His daily life went from joy to joy. And he knew for the first time in his life, the number of his blessings.
On the first of June, he took his wife and daughters to London. His father was to marry Gertrude, the Countess of Marsden, and neither he nor Penn wished to miss the ceremony in Saint George’s. Penn was very great with child and during the wedding, he worried that she stood much too long. But good-hearted and hale as she always seemed to be, she did not complain but grinned throughout the morning. At the wedding breakfast, she began to flag. He saw it in her weary eyes and, when he asked, she admitted she needed to rest a few minutes.
Uncaring for his father’s guests or what they would think of his quick chivalry, he swept her up into his arms and carried her up the stairs into the suite that had once been his. There, he laid her to the bed and wished her sweet dreams.
She nestled into the pillows and curled her hand around his nape to draw him close and kiss him. “Do you know I love you quite ferociously?”
“I do,” he readily admitted. And so he left her to close the door upon her and sink against it in despair.
He licked his lips, fighting his urge to curse against the horror that dogged him.
She would live. She must!
Because without her, he knew not how he would.
* * *
Penn had never felt better in her life. She was happy, which was too small a word for the life she lived with Theo day in and out. She grew very big with her baby, and she admired her form, ever more intriguing as each month went by. Years ago, after her second marriage without any signs of pregnancy, she’d given up hopes of conceiving. She’d consulted two midwives, one in Bath and one in London. They examined her and both declared her fit to bear a child. Their confirmations bore no weight when, months after marrying her third husband, she had not missed her monthly flow. She gave up hope.
Her blossoming figure delighted her. Even more so, she was ebullient that she could present Theo with a child. And if this one was boy or girl, she knew he would welcome the baby. She had come to believe what he said: He could live without an heir, but not without her. Then too she saw him with his daughters and rejoiced in this man who could love without reserve and could show it in his daily regard of all.
She also saw his fear for her safety. He did not mention it. Nor did she honor it with any words to grant it any credence. She felt his gaze upon her as they dined or sat reading in the library or strolled in the gardens. He took to asking her each morning if he might bring her breakfast in her room. Or bring her a shawl or hot chocolate or a book or…any other little thing she might need. His solicitude warmed her.
As her time grew nigh and she began to feel the tingles of false labor, she would beckon him from across the room and place his hand upon her belly.
“It’s normal,” she told him time and again. “The midwife tells me it is preparation.”
* * *
As cooler nights and days turned the leaves to gold and flaming reds, Penn told Theo they would not wait long for their new addition to their family. One night near the end of September, she descended the stairs on his arm for supper when suddenly she bent over with the force of pain up her spine.
“Take me up, please, Theo. I think it is time.”
His eyes went wide. He could not altar his expression. But he let her lean heavily upon him until they reached the landing. He paused her there where she caught her breath. Sweeping her up into his arms, he took the remaining flight to their suite. There he laid her to the massive bed he’d ordered made for them months ago and went to summon a footman to call the midwife.
His man was gone and back with the woman within the hour. Theo had investigated her reputation, coming as she did from the next village not his own of Tain.
Mary Watts was a sturdy woman, perhaps fifty years of age. She came with more than two decades of experience and told him in no uncertain terms when first they met that she brooked no silliness from expectant fathers.
“I’ll allow ye in the birthing room, but if ye turn white, ye will go. No noggins broken, I say. Father or nay. Agreed?”
He took her on the spot. She had two assets which he’d verified with mothers who’d had her in attendance. She’d helped women birth babies who were breach, babies who were corded round the neck and babies who did not at first breathe. Had she lost any women to hemorrhages? Not lost any, no. But she’d saved two who’d been nicked by other midwives who had not taken care with their hands at the birth.
When the woman asked for privacy while she examined Penn, he kissed his wife on the forehead and left.
Sitting at his dining room table alone, he stared at her empty chair beside him. He could not sit here and do nothing, so he rose and went up to the nursery, to his daughters. There he sat down in his chair in their bedroom and told them that they would soon have a brother or sister. Suzanna looked at him quizzically but nodded. Violet stared at him with desperate eyes.
“Mama,” she said because she’d asked to call Penn that soon after their wedding, “won’t go to heaven like our last mother, will she?”
Suzanna, who did not understand death or their talk of heaven and mothers, must have understood their tone. She gazed at Theo with fear in her eyes.
“Come here,” he told them both and put one on each knee and hugged them close. “Mama will not leave us.”
And in the saying, he believed it.
The hours when he walked the hall outside their suite, the groaning of Penn as she labored to birth their child did not diminish his new belief. He could not put logic to his new conviction. Indeed, he did not wish to examine it. But accept it he did.
And in late morning, as the sun rose high toward noon, he heard no more from Penn. He struggled to his feet, his sleepless night wearying him, and he focused all his hopes upon the closed door.
