The Inheritance (41 page)

He stared at her for a moment, surprised at her declaration. And not a little distressed by it. Because it felt so good to hear her say the words. Because he could imagine himself saying them back to her.

“I think we should say good-bye to our guest now,” Daisy said.

Nicholas saw her wince of pain, the teeth that
caught on her lower lip until it bled. “Daisy? What’s wrong?”

“It’s the baby. It’s coming.”

“It takes hours,” Nicholas protested. “At least it did with Colin.”

“It’s been hours,” Daisy confessed. “The pains started early this morning. I didn’t want to worry you.”

Nicholas’s hands found her shoulders and tightened. “It’s too early, Daisy. Three weeks. You can’t—”

“I can and I am!” Daisy snapped back. “Please send for Dr. Fitzsimmons. I think it’s past time I retired to my room.”

Nicholas swept Daisy up into his arms, no mean feat considering her bulk. “Get the door, Estleman,” Nicholas said through tight jaws. “I don’t want to see either of you anywhere near Severn, ever again,” he said without looking back.

Nicholas swept out of the library through the door Estleman held open. “Send for Dr. Fitzsimmons,” Nicholas said to Higgenbotham. “Her Grace’s time has come.”

Daisy leaned her head against Nicholas’s chest and heard his heart careering wildly inside. “Don’t worry, Nicholas. Everything will be fine.”

“Don’t spout platitudes at me, Daisy,” he snarled. “I can’t take it right now.”

“I love you, Nicholas. Barbarian and all.”

“This is no time for lovemaking, either.”

“I wanted you to know,” she said. “In case … in case …”

He hurried along the upstairs hallway, terrified,
anxious to have her safely in bed. “Nothing is going to go wrong,” he retorted. “So shut up.”

“You’re so tactful when you’re angry, Nicholas. I think that’s why I fell in love with you.”

Nicholas groaned. “Please, Daisy. Don’t keep saying that.”

“What? That I love you?”

“There. You did it again!”

Jane was there ahead of him to pull the covers aside and Nicholas lay his precious burden on the clean white sheets. Her hands clung to his neck, holding his face close.

“Say it, Nicholas. Say it once.”

Nicholas was aware of the eyes and ears listening to him. “This is not the time, Daisy.”

She lowered her eyes, so he wouldn’t see her disappointment. “I’ll be all right, Nicholas. Don’t worry. Your son or daughter is sure to come out fighting.”

“Just don’t … Don’t …”

“Oh, Nicholas.” Her fingertips roamed his face, memorizing every character line and crevice. “Don’t worry about me. I have every intention of wreaking havoc in your life for many years to come.”

Daisy’s face contorted as a sharper, harder contraction swept over her.

“Daisy! Darling, what can I do to help?”

Daisy laughed. “Nothing. I have to do this myself.”

“You’ll have to leave now, Your Grace,” Jane said. “The doctor is here and must examine Her Grace.”

Nicholas didn’t want to leave, but found himself unable to stay and watch Daisy’s pain. “Take care of
her,” he said to Dr. Fitzsimmons as he passed him on the way out.

He was outside the door, and it had been shut behind him before he said, “Don’t let her die.”

Daisy was exhausted. She had been laboring for more than twelve hours with nothing to show for her efforts. The words “weak” and “die” were easily audible despite the fact that Dr. Fitzsimmons was across the room from her.

She saw the duke’s face above her and thought she was hallucinating. “Nicholas? What are you doing here?”

“Dr. Fitzsimmons said you were calling for me.”

“I was. I didn’t think you would come. You don’t belong in a sickroom with—” Daisy felt the cramp rising across her abdomen, tightening until she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She grasped Nicholas’s hand.

“I’m here, Daisy. You can hold on to me.”

When the contraction was over, Daisy watched as Nicholas shook his chalk-white hand to return the blood to it. There were four distinct red crescents where her nails had bitten into him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” Nicholas replied. “I’m glad I was here for you.” Nicholas couldn’t imagine the kind of excruciating pain that could take Daisy so far outside
herself, that could give her such incredible strength. Especially when, according to the doctor, she was losing the battle against fatigue. If things continued as they were, she would be exhausted long before the child was born. If that happened, it was likely the child would be born dead, or not at all, in which case Daisy was likely to die, also.

