In the mood Stephen was in at that moment, he couldn’t imagine anything more urgent, or more dire, than what was happening in that room. A moment later, when he opened the door, he realized he had underestimated fate’s ability to rain down crushing blows on the innocent and unwary. “Have my coach brought round and waiting in front immediately,” he ordered the butler.
He turned to Emily who looked frantic and put his arms around her. “I must leave at once. My sister-in-law took a fall and my mother thinks the baby is coming early. Much too early,” he added, more to himself than to her as he let her go.
Emily walked with him to the front door, running a little to keep up with his long strides. “Are you going to Grand Oak?”
“No, I’m going to our family physician. He lives beyond here, another hour to the north, but my horses are rested by now, and I’m already halfway there. I can reach him faster than the footman could have done.” Ignoring the presence of the butler and footmen in the front hall, Stephen pulled her into his arms for a quick, reassuring kiss. “Have faith in me, and in us,” he whispered, then he ran down the front steps, calling orders to his coachman to push his team to their limits.
40
* * *
Emily returned to the drawing room, wrapped herself in a shawl, and sat close to the fire, but she couldn’t stop shivering because the chills that shook her originated from within. Her father walked in a few minutes later, and she stood up, filled with a dread that made her knees knock.
“I passed Westmoreland’s coach just before I turned into the drive,” the duke announced angrily, “and his damnable coachman nearly ran me off the road!”
“Stephen had to leave very suddenly just now—an emergency,” she explained, too upset to notice that she’d called Stephen by his given name. “His sister-in-law fell at Grand Oak and he’s on his way to fetch a physician. The baby may come early because of her fall.”
“A pity,” he said perfunctorily, then his thoughts promptly reverted to his own concerns. “When Westmoreland arrived tonight, he told Jenkins he wanted to speak with me. Do you know what he wanted to discuss?”
Emily nodded. Swallowing, she squared her shoulders and braced herself for an outburst of rage. “He intended to ask you for my hand in marriage.”
Her father’s face went white with fury. “You little fool! You idiot! How could you let things get as far as that?”
“I don’t know. It just—happened.”
“Happened?” he thundered, then he lowered his voice to an infuriated hiss. “Damn you! Do you have any idea of what you’ve done? What did you tell him?”
“The truth. I told him I was already betrothed to Glengarmon.”
“Is that all you told him?”
“No. I told him I had to marry Glengarmon because you wanted our lands joined and because it was my duty to marry in accordance with your wishes.”
“How did he react?”
“He was terribly upset. Papa, please believe me. I never imagined Stephen cared so much. I knew there was gossip and speculation that he planned to offer for me, but I never believed it. I had no reason to.”
“Good God, this is a calamity! You have put me in the untenable position of having to turn down Stephen Westmoreland and alienating him and his entire family in the doing.” Raking his hand through the side of his hair, he paced once across the room, then rounded on her. “There’s only one solution: You will have to marry Glengarmon at once. Glengarmon can get a special license in the morning and you can be wed immediately.”
Emily looked at him, then she turned and gazed at the fire, but she did not object. “Very well, Papa.”
41
* * *
More terrified than he’d been when Whitney stumbled on the edge of a carpet and fell half-way down a flight of steps the night before, Clayton paced back and forth in the foyer at Grand Oak, his attention on the doorway at the top of the staircase. Beyond that door, his wife was giving birth to his child two months early, and both mother and baby were in the hands of Hugh Whitticomb.
In the last twenty-four hours, Clayton’s opinion of Hugh Whitticomb had been dwindling from moment to moment. When Whitticomb first arrived the night before, he’d examined Whitney and reassured the family that mother and babe seemed to be doing quite well. This morning, he’d added more assurances to his original diagnosis. “There’s no sign that the babe will come early because of her fall,” he’d told Clayton and the others, “but I’ll stay until tonight, just in case I’m wrong.”
By then, Clayton was unnerved to the point of issuing commands and following them up with threats. “If you think there is even an infinitesimal possibility that baby is going to come early, you’ll stay here for the next two months!” he decreed.
