Chapter 2
Labor
After twenty-odd hours of fitful pains increasing in strength and frequency throughout the night, as well as a few muffled curses, Harry wanted her husband. She had to speak to him. Suddenly, it was all too much to bear, and she needed an immediate answer to settle her mind.
“Bring me Tommy.”
Alasdair had been sitting up in a chair, trying to snatch some sleep. He rose to his feet and approached the bed.
“Do ye really want him in here, Harry?”
“I need to tell him something. It’s important.” Harry glared at Alasdair and Catherine with as much menace as she could muster while lying in the bed.
Catherine looked at Alasdair. “I can go get him.” She made it into a kind of question.
“’Tis for the best, I think, Yer Grace.” He bowed.
After Catherine left, Harry spoke in a low voice, not wanting the midwife Mrs. Finch to hear. “The pain. When it comes, it’s excruciating, Alasdair.”
“Aye, ’tis only for the stoutest of hearts. But ye are doing very well.”
“If men had to perform this damn labor, they’d keep their falls buttoned up and the human race would not survive.”
“God knew what he was about, making women strong and brave.”
Harry bit back her heresy—if God knew what he was about, he would have made people lay eggs like chickens do—just in time.
Thomas came into the bedchamber at a run, his face showing he had slept as little as Harry had—that is, not at all—with Catherine a few steps behind him.
“What? What’s wrong?” He was almost shouting.
Harry was breathless from trying to push herself up into a sitting position with Alasdair’s assistance, so Alasdair spoke for her. “Everything is as well as can be. My lady says she just needs to tell ye something.”
Thomas knelt by the side of the bed. “What do you need to tell me, Harry?”
She touched his face, met his eyes. “I picked you for me.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, I didn’t think we’d have a— I didn’t realize I was picking you for a child, too.”
Thomas swallowed. “Do you think I won’t be a good father?”
“I think you’ll be a good father to a child who . . . I have to ask you something.”
“Ask me. Ask me.”
“If I die—” Harry held up her hand to keep Thomas from interrupting her. “If I die and, and . . .” Her dratted chin began to tremble.
Thomas leaned forward and folded his arms flat on the bed and put his forehead against the backs of his hands, hiding his face from her.
“My lord, there are nae indications my lady will perish. She is exhausted, of course, but nothing is amiss,” Alasdair said.
Thomas did not respond.
“You must look at me, Tommy, so I know you understand.” Harry could hear her voice had gone very high and shrill.
Thomas raised his head and looked at her. He had suspiciously moist eyes.
She took a deep breath and asked her question as quickly as she could.
“If the child is like me, do you promise not to send him or her to an asylum?”
But Thomas didn’t understand.
“Like . . . you?” he asked.
“Different. Difficult. Strange.”
Thomas reached out and pushed away a tangle of hair that had been sticking to her cheek. “You mean extraordinary. Beautiful. My elf queen.”
She grabbed his hand. “Stop. No. Listen. Time is short. Do you promise? No asylum for the baby? Say it.”
Thomas had a look Harry had never seen before.
“I promise. No asylum, ever. For any of our children. I would never.”
A spasm of pain began to overtake her body. Harry felt her mouth contort. She had allowed herself this moment of weakness, and it was over. Time for the vaunted strength of all women, everywhere.
“Go now.”
Alasdair moved towards the bed. “My lord, I think ye should leave.”
Thomas searched her face. “What do you want, Harry?”
“Leave, leave, leave! I don’t want you . . .” Harry took a deep breath, knowing she must finish her sentence some other way. “To be frightened. And you make me lose my concentration, and I must concentrate on this stupidity right now.”
Thomas got off his knees and pressed his lips to Harry’s forehead. Without thinking, she strained upwards and caught his mouth with hers.
“Stop worrying,” she managed to say.
She held back her shriek until he had gone out the door.
Once the worst of it had passed, Catherine wiped Harry’s face with a cool, damp cloth.
Alasdair clucked. “My lady, ye told a lie.”
“What was a lie?” She almost couldn’t speak, she was so tired now.
“That ye didnae want the earl to be frightened.”
“Yes. Of course. I just didn’t want him to see me afraid. He wouldn’t be able to tolerate that.”
“Are ye afraid? If ye are, I dinnae fault that, but please take comfort in knowing everything is as it should be.”
“Sometimes I forget the pain will end.” Harry breathed in and out, in and out. “But I’m far more frightened of what will come after.”
“Don’t worry about that, just now. First, bring the child into the world. Then the next thing.” Catherine held a cup of water to Harry’s cracked lips.
Harry drank the whole cup greedily. Her throat was dry.
Her stepmother had known Harry was thirsty, but she didn’t understand why Harry was so panicked about becoming a mother. She couldn’t possibly.
But still, Harry was glad she was here. Harry could be as ugly as she liked in front of Mama Katie. Harry didn’t need to take care of her; it was her job to tend to Harry. That was how parents and children worked.
How they were supposed to work.
But Harry was only just learning to take care of Thomas, and she did a poor job of it. She wouldn’t be allowed any time to learn to care for a little one.
She would be sure to make so many mistakes.
And what if she looked at her baby, and it was like any other baby? No one she recognized. A chance lump of flesh that had nothing to do with Harriet Drake.
What if she felt nothing?
She turned her face into her pillow and, even though there was no agonizing pain in her belly at the moment, she screamed.
Thomas forced his legs to return him to the library where he and James had set up camp together, allied as the useless men of the house.
He had not slept a wink throughout the night, but his friend had bedded down on one of the sofas and must have gotten a few hours rest, at the very least. James was up now, standing at the table in a wrinkled tail coat, his curls disheveled, drinking from a steaming cup, but he turned as soon as Thomas came in.
