Page 15 of Miss Pauline’s Perfect Present (Double-Dilemma #3)
B y the time the hack reached the house in Berkeley Square and Pauline ran up the steps and rapped loudly with the knocker, Augusta was in full labor.
“It’s the countess,” Pauline told Allsop, the elderly butler, “Get His Lordship!”
After a moment of confusion, Allsop left his post and moved more quickly than Pauline had ever seen him move.
In seconds, Bridlington was running down the stairs two at a time, straight outside and to the hack.
How he did it Pauline didn’t know, with his club foot.
He reached in and lifted Augusta out, carrying her back up and into the house, limping but strong.
Pauline followed Phyllida in, dropped her cloak on the floor of the hall and ran up the stairs.
“Happen I might need some help with Her La’ship,” Phyllida said. “And then you have to keep the earl out of her room. It won’t be no help if he’s there.”
The two of them went up after the earl and reached Augusta’s room almost at the same time he did.
Bridlington laid Augusta down on the bed and stood by running his hands through his hair and turning around in a lopsided circle. Pauline realized he didn’t even have his cane with him.
“My Lord, me and Miss Carp will help Lady Bridlington get more comfortable, and you need to go out of the room now.” Pauline boldly took hold of Bridlington’s hand and dragged him away, pushing him out the door and shutting it behind him.
Then Phyllida and Pauline helped Augusta out of her clothes and into a shift and settled her in bed, pausing to let her breathe between her increasingly intense pains.
“They’re coming quicker,” Pauline said. She’d witnessed her mother give birth enough times that she knew more or less what to expect.
“The doctor better get here soon!” Phyllida said.
The door opened, but it wasn’t the doctor, it was the earl looking wild-eyed with distress. Pauline ran to him and pushed him out again, this time going out with him. “I better keep him out here,” Pauline said.
“I must go in! She needs me!” Bridlington ran for the door again. Pauline got there first, though, and wouldn’t let him open it.
“There’s nothing you can do. It’s natural. Only time will help now.”
“Where is the doctor!” he fairly screamed.
“He’s here My Lord,” Allsop said, leading the way as the doctor came hurrying up the stairs, followed by the nurse. Neither of them did more than nod at Bridlington. Augusta’s moans had turned to suppressed screams and could be heard loudly through the door.
“Why don’t you and me go down to the library and have a tot of something,” Pauline said, once more taking Bridlington’s hand and drawing him away from his wife’s bedroom door. “It’ll be a long time yet, My Lord, and you won’t want to stand for hours and hours.”
At first he resisted. He gave in eventually, though, and let Pauline lead him away to a room where he wouldn’t hear his wife’s screams so clearly.
The first thing Pauline did when she awoke sometime later, having stretched out on the sofa in the library at Lanyon House, was look at the clock on the mantel.
Nine o’clock! The sun streaming in through the windows told her that it was nine o’clock in the morning, not the evening.
Only an hour until the deadline for the order.
She would miss it. It wasn’t important, was it?
Nothing was more important than a new life!
If Augusta had managed it. How could anyone blame her for not fulfilling a completely unreasonable order at the best of times, let alone with everything that had happened since the evening of December twenty-third?
She sat up. Someone had spread a blanket over her, and the fire in the grate had obviously been kept going all night.
Something else was different, though. She breathed deeply.
Ah! It’s Christmas! She thought, filling her nostrils with the fresh scent of evergreens.
Servants must have come in and draped fir boughs over the mantel while she slept.
But where was the earl? She’d failed at that too, then. She was supposed to keep him away and calm. They’d tried to play cards, but neither of them could concentrate. So Pauline read aloud to him for a while, until her yawns became so frequent that he begged her to stop.
Pauline stood and folded the blanket that had covered her. Had the baby been born, or was Augusta still suffering? At that moment the door opened and Phyllida Carp entered, looking exhausted but wreathed in smiles.
“It’s a little girl!” she said and hurried forward to embrace Pauline—something she’d never done in her life before.
Without understanding exactly why, Pauline began to weep. “Don’t mind me, I’m just so happy for Lady Bridlington.” But that wasn’t all it was.
She shed tears over her disappointment with Jimmy.