Nicholas knew now what it was he wanted. A life at Severn with Daisy and their child. That was his perfect world. He couldn’t shake the fear that God wasn’t through punishing him yet. That God would think Severn was enough and take the child, or Daisy, or both. Nicholas couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t let that happen.

Nicholas had faced a lot of enemies and never felt fear, because he had confidence in his ability with a gun. Because he knew he had planned for every eventuality and given himself escape routes in the event something went wrong. None of that experience was useful in this situation. His enemy was time, and Daisy’s body, which refused to yield up its fruit.

The doctor had said the child was ready to be born, yet it refused to make the trip down the birth canal. When you wanted the pit out of a piece of fruit, Nicholas thought, you squeezed until the pit popped out. He stared at Daisy, trying to figure out how to apply that principle to a pregnant woman.

He put his hands on Daisy’s distended abdomen, but his hands, large though they were, couldn’t apply pressure evenly.

“What are you doing?” Daisy asked curiously.

“I’m trying to figure out a way to get a pit out of a peach,” he said with a wry smile.

“You’d better go see Dr. Fitzsimmons. You sound a little crazy.”

“I’m perfectly all right.” Nicholas stood and stared at Daisy. “Aha! I see how it can be done.” He stepped to the head of the bed and lifted Daisy into a sitting position, bracing her back with his chest.

“Nicholas? What are you doing?”

“Squeezing the pit,” Nicholas said.

“Dr. Fitzsimmons,” Daisy called.

“We don’t need him, Daisy,” Nicholas murmured against her throat. “We can do this ourselves.”

“Do what?” Daisy asked in exasperation. At that moment another contraction overwhelmed her. She grasped the bedsheets and bit her lip until it bled to keep from screaming. This pain was longer than the others and hurt in a different way. “I think … I think the baby’s moving,” she rasped.

Nicholas could see it himself. The child was lower in her belly. “Dr. Fitzsimmons, I think you should come here.”

The contraction ended, and Daisy leaned back against Nicholas. “I can’t do it, Nicholas. I can’t. It hurts too much. And I’m too tired.”

“Only a little while longer, darling.”

“Easy for you to say,” Daisy snapped. “You’re not sitting where I am.”

Nicholas grinned. If she had enough strength to argue, she was going to be fine.

Daisy groaned. “It’s another contraction. Already. I’m not recovered yet from the last one.”

Nicholas lifted her again and forced her upper body forward, putting more pressure on the baby and forcing it down the birth canal.

Daisy’s groan became a guttural sound of effort,
as though she were attempting to lift a cartload of hay along with the horses. “Nicholassss!”

“I see the child’s head,” Dr. Fitzsimmons said excitedly. “Only another push or two, Your Grace.”

Nicholas wiped the sweat from Daisy’s brow with a cool cloth and pressed it to her bleeding, chapped lips. “You’re doing fine, sweetheart,” he crooned to her.

“Shut up, Nicholas. This is all your fault, you know. If you hadn’t—” The tremendous pressure on her abdomen cut off Daisy’s tirade. Nicholas held her upright as she pushed, grunting hard as she worked to free her body from its burden.

She felt the pressure suddenly release as Dr. Fitzsimmons exclaimed, “The head and now the shoulders, that’s it, Your Grace. Ah!”

Though it was plain to Nicholas that the child was no longer inside Daisy’s body, there had been no sound from the other end of the bed. Nicholas felt Daisy clutch his hand. Both of them waited, not breathing, hearts pounding, for the child’s cry.

It didn’t come.

Nicholas had to force words past his swollen throat. “Is everything all right?” He knew the child was dead. How would Daisy survive a second tragedy? And then he thought of the bleeding that had occurred the last time. Was that what kept the doctor silent? Was he trying to stem the flow of blood?

“Doctor?” Daisy whispered. “Is the child—”

The doctor stood with the infant wrapped in linen and approached the head of the bed. “There were some other matters I needed to attend to before I could bring this little one to you,” he said.