“How is she?”
Thomas shook his head. But he must say something. “She’s well, the doctor says.” He collapsed into a wing chair.
James came over to him. “Then why do you look as if the very devil had shown up at your door?”
A dam broke inside Thomas, and everything came pouring out.
He was vaguely aware of the pressure of a strong hand on his shoulder, squeezing. Then the hand vanished, and a cup of coffee and a glass of whisky and a folded handkerchief appeared on the small table at his elbow.
He had no idea how long he wailed before he felt a small hand lightly placed on top of his hair.
Catherine. Come to comfort him as she comforted Harry. He lifted his head and could barely see her face through the haze of his tears.
“It has nothing to do with you,” she said.
He couldn’t reply to that, so he ignored it. “You shouldn’t be here,” he got out, as gruffly as he could. “You should be with Harry. She needs you.”
“I’ll go back upstairs shortly, but I have to tell you why she asked for your promise about the asylum.”
“I know why.” He could not keep the bitterness out of his voice. “She doesn’t trust me.” He choked. “I thought we—” A fresh wave of misery broke over Thomas, and he almost howled.
Catherine spoke loudly over the noise of his blubbering.
“Listen to me. It’s my fault entirely.” She moved and sat in the chair across from his.
“Yesterday, right before Harry began to feel pain, I mentioned her Great-Aunt Lucy, a spiteful witch who threatened Harry with the asylum when she was just a little girl. And with no sleep, with her own worries about— Well, of course, the horror of that time would be weighing on Harry after my thoughtless remark. She needed you to tell her she was safe and the baby would be, too. That’s all. ”
Even though Catherine was only saying this to shield him from hurt, Thomas’ self-pity began to recede.
“She wanted to see you, Thomas. Wanted you to reassure her. Not me. Not Dr. Andrews. You must know that means you are the most important, most trusted person of any of us.”
James voice floated into the conversation. “Catherine wanted nothing to do with me during her confinement. I would have given a thousand pounds for her to have asked for me.”
“And I would have paid ten thousand pounds for the door to be barred to you,” Catherine rejoined. But she held out hand to her husband. “My pride and vanity at that moment outweighed your desire to be needed, my love.”
James took her hand and squeezed it. “And I’ve forgiven you for that.”
The two were lost in each other’s eyes, and Thomas felt a burst of Harryishness. Sugary sentiment was fine for other people, but he didn’t need to see it.
He coughed loudly. “So you don’t think Harry really imagined I’d ever do such a thing?”
Catherine stopped gazing at her husband and looked at Thomas and her adoring smile turned wistful. “I don’t think I’ll ever know what Harry imagines.”
“Me, either,” Thomas said glumly.
“Nonsense.” Catherine stood, the sympathetic woman gone and Mama Katie in her place. “You’re closer to knowing than anyone else, living or dead, and if you don’t realize that, the more fool you. And my daughter would never have married a fool. I must go, so that is the final word on the matter.”
Thomas got to his feet hastily and made a bow, trying to think of something sensible and grateful to say, but Catherine had already given James a perfunctory kiss, whispered something in his ear, and sailed away, out of the library and back towards the birth of her first grandchild.
James nodded at Thomas and sidled over to him. “Fresh coffee there. Strong and hot. Have some, Tom.”
As Thomas picked up the cup, James whisked away the glass of whisky. That must have been what Catherine had whispered to James. Get rid of the drink. Yes, she didn’t want Thomas any more incapacitated than he already was.
And Thomas agreed with her. After draining his coffee cup, he picked up the handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
“Thank you for the coffee and the loan of your linen. And please thank your formidable duchess for her mothering of me.”
James laughed. Thomas often thought James’ laugh was one of the most joyous sounds he had ever heard, and even now, with his own wife in mortal danger, Thomas still thought so and was glad for it.
“I hope you don’t think I let Kate talk to me the way she just spoke to you.
” James grinned. “She’s a wonderful mother, of course, but the most important thing I do is make sure she never forgets she’s not my mother.
And when she loses her head for a moment, I sweep her off her feet and give her what I like to call a good husbanding. ”
Thomas raised his eyebrows. Ever since the two men had married, neither of them had spoken to the other about the intimacies they shared with their wives. Making love was private in a way that bachelor bedsport had never been.
James read Thomas’ meaning and blushed and inserted a finger over the top of his cravat and tugged to loosen it.
“No, no, no. Of course, that, too, along with threatening to grow a beard. But I meant brushing her hair at night, buying her an outrageous bonnet, putting a new bracelet into her jewel box. The usual husband things.”
Despite James’ rank and the differences in their ages, he and Catherine had turned their love match into a conventional marriage-of-passion. Good for them. It’s what they both wanted.
But it was not what he and Harry had, and, truthfully, it’s not what Thomas wanted. Yes, there were times when he wished his wife followed a more predictable pattern, but then she wouldn’t be Harry, and Harry was what he wanted, first and foremost.
Thomas straightened his back. Damn convention. To hell with the usual. Give him the companionship of a wild enigma who only wanted a room for her thinking. Let her live and be well, and he would count himself the luckiest man in England. For the rest of his life.
His mind was suddenly very clear.
Of course, Harry hadn’t realized she would injure him with her question. She was in extremis. And if Catherine were to be wrong and Harry actually didn’t trust Thomas to protect her and their child, he just had to keep showing her, day in and day out, that he would.
It was what he had been born to do.
And four hours later, when he held a squalling, wholly healthy bundle of baby girl in one arm and his sleeping wife against his chest with the other, he once again offered up his thanks for Lady Huxley’s fourth best drawing room and its comfortable sofa.
Because all these miracles had come to pass.