Chapter Sixteen
In all of Abigail’s time spent at Columbia College, she had never, not once, been offered any instruction on labor and birth.
When she had asked why such an intricate and often fatal process was not taught, she was told, a bit snidely, that women were designed to give birth and it was the work of a midwife, not a doctor, to ensure they did it properly.
After all, livestock did not ordinarily require assistance or intervention when birthing.
Why should women? Furthermore, why should a lecture or, even worse, an entire class be wasted on a female concern?
As a result, Abigail had taken it upon herself to learn as much as she could with what limited resources (both time and written material) she had.
Upon first arriving in London, while establishing herself as a physician, she had apprenticed first with a midwife and then a veterinarian, the latter of whom had revealed, with a weary sort of smile, that livestock very much did require assistance with birthing, and had gone on to show her the various ways in which he provided such assistance.
She had learned to palpate a cow, turn a stuck piglet, and had even assisted in a caesarean section performed on a goat whose frame was much too tiny to naturally deliver the triplets she was carrying.
While her work on actual human patients was far more limited given that women were not accustomed to reaching out to doctors for help, she had overseen three successful labors.
Mara’s would be her fourth.
“Put the mattress there, by the fire,” she instructed two servants as they entered the drawing room carrying a large canvas sack stuffed with horsehair and cotton.
Since the duchess’s water had broken, her labor had progressed swiftly, making it unsafe for her to climb the stairs to her bedchamber.
After a brief minute of panic, led largely by the duke who had since been banished to pace in the front hall, Abigail had calmly suggested that if Mara could not get to her bedchamber, then they should bring her bedchamber to her.
“We want the baby to be warm when it is born and there is a slight draft in the room. Mrs. Robbins, do you have the linens I requested? Excellent. Jack, place the bucket of ice chips by the top of the mattress. Lady Kentwood—”
“Kitty,” Mara’s sister interrupted. “This is no time for formalities.”
“Very well. Kitty, please help Mara over here. Steady. That’s it.
” For the duchess, whose countenance was already slick with perspiration and eyes were wide with a combination of pain and excitement, Abigail adopted a softer, calmer tone.
“I want you to lay on your back and I’m going to place these pillows on either side of your hips to tilt your pelvis into a more comfortable position.
Your contractions are less than three minutes apart. We haven’t long until labor begins.”
“Until it begins?” Mara cried as she positioned herself on the mattress. “It’s already been going on for two hours!”
“Twenty minutes,” Jack piped up from the windowsill where she was perched like a cat, her eyes even bigger than Mara’s as she observed the proceedings.
“What did I say?” Kitty demanded, shooting her young charge a glare. “Be quiet or out you go to wait with the men.”
Jack mimed stitching her lips closed while Abigail positioned herself at the foot of the mattress.
“I am speaking about what I call earnest labor,” she explained, “when the baby lowers itself into the birthing canal. Do you remember the breathing exercises we’ve been practicing?
In through the nose on a count of five, out through the mouth on a count of ten.
Yes, just like that. Very good. I’m going to do a quick examination to see how far you’ve progressed.
You can take your sister’s hand if it helps. ”
“Yeouch!” Kitty yelped when Mara squeezed her fingers in a vicelike grip. “That hurts!”
“That hurts? That hurts?” Her cheeks pink and puffed with air, Mara turned her head to scowl at her sister. “A tiny human is currently trying to make its way out of a part of my body that no tiny human should come out of!”
“I can see the head,” Abigail announced, the siblings’ bickering a minor vibration in her ear as her sole focus remained dedicated to the patient at hand. “Another deep breath, and when I tell you to push, you need to push as hard as you can. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Mara moaned.
“I think you snapped off my thumb,” Kitty said mildly.
“Let me look! I always wanted to see—no, no I don’t.” Jack clamped a hand over her mouth as she reeled away. “That’s hideous.”
“PUSH!” Abigail shouted, and with a warrior-like cry that millions of mothers before her had emitted in the depths of their herculean effort to bring new life into the world, Mara did. Then pushed again. And again. And again. Until a new cry, tremulous and high pitched, filled the drawing room.
