Mary Balogh (29 page)

Olivia hoped Sophia would come.

And she hoped that Marc would not come. She could not bear to see him. Not now. She needed tranquility in her life for the next few weeks. She hoped he would not feel obliged to come.

She could hear the sound of horses far down the drive. It sounded like more than one. Clarence usually rode over. Perhaps it was Emma, she thought, or the rector’s wife. She had promised to call one afternoon during the week. Perhaps it was Sophia. But no. Her letter would not have reached London more than a day or two before. There would have been no time for Sophia to come.

It was a curricle, she saw as the vehicle came into sight. She stood up to watch it. Whom did she know with a curricle? There was no one in the neighborhood. It must be someone come from a distance.

Marc?

But no, it could not be Marc. There would not have been the time for arrangements to be made for a journey and the journey accomplished.

She drew her shawl closer about her shoulders and spread both hands protectively over her unborn baby.

It was Marc. She knew it long before she could see the driver clearly and despite the improbability that it was he. Her thudding heart and the blood pounding at her temples told her that it was he. But she could neither run to him nor away from him. She stood quite still.

It was Marc. And he had seen her. He was signaling to a couple of grooms who had appeared at the gateway of the stableyard to see who was approaching. He jumped down from the high seat, leaving both curricle and horses to their care.

It was Marc. Her baby moved violently inside her. He had flung his hat onto the seat of the curricle. She had forgotten his silvering hair. She had forgotten how attractive it looked.

She was standing in the middle of the rose arbor, a woolen shawl drawn over a flimsy, loose-fitting dress. She was enormous with child and quite pale and quite impossibly beautiful. He did not even look behind him to see if the two grooms he had signaled were coming to take his horses. He strode toward her.

“Livy,” he said, reaching out his hands to take the hands she had stretched out to him. “My God. Oh, my God.” Her hands were cold. He squeezed them tightly.

“Marc,” she said, “why did you come? Oh, why? I have been hoping and hoping that you would not.”

“Have you?” he said, and he could feel his jaw tightening. “You did not think I would be interested in the birth of my own child? You did not think I would consider it important enough that I need be informed before now?”

“Yes,” she said, “I knew you would be interested. It might be a son. Perhaps you will have an heir long after you must have given up all hope of having one.”

“And perhaps it will be a daughter,” he said. “Either way it will be a child of my own body. And of yours. You had no right to keep it from me this long. No right
at all.” All the shock and anxiety and love that had sustained him on his journey were converted suddenly and unexpectedly to anger. He had committed one wrong long ago in the past, and ever since she had made him into a monster of depravity and insensitivity.

She withdrew her hands. He had come because of the baby. Of course. It would be his only reason for coming. She had known that. It was why she had not wanted him to come. And yes, it had been spiteful to make those remarks about a son and heir. He would love the child if it were a girl, just as he had loved Sophia. He would want to share the child as he had shared Sophia. But it was her child. This time she had done all the suffering alone.

“This is my child,” she said. “All mine. You shall have no part of this child. You have not been here.”

“I was there at the start,” he said harshly. “I will not satisfy you, you see, by suspecting you with someone else. No child can be yours alone, Livy. The child is ours. And I would have been here ever since the start if you had only said the word. You know that.”

“No, I do not,” she cried. “You could not wait to return to London and your whore.”

“Mary is not a whore,” he said, “and never was my mistress, either. And you know you are being unfair. I wanted you to stay longer, if you will recall. Or have you forgotten that detail? Does it not fit your image of me as a compulsive womanizer and therefore must be suppressed from your memory?”

“I don’t want to argue with you,” she said, turning away from him. “I don’t want you here.”

“What is it?” he asked when she stopped abruptly.

“Nothing,” she said, taking a deep breath. “The baby moved. It is low and awkward.”

He reached out and touched her shoulder. She was heavy and awkward with his child. He felt an ache at
the back of his throat. “How have you been, Livy?” he asked. “Has it been a difficult confinement?”

