Page 74

“There’s more, Grandmother,” Hugh added soberly, knowing that the next piece of information would break her heart all over again just as it had broken his. “The fire that killed my father, Rose, Henry, and Collinson was orchestrated by her, too. She murdered them all, and I was meant to die, too. But I didn’t. I ruined all her plans by staying alive.”

“Oh, my dear boy!” His grandmother threw her arms around him very tightly, making him aware both of her strength and her fragility.

Hugh could not remember his grandmother ever hugging him or anyone else before. Perhaps resetting Henry’s dislocated shoulder once was the closest thing, but that was an entirely different thing. The Dowager Duchess had always been the levelheaded thinker in the family, the dispassionate authority figure, and sometimes the arbiter of justice. She had never been someone he would turn to for comfort.

Nor was she now, Hugh realized. It was the other way round. She was holding onto him for support upon learning that her beloved oldest son and two grandchildren had been evilly murdered twenty years ago. For her, they were dying all over again, just as they had for Hugh upon hearing Lady Georgina’s wicked confession.

“Edwin has her locked up now,” Hugh said reassuringly. “I believe he will have her declared insane and send her away, for Andrew’s sake and his own.”

“I would like to see that woman hang.” Rebecca sniffled, sitting back and dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief before Hugh could see her tears. “I’d hang her myself if I could.”

“Anything further on this subject must wait for tomorrow,” he said. “Catherine needs me tonight. I suggest you go to bed and get some rest, Grandmother. It is late. Uncle Edwin will likely need your counsel tomorrow, and I must stay here.”

“All right.” Rebecca pushed herself to her feet and schooled her features into their usual calm, collected expression. “That is the sensible thing to do, Hugh. I’ll call for a maid and retire to my rooms here now that Catherine is finally awake.”

She gave him a brief pat on the shoulder and then retreated down the lamplit corridor, leaving him alone at the window.

A few minutes later, Hugh heard the door of Catherine’s room open again and hurried back to see Dr. Vernon standing in the doorway with a smile on his face, despite his wariness of the three dogs who still sat outside expectantly.

Behind the physician, Hugh could see Catherine sitting up in her bed, also smiling, with a positively radiant expression despite her pallor and tangled hair.

“You can come back in now, Hugh,” Catherine called to him.

Hugh rushed straight to her side, sitting down on the bed and putting his arms around her.

“It’s the most wonderful news, Hugh!”

“You’re going to be all right?” he asked as he peppered her face with kisses. “Yes, what could be more wonderful than that?”

“It is more wonderful.” Catherine laughed, stroking his scars and pressing a kiss to them.

“Her Grace is with child, Your Grace,” Dr. Vernon announced while packing up his bag. “When she described her recent symptoms, I thought it was a possibility. Now that I’ve completed a physical examination, I’m certain. Her Grace should be delivered in seven or eight months. It’s early enough that this poisoning episode should have had no effect on the pregnancy.”

“My love!” Hugh exclaimed, dropping kisses all over Catherine’s smiling face again. “Our child!”

“Mrs. Kaye has prepared a room for me tonight at the end of this corridor, and I’ll go there now. Remember, Your Grace, Her Grace must not sleep until dawn.”

With a smile to the Duke and Duchess of Redbridge, and a grimace at the dogs he had to step over, the physician departed, finally leaving Catherine and Hugh alone in one another’s arms.

“Our child,” Hugh repeated to himself, lying down and wrapping his long body around Catherine. “That should be enough to talk about until dawn, shouldn’t it? We could go through the whole of Johnson’s Dictionary for possible names.”

Catherine burst into laughter at this idea and snuggled into his embrace. “Will you send a message to Jemima and my father tomorrow, inviting them to stay over in a few weeks’ time? Lady Harvey, too, of course, since she’ll be Lady Sedgehall, by then. I’d like to tell them the good news before anyone else, and I don’t want to do it at my father’s wedding next week. That’s their day, and they’ve waited a long time for it.”

“Of course, I will.”

“What about Lord Edwin?” she asked then, stiffening silghtly. “You never said what happened in London tonight while I was unconscious.”

“I’ll tell you that tomorrow, but you should know that it’s all in the past. You’re safe now, and tonight, we’re only going to talk about the future.”

For once, Catherine didn’t argue.

Hugh laid a hand on her belly, imagining the child growing in her womb. Would it be a boy or a girl? Would it look more like him or her? Or perhaps more like Henry and Rose, with coppery hair and green eyes?

Hugh smiled and kissed her neck as she rested her hand over his.

“I love you, Hugh Vaughan. Never forget that, will you? Even when I lose my temper.”

“I love you, too, Catherine, and I’ll love our child just as much. This is forever, no matter what.”