Barbara Metzger (14 page)

Delia was not done weeping, and Ty was not done convincing himself he had to take his arms away now. They might have stayed like that forever, except Mags scowled at them and said, “But what about the babe?”

Chapter 16

“What do you mean, what about the babe?” Ty almost shouted, forgetting where he was. Actually, he’d already forgotten where he was, but, oh, hell, one did not bellow at a deathbed. He dropped his arms from Miss Croft so fast she staggered, and he winced with the pain from his wounded arm at such sudden motion.

Belinda was still breathing, though barely, and old Mags had pulled the covers down to listen for a heartbeat. Then she moved her ear lower to that distended mass. “The infant’s heart is still going steady. Not for long, for neither of them, I wager, but there is a chance for the wee one.”

“But you said Belinda was not ready to give birth.” Delia blew her nose and watched the midwife poke at the mound of Belinda’s stomach.

“She will never be ready, not now. But we can make a way for the baby to come out. The Romans did it.”

“The Romans also left unwanted children outside the gates for the wolves to eat,” Ty said.

“Aye, but I have heard of a few other cases where it has been done,” Mags replied. “I read of two such at Edinburgh, where they teach the physicians what little the rattlepates know.”

“Yes, but were any of them successful?” Ty wanted to know.

“Not for the mother, that’s the truth. But sometimes the infant survives. I don’t see as we have much to lose, my lord.”

Delia’s face had drained of color. “You mean cut Belinda open, while she still lives? But that would be murder, would it not?”

Ty looked at Anselm, who shrugged. “I do not think Lady Tyverne’s life is ours to give or take any longer, but the child’s? That would be the miracle of birth, surely not a crime.”

“Macurdle!” Ty bellowed in his officer’s voice, loud enough to be heard above the roar of cannons. Belinda was past hearing, anyway.

The whole household, it seemed, appeared in an instant. The solicitor listened to what Ty asked, looked to the midwife with her sharp knife, and promptly slid to the floor in a dead faint. So much for the legal opinion. Winsted, who knew better than to ignore the major’s command, directed at him or not, dragged the lawyer out of the room. Mindle and Aunt Eliza leaned on each other, both ashen and trembling.

“You’d better hurry and decide,” Mags told the viscount. “Another minute and it will be no use.”

They were all looking at him. Of course they were. He was the woman’s husband, her lawful spouse, the one authorized by the church and the crown to make life-and-death decisions for her and the issue of her body. Lud, first he had held Miss Croft in his clumsy hands, now he held a child’s life. He was not qualified for either.

“Likely the babe won’t live anyway,” Mags was saying. “And if it should, you’ve got even odds it’ll be a girl, no threat to your title and all that nonsense men put such stock in. If it’s a boy, the world will know he’s a bastard no matter what you do, but at least he’d have a chance to live.”

Delia was looking at him with hope for her brother’s child.

Anselm had his eyes on Belinda, holding his own breath between her rattling respirations. “Hurry, Ty. Decide.”

A long shot, Ty calculated, that was what the infant had. A chance. The same slim chance that George Croft had given a mortally wounded man in the midst of battle. “Live to pass on the favor.” That’s what the lieutenant had said as he sent Ty to safety on his horse. “Save someone else’s life.” Major Tyverne had not saved the lieutenant’s sweetheart. He had to try for the babe.

He nodded. “Do it.”

Mags and Nanny started to unwrap Belinda’s covers and pile blankets and towels beside her. Delia sent Mindle for hot water, rags, brandy. Aunt Eliza huddled in a corner using the little dog in her arm as a towel.

“Wait!” Ty ordered. “This is no place for Miss Croft or her aunt. My man Winsted and I have seen more blood and gore than all of you combined. We will assist Mags. The rest of you, get out. Except for you, Anselm. And you, too, Nanny. You stand there and pray. Pray for all your soul is worth, for all of us.”

Delia did not leave, of course. She made ready a clean basket, with the softest cloths and placed it to warm by the fire. When Winsted turned green at the first cut of the knife, though, she was there at Ty’s side, following the midwife’s instructions.