“Because I am thirty-seven years old?” she asked him. “No, I am still capable of bearing, Marcus. I must return to the house. I need to sit down in a proper chair.”

She was being deliberately nasty and spiteful. She realized that, but she could not seem to help herself. It was either that or cast herself into his arms weeping. She would not show him that she needed him, that she had longed for him every moment of every day and night since she had returned from Clifton the summer before. He had come because of the baby. He had left Lady Mornington so that he might have a new child to go back and boast about. Had he told the truth about her? She frowned.

“Let me help you,” he said.

His arm was so much firmer than Clarence’s. So much easier to lean on. But the distance to the house suddenly seemed a formidable one.

“What is it?” he asked when she stopped.

“More movement,” she said. “I need to get back to the house. I have not been feeling well today.”

“And you have no one to insist that you stay indoors when you are feeling so?” he asked. “You will have me from now on.”

“There are two weeks to go,” she said. “Sophia was late. Perhaps this child will be, too. It could be a month. You will miss part of the Season if you stay. There will be no need to do so. I shall let you know immediately.”

“You might as well save your breath for the walk,” he said. “This is my home, too, if you will remember, Livy. This is where I plan to be living for some time to come.”

“I don’t want you here,” she said.

“Don’t you?” he said. “Too bad.”

“I was hoping that Sophia would come,” she said.

“I sent a note around,” he said, “but I did not wait
long enough for a reply. I had the sudden and strange urge to visit my wife. For all I know they may be on my heels. What is it?” She had stopped walking again and was drawing a deep breath instead of setting a foot on the bottom step leading up to the house.

“I think,” she said, “that this baby is not going to wait another two weeks. I think it is going to be born much sooner than that.”

There were more servants than usual in the hall, all of them curious to see the master they had either never seen or not seen for many years. The front doors were open. There were certainly enough servants present to answer the earl’s roar for attention. Soon one was scurrying for My Lady’s maid, another for Mrs. Oliver, and a third for the doctor. The remaining ones gawked as My Lord swept his very pregnant wife up into his arms as if she weighed no more than a feather and half ran up the stairs with her.

S
HE COULD NOT
lie down. The pains were more severe and more frightening when she tried to lie down and rest between times. She should try to lie on her side, her maid told her. She should bring her knees up to cushion the pain, Mrs. Oliver advised. She should pile the pillows beneath her head so that she was not so flat, the doctor said.

They might all go hang, the earl said, and leave his wife to do what was most comfortable for her. And no, damn it, he would not leave the room. His wife was about to have his child and he would damned well stay in the room if he damned well pleased.

He apologized to the ladies for his language when his wife relaxed after a particularly lengthy contraction, but refused to change his mind.

“Lean against me, Livy,” he said, “when the pain comes again. Perhaps it will help.”

And so when her indrawn breath signaled the onslaught of another bout of pain, he got behind her at the side of the bed and stood firm while she pressed back against him and arched her head back onto his shoulder.

“It helps?” he asked when she relaxed again.

“Yes,” she said.

Her maid had disappeared. The doctor and Mrs. Oliver were deep in low conversation at the other side of the room—probably some conspiracy to get rid of him, the earl thought.

“Livy,” he said. “I came because of you, you know. Not because of the baby.”

She was sitting upright again, her head dropped forward. Her eyes were closed.

“The child was begotten in love,” he said. “At least on my part. I love you. I always have and I always will. About that at least, I have always remained steadfast.”

She lifted her head and drew a deep breath and he took her against him again and stood firm as she grappled with her pain. She stayed against him when it had passed.

“I have never been as much of a womanizer as you seem to think,” he said. “There was someone for a year after you made it clear that there could be no reconciliation between us. And a few since for brief spells. And there was Mary for six years—my friend, as Clarence has been yours, Livy. But I broke off with her immediately after Sophia’s wedding, nevertheless. I knew there could be no one but you, even if you would never have me back.”

“Marc,” she said, “you do not need to say these things.”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I know you have a low opinion of me, Livy. But you must have consoled yourself while
Sophia grew up with the knowledge that my fall from grace came several years after her conception and birth. I think you need to know that this child, too, is not the child of a total degenerate.”

