Page 74 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

Betsy sat on the settle with Arabella clamped hard against her side. The child had not said a word in twenty minutes, which frightened Valentine more than the praying did.

Mrs. Fletcher paced the other way with her keys gripped in her fist so that they should not chime.

And Levi Fernside sat on the top step with his head in both hands, and had sat there since noon, and had not once tried to speak to anybody.

Inside the room, Diana cried out.

Valentine’s whole body went with it. His hands closed, and he made them open again.

I did this to you.

That was the other thing that had been going round, and it was the worse of the two. He had said, in a firelit bedchamber, that they need not have a child at all. Then he had failed to be careful, twice, three times, more, because she had come to him and he had wanted her. He had not been able to make himself be careful.

If this takes you from me I shall not survive it.

“Push. Push, Your Grace, that’s it — that’s beautiful⁠—”

Another cry came, torn and exhausted.

“Wait.” The midwife’s voice changed pitch entirely. “Wait — hold hard now, Your Grace, don’t you push⁠—”

The whole landing stopped.

“—there’s another. God love us all. There’s two.”

Valentine heard it and did not understand it.

“Twins?” said Octavia.

And then, from behind that door, thin and outraged and unmistakable: a baby crying.

Arabella came off the settee like a shot.

A moment later a second cry, higher and angrier than the first. Then both of them going at once, and the sound of women laughing in the room beyond.

Valentine found that he had put one hand against the wall.

The door opened.

The midwife came out with her sleeves shoved up past the elbow and her whole face shining. She looked straight at him.

“Two healthy boys, Your Grace. Both of them roaring fit to bring the roof down.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “And the Duchess is well. She is tired, and she is well. She asked after you before either of them was so much as wiped. You may come in when we have got her decent, and that will be five minutes and not one moment before. My congratulations, sir.”

Valentine did not say anything.

He was aware, distantly, that this was probably the moment at which a man ought to say something.

Behind him Betsy burst into tears and started cheering at the same instant, which produced a remarkable noise. Levi Fernside came up off the step and crossed the passage and scooped Arabella off the floor.

“You are an aunt,” he said, into the child’s hair. “Do you hear me? You are an aunt, and I am a grandfather, and I am one-and-fifty years of age⁠—”

Arabella was shrieking. “There are two⁠—”

Octavia put both hands over her face and laughed until she had to sit down.

“Well.” Mrs. Fletcher dragged her wrist across her eyes and recovered herself entirely in the space of a breath. “Then we shall have a celebration, and we shall have it directly. Betsy — come. There is the good ham, and there is the cake I made a-purpose on Tuesday, and there are four dozen of the old Duke’s claret sitting in that cellar which have been waiting sixty years for an occasion. If this is not the occasion then I should very much like to know what is. Come along.”

They went down in a body, all of them talking at once.