She shed tears over her inability to bring what was admittedly an insane project to fruition.
She shed tears because for the first time since the summer, someone had touched her heart. But he would have gone away by now and since he no longer worked at Meyer’s, she wouldn’t be able to find him.
Phyllida fished a large handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to Pauline. “Get control of yerself. Her La’ship asked fer ye. I’m to bring you upstairs.”
Pauline wiped her eyes and blew her nose. What did she have to cry about, really? Her very best friend in the world had just survived childbirth and had delivered a baby girl into a life of privilege. Surely that was enough to make all her disappointments unimportant.
Of course, things would never be quite the same again. Would Augusta still have time to design gowns? What would happen to Madame Pauline’s without the stamp of the ton on everything the shop produced? But this was not the time to think about it.
Phyllida led her upstairs, chattering all the way about Lady Bridlington’s hard labor, saying that all turned out well in the end, and the doctor said he’d never seen such a beautiful baby.
Pauline’s eyes were round with wonder, but not at what Phyllida was telling her.
Everywhere she looked, evergreen garlands and holly boughs had transformed the elegant and understated mansion to effusive life.
Their scent was so redolent of Christmas that Pauline’s heart swelled.
It was all a miracle. Augusta had made it through childbirth, and her infant was healthy.
A Christmas baby! Surely that meant something.
“And you should see His Lordship!” Phyllida said as they walked along the hallway to Lady Bridlington’s bedchamber. “I’ve never saw a man so besotted for a baby in my life.”
“Wasn’t he disappointed it wasn’t a boy?” Pauline asked, suddenly aware that she probably hadn’t seemed sufficiently enthusiastic, or asked any of the right questions. She was still completely exhausted, after all.
“Nah, he says it’s just perfect, and they’ll just have to do it again as soon as Her La’ship is recovered.” They both laughed.
Phyllida tapped on the door and Augusta’s voice called out for her to come in. She sounded strong, Pauline thought.
Indeed, Augusta was sat up in bed with a cup of tea in her hands, looking tired and pale—and so, so happy. “Come and meet Lady Isabel Pauline Mariana Lanyon,” she said.
The earl had been facing away from them, but he turned to show them the swaddled bundle he held lovingly in his arms.
“She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Pauline whispered, touching the sleeping infant’s cheek with her fingertip. And then she turned back to Augusta. “What did you say her name was?”
“Lady Isabel Pauline Mariana Lanyon.”
Pauline struggled to hold back her tears, again. “Y-you’ll call her Lady Isabel, of course. Pauline’s not a fine enough name for a lady.”
Augusta shook her head. “I know a Pauline who is every bit a lady.” She stretched her hand out and pulled Pauline to sit on the edge of the bed next to her.
Pauline took in the sumptuous furnishings of the bedchamber, admiring the silk brocade bed curtains and the Aubusson carpet on the floor. Suddenly she thought of the unfinished gowns in Bruton Street, and gasped.
“What is it?” Augusta asked.
“Oh, n-nothing. It’s not important. Only I can’t stay for too long.”
“Of course. You must be so tired yourself.”
“Me tired! It’s you what’s done all the work!” Pauline said.
Lady Bridlington shook her head. “I won’t pretend it was easy. But I would do it all again for this joy. It’s Christmas morning. And I have been given the best present I could ever have imagined.” Augusta raised glowing eyes to her proud husband, who beamed right back at her.
The intense intimacy of that moment brought Pauline to her senses. “I must go. I’m a mess. Been in these clothes for two days!” She tried to make it sound like a joke even as the thought of the unfinished pieces back at the workshop weighed on her.
“Come back whenever you like,” Augusta said. “You must get to know your god daughter.”
Not that as well! It was too much. Pauline said her goodbyes quickly, rushing out of the room before she embarrassed herself by sobbing in front of Lord Bridlington.
She hurried down to the hall. Allsop had her cloak and scarf ready, and said, “His Lordship had the carriage brought round to take you back to Bruton Street, Ma’am.”
Pauline nodded, although the shop was so close to Berkeley Square she could easily have walked, and went through the open door, letting a footman hand her up into the barouche.
What a Christmas this had been!