“I can help—” Amanda assured her, but the pain attacked her savagely again, and this time, it was so sudden that she could not help but cry out.
“Hold to the bed frame!” Danielle advised her. “Ah,ma petite! It will be much worse before it will be better!”
Danielle was so very right. For hours the pain came at short intervals. At first Amanda felt that she could bear it—the result would be her child, the babe she so desperately craved. Someone to hold and to love and to need her.
Then the pain became intense, and so frequent that she began to long for death. She swore, and she cried, and some point she didn’t know what she was saying. Exhausted, she drifted to a semisleep in the few minutes between the pains. She dreamed of Eric Cameron, coming toward her in his boots and breeches and open shirt. He had loved her once, she thought. His eyes had danced upon her with silver and blue desire, and his mouth had turned into a sensual curl when he had touched her. He had held her against so much danger, but she hadn’t trusted in the strength of his arms. He was speaking to her, accusing her of things.
“You have done something. You have done something to deny me a child.” She protested. She promised that she had not. But he accused her anew, the silver lights of laughter and desire gone from his gaze. “Betraying bitch!” But there is a child now! she tried to tell him. He already had the baby; he held it high and away from her. “My son returns with me, my son returns with me—”
A savage pain, just like the thrust of a knife, cut across her lower back and wound around to her front.
“Easy,ma petite, easy!” It was Danielle who spoke, Amanda realized dimly.
Amanda screamed, trying to rise to consciousness. Her eyes were wild, her hair was soaked and lay plastered about her head. A cool cloth fell upon her forehead, smoothing back her hair. “No!” she screamed the word. “He cannot have my baby, the lying, treacherous bastard shall not take the baby away—”
“Amanda, if you mean me, my love, I’ve no intention of taking the babe away. If you’ll only be so good as to deliver him to us.”
Her eyes flew wide. She had to be dreaming still. He was there, standing above her. It was Eric with the damp sponge, cooling her brow, smoothing back her hair. She stared at him in distress and amazement. He could not be there. He despised her so, and now he was seeing her thus! Wretched and in anguish and so much pain. And though he spoke softly, she thought that there was bitterness in his voice. And coldness, like an arctic frost.
“No,” she whispered, staring at him.
“Aye, my love,” he retorted, his devil’s grin in place, silver and indigo glittering in his gaze. He was nearly dressed as in her dream, wearing ivory hose and navy breeches, his frock coat and surcoat both shed, the laced sleeves of his shirt shoved high upon his muscled arms, his hair neatly queued back from his face.
“Please, don’t be!” she hissed, and she did not know if she wanted him gone because she was angry still, or because she was so afraid that she could never attract him again.
His glance moved toward the foot of the bed, and she realized that, of course, they were not alone. She followed his gaze and saw Danielle and the French physician. She swallowed tightly. Again a pain seized, swift and sure and barely a minute from the one before it. She cried out pitifully, unable to hold back. Danielle whispered feverishly to Eric.
“It’s over twenty-four hours. I do not see how she bears it.”
“It is time now,” the French physician said. “She must find the strength to bear down.”
Eric’s arms came around her. “Go away!” she begged him.
“He has said that you must push, Amanda. I’ll help you.”
“I do not want your help—”
“But you shall have it! Now do as you are told.”
It was not so hard, for an overwhelming desire to do so came to her. Nor would Eric let her quit. When she would have fallen back he pressed her forward, his voice full of command. “Push, madame!”
“I am not among your troops, Major General!” she retorted, and then she was gasping and unable to say more, and they let her fall back at last.
“Come, come! A little Cameron head has nearly entered into the world!”
“Again, Amanda—”
“Eric, please—”
“Push!”
She did so, and that time she was rewarded with the sweetest sense of relief. The child emerged from her body and the physician exclaimed with delight, slapping the tiny form. A lusty cry was heard, and Danielle called out, “A girl!Une petite jeune fille, une belle petite jeune fille—”
“Oh!” Amanda gasped. She had been so very happy, so thrilled and excited. But then pain had seized her again, and she was suddenly terrified that she was going to die.
“What is it?” Eric demanded harshly.
“The pain—”