Working swiftly, Abigail cut the umbilical cord and cleared the squalling infant’s nostrils before placing it into Mara’s trembling arms. “Congratulations, Your Grace. You have a son.”
“A son,” Mara whispered tearfully, all of her pain and discomfort draining away as love, powerful and omnipresent, brought a warm, contended glow to her face. “I have a son. And he is perfect.”
While Kitty and Jack fussed over the baby and Mrs. Robbins went to fetch Ambrose, Abigail worked diligently to ensure that Mara finished the laboring process in its entirety before she gently cleansed the area and covered the duchess’s legs with a fresh sheet.
She waited until the infant had latched to its mother’s breast, and then she left, her own body exhausted from the burned-away adrenaline of ensuring a safe, successful delivery for both Mara and her newborn son.
“Abigail.” Stephen was there to meet her in the hallway.
One glance at her pale face and he wrapped his arm around her waist, steering her toward the solarium where she found hot tea and breakfast waiting.
“Eat,” he said, pushing a plate in front of her piled high with buttered toast, roasted sausage, and buttered eggs.
“Then you’re going upstairs to sleep. You’ve worked yourself to the bone these past few weeks caring for the Duchess of Southwick, and if those loud cries were any indication, it was a job well done. ”
“A boy,” Abigail said between mouthfuls of toast. “She had a boy.”
A shadow flickered in Stephen’s gaze. “That’s wonderful news. I’m sure the duke will be quite pleased with an heir.”
“That’s what you would like, isn’t it?” She paused with a forkful of sausage halfway to her lips. “A male heir. You spoke of it before, briefly. But we’ve never discussed it in great detail.”
“What I would like is for you to be happy.” He rose from the table and went to the sideboard to put more food on his plate even though, she couldn’t help but notice, it was already full. “Yesterday, you said that you’d like to remain at Summerwind House for a while longer. Why?”
Hearing the weight in his words, the somberness in his tone, she lowered her fork without taking a bite as a pit began to form in her belly. “I told you. I’ve been busy with the duchess—”
“You’ll always be busy, Abigail,” he replied stiffly, his back to her. “Such is the profession you have chosen, and I won’t ask you to change it. Not for me. Not for anyone. It is clear that helping people, healing them, is your passion, and you’re damned good at it. Brilliant, even.”
“Thank you,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure if it was a compliment . . . or an accusation. “I am a good doctor. It is a career I intend to pursue for many years to come.” Without warning, her mind suddenly flashed back to an office she’d stood in eight years ago.
“No doubt you have a bright mind, but being a physician requires an intelligence that a woman simply does not possess. If you wish to pursue a career in the medical field, might I suggest becoming a midwife or apprenticing with an herbalist?”
Dr. Bard had never come out and said that his first impression of her was incorrect, or that he’d been wrong to discourage a woman from pursuing the field of medicine.
He was too arrogant for that. Too set in his own way of thinking.
But she’d felt him watching her over the course of her education, the corners of his eyes crinkled in a way that might, if one looked close enough, be perceived as approval. Perhaps even admiration.
After leaving his office on that fateful day, she had run, quite literally, into Stephen. Or rather he had run into her. And her life had been irrevocably changed, a new path carved from the rutted path of where she’d thought she was going to where she’d actually gone.
She had become a wife and then, in some ways and by her own choice, a widow. A doctor. A keeper of cats. A countess.
But who was she truly?
She knew who Stephen was.
Who he’d always been.
A lord. A husband. A protector. A man who had hunted her and helped her in equal measure. One who had made her both grit her teeth and bite her lip. One she was falling—had fallen?—in love with, as much as love could be believed despite not being a provable scientific theory.
“Stephen.” She gripped her fork, fingers wrapping around the silver utensil until her knuckles shone white as the pit in her belly began to unfurl with tender shoots of green and a blossom of yellow.
A color, she’d read in Ancient Herbal Remedies and Their Practical Modern Uses, that signified hope and new beginnings. “Stephen, I have been considering—”
“I would like you to leave, Abigail.” Finally, he turned to look at her, and she almost wished he hadn’t, because his stare was as hard and unflinching as a wall of stone.
