Lottie didn’t know quite how to tell Brandon. Their family had grown and blossomed over the two years of their marriage. Pandy, Jane, Albert, Cat, and a new furred addition as well—ironically, a gray-and-white cat who had aptly been named Dogby Jane. Lottie had reveled in being a mother, in embracing that part of herself that she had thought she would never know.
Each day was one of new challenges and triumphs, of love and laughter and fur and barking and meowing and the occasional game of chase-chase and tears and sniffles and tricks and games of hide-and-go-seek. It was crumbs and spills, mayhem and peace, all wrapped in family and home.
Lottie had the happiness, the family, and the husband she had once only dreamt of having. And now, their family was going to grow just a bit more.
When she had first begun feeling dizzied in the morning and then sick to her stomach, she had thought she had contracted some manner of illness. But then she had spoken with her friends Hyacinth and Rosamund, who had realized what was amiss when she had nearly swooned during tea.
Lottie was with child.
Yet again, something she had never thought possible for her. Two years had passed without Lottie becomingenceinte, and her old suspicions had proven true. She was barren.
But she had been wrong.
This morning, the doctor had confirmed her suspicions.
It was time to tell her husband.
Lottie stopped at his study door and knocked. He spent mornings tending to business affairs in the sanctity of his study and shared the afternoons and evenings with her and the children. Her news could not wait until afternoon, however.
“Enter,” he called.
And with a deep breath, she did, reminded of that day over two years before when she had crossed this same threshold, coming to him to ask him to marry her. He had told her every day since, in word and deed, what her previous husband had not—that she, Lottie, was enough, that she was worthy. That he appreciated her and loved her, and that there was no otherwoman in the world whom he would rather have at his side, as his wife.
Brandon lookedup from the correspondence he had been poring over when his magnificent wife swept into the room. He stood, half ready to carry her to his chamber and make love to her for the rest of the morning. She was wearing his favorite shade of blue, the one that matched her eyes.
“Did you miss me?” he teased, for they had only breakfasted some three hours before.
“Every moment I’m not with you,” she said with a small, tender smile.
There was something different about her this morning, something that had been absent at breakfast, he thought. A seriousness.
“Is something amiss, Lottie?” He rounded his desk and went to her, admiring the way the sunlight shone in the window and caught in her cinnamon curls.
“Nothing is wrong,” she said, “but perhaps we ought to sit down.”
He didn’t think he liked the sound of that. “The last time you wanted me to sit down, it was to tell me that Pandy had thrown a pig trotter through the library window.”
Lottie winced. “That was because I feared you would be cross with her, and it truly was an accident.”
Pandy had been playing a game of fetch-and-carry with Cat, and she had tossed the pig trotter in question with just a trifle too much force, shattering the library window in the process. Brandon had been nettled by her carelessness, but Pandy wasPandy, and that meant that, generally speaking, wherever she went, mischief inevitably followed.
“Are all the windows intact?” he asked.
“As far as I am aware.” She reached for his hand, twining her fingers through his. “Come with me, my love.”
He clasped her hand, allowing her to guide him to a pair of wingback chairs by the hearth. Lottie seated herself primly in one, and he sank into the other.
“Well, darling? What is it that you need to tell me?”
She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide, and then she blinked. “How would you like for our family to grow a bit larger?”
Instantly, he thought of the dog and the cat who were forever chasing each other about, up and down the halls of their town house. “I’m not certain I can bear to add one more furred creature to the mix. These two are bedlam enough. Unless you’re considering a bird? Perhaps a dove or a parrot, even. Something more contained.”
“Or a child,” she said.
They had already taken in two children from the orphanage in two years. Little Albert had just begun to toddle about. Pandy and Jane were growing like weeds. The thought of another child joining their family was both wonderful and daunting.
“Perhaps we might wait just a bit,” he cautioned. “Albert is yet young, and Jane and Pandy have only just begun to calm in their mischievous rivalries.”