Nicholas ignored the child and said, “Is Daisy all right? Is she … Is there …”

“Her Grace is just fine. Came through without any complications at all.”

Nicholas allowed himself to look at the child. “Why didn’t the baby cry?”

“They don’t sometimes. Just come into the world as quiet as you please. She was breathing just fine. I saw no reason to set her to squalling.”

“She?” Nicholas said.

“It’s a girl, Your Grace.”

“Oh, Nicholas, we have a daughter,” Daisy cried tearfully.

Nicholas peered at the linen-wrapped child the doctor was laying in Daisy’s arms. Her face was a wrinkly, blotchy red, but she had a wealth of black hair and stunning blue eyes.

“She looks like you,” Daisy said.

Frankly, Nicholas couldn’t see the resemblance.

“What shall we name her?” Daisy hadn’t been willing to choose a name before the child was born, because she thought it might jinx the baby’s birth. Now that she held her daughter safe in her arms, she turned to Nicholas for help. “You must have been thinking about this,” Daisy said.

“I swear I haven’t,” Nicholas demurred. “Why don’t you choose a name?”

“Beatrice,” Daisy said. “It means ‘one who brings happiness.’ She’s done that, hasn’t she, Nicholas?”

Nicholas rolled the name around in his head, then let it spill off his tongue. “Beatrice. She looks like a bundle of joy, all wrapped up like that.” He brushed his finger against the baby’s cheek, and Beatrice
turned her face toward him. “What do you think, Peaches? How does Beatrice sound to you?”

“Peaches?” Daisy said, arching a brow.

Nicholas grinned. “I’m afraid she’s always going to be Peaches to me.”

“Where on earth did you get a nickname like that?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Nicholas said. “When you’re feeling stronger and more like arguing.”

“Am I going to want to argue?”

“It’s possible.”

“Your Grace, it would be best if Her Grace rested now,” Dr. Fitzsimmons said.

“Get some sleep, Daisy. Everything will be fine now.”

“Will it, Nicholas? Have you made a decision? About going back to America, I mean.”

“Not now, Daisy. I’ll be back as soon as you’re awake.”

“I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t know.”

But she could barely keep her eyes open. Nicholas merely kissed them closed and said, “Later, Daisy. When you’re stronger we can talk.”

“Don’t leave me, Nicholas,” she whispered.

Before he could respond, she was already asleep.

Nicholas turned to the doctor. “Are you sure she’s going to be all right? And the baby?”

“Mother and child are both fine, Your Grace. The child is a bit small, but she seems to be breathing well. And Her Grace came through the delivery more easily than I had anticipated.”

“Are you saying that whatever went wrong the first time won’t happen again?”

“I would have to say that the first birth was
extraordinary, and I see nothing that would prevent Her Grace from having other children.”

Nicholas felt euphoric and realized he was happy more for Daisy’s sake than his own. She would want a lot of children. Now she could have them.

“Thank you, Doctor. For everything.”

Nicholas headed downstairs in a daze, where Colin was waiting with Charles and Priss. Priss had brought their son, Alexander, with her and was sitting in a corner of the library with a blanket over her shoulder to conceal the fact she was nursing the child. However, the noises coming from under the blanket made it perfectly obvious what was going on.

“Is Daisy all right, Pa?” Colin asked. “Has the baby been born?”

“Daisy is fine, Colin. And so is our daughter.”

Colin let out a whoop. “Jehoshaphat! I’m a brother.” He took the few steps that brought him to his father and gave him a hug. Both men were grinning when they separated.

Nicholas turned and shook Charles’s outstretched hand.

“Congratulations, Nick,” Charles said. “How about a drink to celebrate?”

Nicholas bunched his trembling hands and said, “That sounds like a good idea.” It was just beginning to dawn on him that he had a daughter. And that Daisy was going to be fine.

“What did you name the baby?” Priss asked.

“Daisy named her Beatrice.” Nicholas swallowed the brandy in a single gulp. It burned like fire all the way down. It didn’t do a thing to steady his nerves, so he poured himself another.