“When the Duke and Duchess of Southwick depart, I would like you to go with them. Or you can go back to London. Your destination doesn’t matter to me, only that you go.
The three-week period we agreed to has come to an end. ”
Her fork dropped to the table with a clatter. “But . . . but we discussed extending my time here.”
“We did, but I don’t see the need or what difference it would yield.
Any funds you require will be at your disposal.
” He spoke formally, flatly, in a tone that didn’t sound like her Stephen at all.
The warmth was missing. Even the anger had disappeared.
In its place there was . . . nothing. A terrible, awful shade of beige in a library that had just been filled with color.
“I’ll notify my solicitor in London to pay any bills on your behalf, you need only send them to him. ”
Her spine stiffened. “I can pay my own bills—”
“You will also have a carriage and driver at your disposal. Servants, too, if you would like them. Mrs. Robbins can assist you with hiring. Should you ever want to purchase a larger property in London, or anywhere else, for that matter, simply write me the address.” A muscle ticked in his jaw.
The only sign of emotion in a countenance that was otherwise blank.
“Of course, you are welcome to return to Summerwind House when I am not in residence. You may also make use of my manor in Grosvenor Square in a similar fashion. I’ll have my secretary coordinate our schedules. ”
Abigail stared at him. What was happening?
She felt as if she’d been given a test with no time to prepare in a language that she didn’t understand with a pencil that hadn’t any lead.
All of these years, through all of the places she’d traveled and all of the things she had done, there had been one single, unwavering certainty.
Stephen had wanted her. He’d searched the world for her.
But now, when they were in the same room, he .
. . did not. He was sending her away. And it should have been a relief.
It should have been everything she’d always claimed she ever wanted.
Why, then, did she suddenly feel so hollow?
With a hand that shook ever so slightly, she removed her spectacles and used cleaning the lenses on her skirt as an excuse to glance down at her lap. “That is all very generous. Thank you.”
“You needn’t thank me, Abigail. You are still my wife. My responsibility.” He set his plate aside. “If you’ll excuse me, I would like to find the new father and congratulate him. Don’t forget to rest after you’ve finished eating.”
“I won’t,” she said automatically, but it was too late.
He was already walking away.
*
Stephen could hear the happy muddle of voices coming from the drawing room, but instead of following them, he put on his greatcoat and went out to the stables where he was greeted with frosty air and the friendly whicker of his favorite mare, Vixen, a spirited chestnut with a white blaze and a penchant for stealing treats out of his pocket.
“Here.” Reaching into a nearby bin, he procured a handful of dried alfalfa and fed her with a flat palm. She nudged his chest when he was done, a response that ordinarily would have summoned a smile, but he didn’t feel very much like smiling at the moment.
Abigail’s face was trapped in his mind. Particularly, the stricken expression that had befallen it when he’d told her that he wanted her to leave. An impulsive decision born of a desperate need to guard his own heart against further pain.
The battered organ already had too many cracks to count.
Any more, and it would be broken beyond repair.
So he had to send her away, didn’t he? He had no choice.
It was either that, or wait for her to leave him.
Three weeks. Five weeks. Ten. Twenty. What was the bloody difference when the story would be the same in the end?
Leaning against Vixen’s stall, he dragged a hand through his hair as his heavy sigh expelled a plume of smoke into the aisle.
There was a twisted irony, he supposed, in going to such great lengths to avoid being trapped in a marriage like his parents .
. . and ending up there anyway. Stuck in a distant union born of convenience and apathy.
For a brief, glimmering moment, he’d thought it might work. He’d believed, foolishly, that some magical solution would present itself if only he could show Abigail what she would be missing. But she’d seen it. She’d seen it, and just now, when given the opportunity, she hadn’t pleaded to stay.
She’d thanked him.
His bitter laugh caused Vixen to pin her ears. When she swung her haunches toward him, he coaxed her back with more alfalfa which she nibbled daintily before rubbing her head on his shoulder.
“I know,” he murmured, scratching the middle of her blaze. “But I already spent a year chasing her. I won’t torture myself by doing it for the rest of my life. A line has to be drawn somewhere.”
And finally, after eight long years, he was drawing it.