“You have a perfect, healthy son,” Mrs. Hutton announced proudly.
Exhaustion faded as Clara laid the baby against her. Eleanor traced his tiny cheek and the wisps of fair hair crowning hishead. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Merrick had been right—it was a boy after all.
“Can you let him come in?” she asked.
No one needed to ask who she meant, and in less than ten seconds, Merrick was by her side.
“Were you waiting outside the door?” she asked.
“Where else was I supposed to be?” He smoothed back her damp hair and looked down at the baby in her arms.
“Isn’t he perfect?” Eleanor said.
Merrick seemed to be at a loss for words. He gently touched the baby’s fingers—which instantly wrapped around his thumb.
Joy filled Eleanor’s heart. She’d never seen such a look on Merrick’s face—it was awe mixed with a fierce and almost heartbreaking love.
“What name did you decide upon?” he asked after a few moments.
“I don’t know.” Everything she’d felt partial to beforehand now seemed inadequate. “Which do you think fits him best?”
He glanced up at her, the baby’s hand still grasped around his thumb. “David. If that’s fine with you, of course.”
“David.” Saying the name out loud brought the pang of loss she’d grown used to over the past several weeks, but there was something else there now as she looked at the little one in her arms. Something joyful. “I hadn’t considered it, given the circumstances.”
“I think it fits him,” Merrick said. His encouraging smile made the joy in her heart blossom into something even bigger.
“All right, but I insist on calling him David Merrick.”
“David Merrick Benton,” her husband said before dropping a kiss to her lips.
Chapter Twenty
THERE HAD NEVER BEENa more beautiful spring, Merrick decided as he walked from the house to his shop. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t slept a full night since Davy’s birth, or that their meals these days were either provided by Deirdre Wiley or pulled together at the last minute from anything in the house that might be edible. He’d had a good life before Eleanor and the baby, but he never could have imagined how full it was now.
The morning sun was bright over the low-slung mountains to the east, and Merrick took a moment to appreciate the fading pinks and purples in the sky as the sun rose higher. If Davy hadn’t grown hungry, Merrick would have happily opened the shop late to sit there with the baby in his arms for as long as possible. Nothing felt more miraculous than having those wide blue eyes staring up at him as tiny hands waved in the air.
“Morning!” a voice called from the direction of the livery.
Merrick realized then how ridiculous he must look, staring up into the sky. But if Jeremiah Wiley thought so, he didn’t say it as Merrick walked over to the livery.