“Marc,” she said. But she drew in a sharp breath and pressed her head back into his shoulder. “Oh,” she said when it was finally over. “It hurts. It hurts, Marc.”

“Oh, God,” he said. “If only I could do this for you.”

She laughed softly.

“I love you, Livy,” he said. “For the child’s sake I want you to know that. I have always loved you. And I have been faithful to you since its conception. It broke my heart when you left last summer and I have longed for you every day since. I want you to know that for the child’s sake, not to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable,” she said. “It is so hot in here. Open a window, Marc.”

“They are all open,” he said. He raised his voice. “A cool cloth, Mrs. Oliver. Hand it to me. Her ladyship is feeling uncomfortably warm.”

It was a long labor. The doctor took himself off to sleep in another room in the house some time after dark. Some time after midnight, the countess’s maid replaced Mrs. Oliver at her vigil. The earl refused to leave. If he moved from the bedside in order to wet the cloth afresh or sip some water, his wife would cry out in panic for him when another wave of pain assaulted her. She had become dependent upon the warmth and firmness of his body at her back.

Daylight came before she finally felt the urge to push and her maid went flying off to rouse the doctor.

“Take my strength, Livy,” her husband murmured against her hot temple during an ever-shortening interval between pains. “I wish I could give it all to you, darling.”

“Marc,” she said. “Marc. Ahhh!”

He held her by the shoulders, willing his strength to flow into her.

He had paced belowstairs during the long hours of her delivery of Sophia. The time had been endless, and he had seen in her face afterward that the birthing had not been easy for her. But he had had no idea of what a woman must suffer to bring a man’s child into the world. He would have died for her if he could, to save her one more moment of pain. But he could do nothing for her but stand and hold her and bathe her face between pains and remember the pleasure it had given him to plunge his seed into her.

Even after the doctor came back to the bedchamber and persuaded her to lie down at last and position herself for the birthing, it was not over and not easy. It terrified Marc to see her use more energy, at the end of hours and hours of the weakening pains than he had ever used during a hard day’s work.

My God
, he thought, as he helped Mrs. Oliver for surely the dozenth time to lift her shoulders from the bed as she bore down to release herself of her burden.
My God!

Both the housekeeper and the doctor had given up long before trying to make him leave as any proper husband would do. He had been an improper husband for long enough, he thought. Why change now?

And then she bore down and did not stop, only letting out her breath with a whoosh two or three times before gasping it in again. And he watched in wonder and awe as his son was born. He was sobbing, he realized as he lowered his wife back to her pillows, and he did not care who saw it.

“We have a son, Livy,” he said. “A son.”

And the baby was crying and being set, all blood streaked, on his mother’s breast as Mrs. Oliver wiped at his back with a cloth.

“Oh,” Olivia said. “Oh.” She touched him, smoothed a hand over his head, touched his cheek with light fingers. “Look at him, Marc. Oh, look at him.”

And then Mrs. Oliver was taking the baby away to clean him and the doctor was coughing and suggesting that his lordship leave the room while he finished with her ladyship.

The earl straightened up and dried his eyes with a handkerchief. But she turned her head and smiled radiantly up at him before he could turn away.

“We have a son, Marc,” she said, reaching up one weak hand, which he took in a firm grasp. “We have a son.”

He raised her hand to his lips and laid it against his cheek. “Thank you, Livy,” he said. “I love you.”

The doctor coughed again.

E
VERYTHING LOOKED REMARKABLY THE SAME AFTER
almost fifteen years. It was true that downstairs she had made some changes. The draperies and carpets and some of the furniture had been changed. He remembered her writing for permission and funds to make the changes. But the park he was looking at through a window was much the same. There had never been formal gardens at Rushton; only the kitchen gardens and the greenhouses behind the house and the rose arbor to the west. The room behind him, his bedchamber, had not been changed at all. Some of the belongings he had left behind were still in the drawers.