Cocking his head to the side, Hugh Whitticomb had regarded him with the amused sympathy he always felt for men who were about to become fathers for the first time. “Just out of curiosity, what would you do to keep me here?”
“I would not have any trouble finding a way, believe me,” Clayton snapped.
“I have no doubt of it,” Hugh said with a chuckle. “I was merely curious. When your mother caught a chill a month before you were born, I believe your father threatened to hold me prisoner in the dungeon at Claymore. Or was that the Earl of Sutton? No . . . the earl merely sent my coach home and then refused me any of his conveyances.”
His amusement vanished an instant later, when Whitney’s maid came flying out of the room and leaned over the landing. “She’s having pains, Dr. Whitticomb.”
That was hours before, and since then Clayton had only been allowed to see Whitney twice and for only a few minutes each time. She looked pale and fragile in the big four-poster bed, but her pains were erratic, so she smiled her beautiful smile and invited him to sit beside her on the bed. “I love you, and I’m going to give you a wonderful, healthy baby in a little while,” she told Clayton, hiding her fright behind reassuring words. Clayton had been profoundly relieved—until a hard pain struck her, arching her back clear off the bed. “You need to leave now,” she said as she bit down on her lip until it drew blood.
Clayton had vented his helpless rage on Whitticomb. “Dammit, can’t you do something for her?”
“I am doing something for her,” Hugh replied. “I am going to send you downstairs now so that she doesn’t have to worry about you when the pains come.”
An hour later, Clayton had insisted on seeing for himself that she was alright, and when the physician tried to stop him at the door, Whitney had called out to let him come in. She looked far more pale and her forehead was damp with perspiration. Clayton sat near her hip, smoothed her heavy hair off her forehead, and solemnly promised, “I will never let this happen to you again.”
Another pain hit her before she could reply and Clayton snatched her into his arms, rocking her like a baby. “I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes blurred with tears of terror. He’d been evicted after that and the door to her room locked to keep him out.
Whitticomb appeared periodically after that to give the family encouraging little bulletins, and false predictions about the hour of the baby’s likely arrival. Clayton wasn’t reassured by anything he said. Tearing his eyes from the door at the top of the staircase, he glanced at the clock in the hallway, saw that it was after nine, then he stalked over to the doorway of the drawing room where Stephen and his mother were keeping a vigil with Lord and Lady Gilbert. “Whitticomb is an incompetent imbecile!” Clayton told them furiously. “I’m going to send for a mid-wife, no, for two mid-wives.”
Lady Gilbert smiled weakly. “I’m sure the baby will come soon and everything will be all right.” She did not succeed in reassuring Clayton because she was terrified and Clayton could see it.
Lord Gilbert seconded his wife’s prediction with an emphatic nod of his head and a hearty voice: “It’ll happen any moment. Nothing to worry about. Babies are born every second of every day.” In Clayton’s opinion, Lord Gilbert was even more panicked
than Lady Gilbert.
Stephen lifted his head out of his hands and gazed at Clayton in mute helplessness. Stephen, Clayton realized, had too much respect for his older brother to tell him lies he didn’t believe.
The dowager duchess stood up and walked over to him. “I truly feel in my heart there is nothing to worry about,” she said shakily. “In my heart, I feel that Whitney and the babe will be perfectly fine.”
Clayton paled and headed for a decanter of brandy on the side table. The last time his mother had made a prediction like that one was when her favorite mare had fallen ill. The mare died the next morning.
He knew everyone was praying because they couldn’t do anything else. He knew it as surely as he knew that Hugh Whitticomb was a callous, incompetent idiot.
“Your grace?”
Everyone in the room looked up at Hugh Whitticomb who was standing in the doorway, looking suddenly haggard.
Clayton froze. “Yes?”
“Would you like to go upstairs and greet your son?”
Clayton felt as if he were rooted to the carpet. He had to swallow over the lump in his throat to ask, “How is my wife?”
“She is doing beautifully.”