The room was so hot, for the baby, Mags said, that sweat poured off Ty’s forehead. He took off his coat and tossed it aside. Hours seemed to pass while they listened for Mags’s orders, Belinda’s breaths, and Anselm’s prayers. And then
...
and then there was a baby.

“Small,” Mags declared, “but breathing.”

She placed the infant on the waiting towels to cut and tie the cord, and the child made a noise, more like something a kitten would make than a baby, but it lived!

“A girl, my lord,” Mags said, before handing the infant to Nanny for cleaning. They all smiled and started to cheer, until they noticed the vicar remove the garland of flowers from Belinda’s hair and draw a sheet over her face.

“Plenty of time for that later,” Mags said when Delia brushed a tear from her eye. “Go help Nanny with the babe now.” She went back to the mother, making her ready for the grave.

The others returned to the sitting room, where the solicitor had revived and was having a drink. The men joined him, while Delia and Aunt Eliza rhapsodized over the infant as Nanny dressed her, near the hearth for warmth.

The newborn was hardly moving, and had not made so much as another mewl of protest at being torn from her warm, watery nest, not even when Nanny wrapped her tightly in soft flannel. The old nursery maid had not swaddled a babe since George had been born, but she remembered how, and showed Delia. Then she shook her head when she handed the tiny bundle to the infant’s aunt by blood, if not by law.

“Methinks, Reverend, we’d best get this wee lass churched,” the old woman called across the room, going back to the bedchamber to fetch her Bible. “The sooner the better, I’d say.”

Ty went over to Delia, who was standing by the fireplace, rocking the infant in her arms. He looked over her shoulder at the new life she cradled.

The babe was as beautiful as a da Vinci cherub, if not as rounded or rosy-cheeked. Her hair was wet, but it looked pale and downy, with no reddish cast at all, Ty was pleased to see. He recalled hearing that the color could change, but if there was ever any chance of passing the chit off as his, she’d do better with her mother’s—and his own—blond hair. Now, if she did not develop a space between her teeth, Ty would be more relieved. “I thought newborns were supposed to be so ugly, all red and creased and pinched together. One of my men said his new son looked like a dried-up apple.”

Delia smiled, but more at the treasure she held than at the viscount. She had never seen such a beautiful child, either. She had never seen as young an infant at all, single women generally being excluded from the birthing process, but she was certain this was the prettiest babe in all of England. “Perhaps they are injured when they are born in the usual fashion.” Then she blushed, because this was not a topic she should be discussing with a man. His lordship was going to think she was the veriest strumpet, “Do you wish to hold her?” she asked.

What a question! She might have asked if he wished to have his other arm cut off. Ty busied himself donning the jacket that Winsted had retrieved, at a safe distance in case Miss Croft thought to hand the infant over. “Your nanny thinks she is going to die, doesn’t she?” he asked.

“Nanny thinks we are all going to die. We are, of course, but I mean that Nanny always sees the dark side of things. Otherwise she would not have to keep praying, would she?”

“What do you think, about the baby?”

Delia shrugged. “I do not know. She is so small, and so still. Healthy babies make a lot more noise, Nanny says. They strengthen their lungs that way. They do not all start to suck immediately after birth, but soon. If the baby does not, if she is too weak or too young ...” Her voice trailed off. They both knew what happened to a creature that would not nurse.

Reverend Anselm had turned to a different page in his prayer book. He called them into a circle close to the fire. “Ty, you have to name godparents for the baby, to watch out for your daughter’s spiritual well-being.”

Who better than the vicar himself, Ty’s old friend? “Would you serve, Stephen? I cannot think of a better man for the job.”

Mr. Anselm bowed. “I would be delighted.”

“And Miss Croft, of course, if you would?”

“Since I cannot be her aunt, I would be pleased to be her godmother. Thank you, my lord, for the honor.”

Anselm looked up from his prayer book. “And a name.”

Ty’s mind was blank. “A name?”

“We cannot christen her into the church without a name, old chap. The poor mite will want something on her birth certificate, you know.” As usual, the vicar refused to consider that the name might soon be inscribed on a gravestone. “And as my first duty as godfather, I am begging you not to pick something like Clytemnestra or Calpurnia. She is too small for such a mouthful, for one, and I would not have her growing up defending herself against being called Clem or Cal.”

