The Brigadier's Runaway Bride (Dukes of War Book 5) (17 page)

Edmund shoved boxes out from under the stairwell until he finally unearthed his missing bottle of cognac.
 

He slumped against one of the dusty walls, propped his booted feet atop the closest crate, and uncorked the last few inches of golden liquid. The bottle predated his commission into the army, but a sniff of its contents indicated the contents were just as sweet and fragrant as ever.
 

With a sigh, he recorked the bottle and put it back into the box.

To him, spirits were a celebration. A toast to a new life or a tribute to a job well done. He had a new life, all right, but he didn’t deserve commendation. He deserved castigation. He had pushed Sarah before she was ready.

The back of his head thunked against the stairwell. Damn it all. He had sworn to himself he would give her time to adjust to her new home, her new children, her new husband, everything. He had
seen
what she’d had to suffer to give birth and had no doubt it would take time to recover. She was as beautiful today as the day they’d met, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still healing. Even if she had reached for him first.

A distant knock rapped against the front door and Edmund’s body tensed. He supposed that was an improvement. Until recently, his normal reaction to startling noises had become diving for cover lest he be shot in the chest.

His footman materialized outside the open stairwell door.

“Don’t tell me.” Edmund pushed to his feet and ducked out of the low cubby. “My parents are back.”

The footman smiled. “Major Bartholomew Blackpool to see you, sir.”

Edmund’s twin came into view wearing champagne-shined Hessians, spotless buckskin breeches, an exquisitely carved walking stick, a sapphire blue tailcoat with sparkling gold buttons, a coal black top hat, and an explosion of starched white linen protruding from his neck.
 

Bartholomew grinned and affected a formal bow. “Brother.”

Edmund wiped stairwell dust from his hands to his wrinkled trousers. “Please tell me you’ve come because you’ve missed me, and not because Mother has been overstaying her welcome in London and you want me to do something about it.”

Bartholomew’s eyes widened. “Did she truly leave Maidstone? I had no idea.”

Edmund squinted at him. “They were here not a fortnight ago, and I could swear she intended to pay a long visit to you.”

“Well, she might have intended such, but Daphne and I were in South Tyneside with the miners, then over to Littleport to see about the wheat farmers, and then of course there’s the situation brewing in Manchester…” Bartholomew lifted a shoulder. “Truth be told, we just got back to London this afternoon.”

Edmund motioned for his brother to follow him to the sitting room. “And your first act upon returning to Town was to visit me? I’m flattered, brother, but should you not be relaxing at home?”

Bartholomew burst out laughing. “Have you met my wife? Daphne has no idea what relaxing means. ’Twas all I could do to talk her out of inspecting every weaving loom in Lancashire. Now that we’re home, she’s decided we ought to go to Vauxhall to see the orchestra and the fireworks. Any chance you two would like to join us?”

Edmund’s stomach clenched. “None. I doubt Sarah could bear to be more than a few feet from the twins.”

Bartholomew flopped into one of the wingback chairs. “I presumed as much.”

Edmund, on the other hand, was having a moment of doubt.
He
couldn’t think of anything less relaxing than standing amongst a teeming crush of people while loud explosions sounded overhead.
 

Sarah, on the other hand, might find the pleasure gardens a welcome distraction.

She hadn’t been more than a few feet from the twins since the moment of their birth. Constant proximity had been as much Edmund’s design as any particular requirement of the babies’. They needed to be fed every few hours, but that didn’t mean someone else couldn’t keep a watchful eye on them while she and Edmund took a turn about the park or did a bit of shopping.
 

She’d as much as begged him for just such a brief respite and he had refused out of hand. Repeatedly. The streets were dangerous, unpredictable… but to Sarah, they were home.

Bartholomew leaned forward, frowning. “Is something amiss, brother?”

Edmund shook his head. Nothing at all was amiss, other than his realization that his wife’s rejection of further advances might not have had anything to do with her physical recovery. After all, she was the one who had initiated the lovemaking. She would not have done so if her body were not ready.

Thus the problem didn’t lay with her, but with him. Could he blame her? He wasn’t the same man as when he’d first left, or even the same man who’d thought nothing of meeting a lover in Bruges. He was a man who wouldn’t let his wife or children leave their minuscule townhouse. Perhaps Sarah had simply wished to make love to a husband, not a gaoler.

The staircase creaked.
 

Edmund glanced up to see his wife descending the stairs. His jaw tightened. She hadn’t spoken to him since the previous night. She’d waited until he was asleep before returning to the bedchamber, then feigned sleep of her own until he’d quit the room in the morning.
 

He hoped this wouldn’t become their new routine. He loved her too much to live like that. But if she was waiting for him to rent a phaeton to go racing on Rotten Row… well, she’d be waiting a long time.

“Bartholomew!” Sarah’s warm voice was filled with genuine pleasure. “What a lovely surprise. I’ll ring for tea.”

Edmund’s eyes met Bartholomew’s over the empty table and they both hid smiles. Edmund supposed he couldn’t feel slighted that Sarah hadn’t bothered to ask if he’d already rung for tea… because, of course, he hadn’t. He’d been thinking of her, not his brother.

“What are you doing in London?” Sarah asked Bartholomew after joining Edmund on the sofa. “I thought Daphne didn’t expect to be back home until late June.”

She hadn’t? Edmund cast his wife an inquiring glance. Her gaze was fixed on Bartholomew. Edmund frowned and tried not to feel left out. If Sarah wished to correspond with Daphne, she had every right to do so. They had been acquainted for years, and even if they hadn’t, writing letters was likely the sole source of non-baby entertainment to be found inside the townhouse.

“Yes, well, that was the idea, but…” Bartholomew took a deep breath. “Daphne is going to be a mother.”

Sarah gasped and clapped her hands together. “That’s splendid!”

Edmund grinned. “Congratulations, brother.”

“I’m scared out of my skull.” Bartholomew dropped his head into his hands. “That’s why I’m here.”

Edmund arched a brow. “You’re worried it’ll be twins?”

“I’m worried they’ll be
girls
,” Bartholomew confessed in terror. “How the devil will I ever keep up with three Daphnes?”

Sarah laughed. “Well, the first thing to know—”

“—is that you’re going to do everything wrong,” Edmund finished wryly. “But it will end up just fine.”

The blood drained from Bartholomew’s face. “Wrong? Like what? Perhaps I can avoid the same mistakes.”

“Little things. The first time I burped the baby, I had just donned fresh clothes.” Sarah smiled at the memory. “He spit up all over me and I didn’t have another chance to bathe for an hour.”

Bartholomew recoiled in horror. “He spit up on your
clothes?
”

Sarah made a face. “After that, I learned to keep clean rags on my shoulders.”

“Their drool gets everywhere,” Edmund said with a shake of his head. “They like to gnaw my fingers, my cravat…”

“My hair, my cheek… One time, even my nose.” Sarah laughed.

Bartholomew looked appalled. “I will let someone else burp them. Thank you for the sound advice.”

“And then there’s the baths,” Edmund said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t wear white to—”

“Hire a nanny.” Sarah made eyes at her husband to leave his dandy brother in peace. Bartholomew would not be able to handle the bath stories. “The biggest difference in our lives was the constant exhaustion. The first few weeks are definitely the most difficult.”

“I don’t think we slept,” Edmund agreed.

“I
know
we didn’t. Remember the time the twins were fussing to be fed, and you accidentally brought me the same one twice?”

“Or the time you went to put Noah in his cradle and got confused because he was already in there sleeping?”

“It was Timothy!” She gasped with laughter at the memory and touched her head briefly to Edmund’s shoulder. “How about the time you were so wet with bathwater that you took off your ruined shirt and Noah tried to suckle your nipple?”

“Or the time you lifted Timothy from the bath and suffered an attack of hysteria because you thought his bollocks were missing?”

“They vanished!” she protested, her face flaming red. “How was
I
to know cold water has such an effect on young boys?”

“Tea?” said the footman as he placed the tray on the table with an impressively expressionless face.

“Have you anything stronger?” Bartholomew asked weakly.

Edmund smiled. “Old cognac.”

“Under the stairwell,” Sarah clarified.

Bartholomew glanced at the open stairwell then back at Edmund’s dusty breeches. “Tea will do.”

Edmund cocked his head. “I thought you gave up spirits.”

“I thought this was a fine time to start anew.” Bartholomew accepted a freshly poured cup from Sarah. “How have you managed it?”

She cast Edmund a tentative smile. “Together, my husband and I can do anything.”

He reached for her hand before responding to his brother. “At first, I felt like a total failure. I was constantly trying to keep up, trying to guess what the twins needed, trying to recall what I’d already done. I couldn’t keep track of what day it was, much less anything else. But then we got into a routine and things went smoother. The twins were calmer, happier. Even started sleeping longer.”

“The first time they slept through the night, I panicked,” Sarah admitted. “I was convinced if they weren’t crying, it was because they’d stopped breathing, or that something was wrong. Edmund had to practically shake me out of my hysteria to get me to see they were breathing just fine and had fallen asleep.” She held his hand to her face. “By then, I’d woken them up and they
did
start crying.”

“They quieted down right away.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb, then turned to his brother. “The point is, people have been having babies for thousands of years. There will be frightening moments and exhausting moments, but more than anything—”

“—there will just be love,” Sarah finished. “More than your heart can handle. There are no words to describe the awe of holding your newborn infant in your arms.”

“…or their tiny fist closing about your finger…”

“…cradling them in your arms…” Her eyes went dreamy.

“…the way their eyes light up when they first recognize you…”

“…the smell of their skin…”

“…how they both have a single tuft of curly hair…” He lifted a piece of his own to portray the tuftiness of it.

Sarah waved him away. “They’re perfect angels. I adore their cunning little baby gowns…”

“I adore the way they snore like lumbermen…”

“Noah does not snore!” she huffed.

Edmund arched a brow. “What’s he doing, then? Speaking ‘pig’ to us?”

She cuffed him on the shoulder before turning to Bartholomew. “You’ll see. It’s the little things that make everything so worth it. Just the way they snuggle into my chest as if there’s nowhere else they’d rather be…”

“There’s nowhere else
I’d
rather be,” Edmund stage-whispered to his brother.

A cry sounded from upstairs.
 

Sarah squeezed Edmund’s hand before letting go to rise to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”

They both leapt to their feet until she’d disappeared up the stairs.

“You’re happy, then? With everything?” asked Bartholomew once they’d retaken their chairs. “Not only did it take longer than hoped to reunite with Sarah, your return home wasn’t as smooth as one might’ve liked.”

“Happier than I’d ever imagined,” Edmund assured his brother. He was not surprised to find it was true. There were things he hoped might improve, but there was nothing he would wish away. “Neither my long trek home nor the circumstances of my reunion with Sarah were any fault of yours, brother.”

Bartholomew flinched. “I cannot help but feel ashamed for my cursed silence. I am sorry I did not tell you immediately about what had really happened at Waterloo.”

Edmund shook his head. “Don’t be absurd. Were you meant to shout it out in front of everyone? I had already crashed the wedding, so there was no hope of making a bigger commotion than that.”

Bartholomew swallowed. “Ravenwood—”

“—was being a true friend. I might not have seen it at the time, but I see it now.” Edmund’s smile was wry. “All of you were willing to sacrifice for the sake of my unborn children. How could I condemn any of you for that?”