Ty looked at the infant, but all he saw was Miss Croft, with that rapt, Madonna-like expression all women got when they held babies. She would make a good mother herself someday, he was certain, if she found a husband worthy of her.

“Would you wish me to call her Georgina?” he asked her. “Or Georgette, after her father?”

“What, and tell the whole world what we have been at pains to conceal?” Delia answered. “Definitely not.”

“Shall I name her after her mother, then? Belinda?”

“The choice has to be yours, my lord. It is a pretty name.”

And Belinda had been a pretty widgeon who could not count and had dreadful handwriting. Ty preferred not to immortalize her that way. “My mother’s name was Melissa. How about Melinda? And Adele after her godmother? No one can object to that, can they?”

So Melinda Adele St. Ives was blessed and anointed from the bottle Anselm had so recently stoppered. And she complained. Nanny praised the Lord, but Mags rushed off to find Hessie Wigmore, who had given birth two months ago and had plenty of milk.

“But Hester was one of those who turned her back on Belinda,” Delia fretted. “Will she come for Belinda’s baby?”

“Mayhaps yes, mayhaps no. But she will come for Lord Tyverne’s blunt. What with that ne’er-do-well Fred Wigmore for a husband and five children to feed, she’ll come.”

Just in case, Winsted was sent into the village to find out who had a milk cow for sale, and a nanny goat, too, for Mags declared some youngsters did better on one than the other.

While Delia, her aunt, and the nursemaid made lists of what the infant needed, and what might be found in the attics, Mr. Anselm was finally getting to pour himself that glass of brandy.

“I deserve it,” he told his friend, who already had one in hand. “A marriage, a death, and a birth, all in one day. I’ve gone from giving last rites to performing a wedding, and once conducted a wedding and a christening in the same day. For the same couple, in fact. But I have never had to go through all three together. I doubt there could be anything else to top this.”

The viscount was sipping from his own glass. “If the earl gets wind of it, you could add a suicide.”

“No, knowing your father, it would be a homicide. Stivern will flay you alive for this day’s work.”

Ty took a larger swallow. “I did what I had to.”

“Will you tell him?”

“What, travel to Warwickshire to inform my sire that he has a granddaughter, whom I could not possibly have sired? The blackguard is liable to use the marriage as proof that I am insane and incompetent, so he can push even harder to cut me out of the succession. No, the earl can read the announcement in the journals, the same as everyone else.”

“Well, at least it is a girl.”

Ty nodded. A common-born wife was bad enough. A bastard was worse. A bastard son bearing the St. Ives name would have been the worst complication of all. He raised his glass. “To a daughter. Now I can get on my way.”

Chapter 17

“What do you mean, now you can be on your way?” Delia had come to urge the gentlemen to partake of the wedding breakfast in the dining room, whatever of it had not spoiled by now. The baby was asleep in her basket, once the dog had been ousted and fresh blankets laid there, and Delia realized she was hungry, herself. It had been a long, adventuresome, emotional morning. The men, especially a large man like Viscount Tyverne, must be sharp set. Instead, it seemed, he was set on leaving,

“I told you I had urgent affairs in London,” he reminded her. “It is well past the time I wished to return. If I leave when Winsted gets back with the cow or goat or whatever, I can still complete most of the journey by nightfall.”

“Your debt is paid, like a hotel bill, and now you will ride away, your obligations fulfilled?” Mags had said Viscount Tyverne was not the staying kind, but this was absurd. How could he go from tender comforter to callous cretin in a matter of minutes? The fact that he was a man, she supposed, was answer enough. Well, it was not good enough for her. Delia crossed her arms, set her jaw, and tapped her foot. “You are going to leave, just like that?”

Anselm bowed himself out of the room, the coward. Ty recognized the martial gleam in Miss Croft’s green eyes, too, and thought enviously of the meal he knew was waiting below. Better a cold meal than this cold glare. He wondered what more the woman could want of him. What, did she expect him to change the infant’s nappies next? He had done everything he could, dash it, and so he would tell her.

“Just like that, Miss Croft? I was intending to leave my man behind, with a blank check. I told him to reserve himself a room at the inn in the village, so not to be a burden to you here, but to be on hand to lend assistance.”