Page 15 of The Homecoming (The De Montforte Brothers #6)

Chapter Eleven

“ O hhhh,” Amy moaned, as Charles and Eva got her up the stairs, down the corridor, and into their apartments. Her face was white with fear, her eyes swimming in tears. “Charles, the baby isn’t supposed to be this early ... I’m so scared.”

“It will be all right,” Charles said with an assurance he didn’t feel as they guided her to the bed. “Just try to relax, sweetheart. I’m here. Everything will be fine.”

“I’m frightened,” she repeated, the tears still tracking down her face. “Something’s wrong, I know it is. I don’t feel well. Please don’t leave me.”

He glanced over at his sister-in-law. Her beautiful face was tight, but if she shared his concern, she was keeping it to herself.

Nobody said a word as servants came running, the covers were turned back, and Amy was eased onto the bed, her gown and stays removed until she was stripped down to her chemise.

“Little Mary ... she was crying ... someone, please see to her,” Amy pled.

“What is happening?” It was Nerissa, sleepy-eyed and alarmed, just coming into the room. “Amy! I was napping, are you—”

“Yes, she is,” Eva murmured.

Charles felt his terror mounting. The baby was early.

Was Lucien right? Had the animosity between himself and O’Devir brought this on?

Oh, why had he not waited until they’d reached the stable where he and O’Devir could’ve settled things discreetly?

Now Amy was in childbirth. Amy, his sweet and loving wife, paying for his sins with an early labor and maybe their coming child would be paying too.

Charles felt sick.

Through it all he was aware of the throbbing in his lip, the way it had swollen and pushed against his lower teeth, and worried that the sight would further distress his wife, he took out his handkerchief to dab at it.

It came away with a spot of blood, and disgusted, he thrust it back into his pocket.

He stood there holding Amy’s hand and feeling quite useless as the women bustled about, Nerissa plumping up Amy’s pillows, Eva calling for hot water.

Amy clutched his fingers and looked up at him with desperate, fearful eyes.

A contraction hit her. She caught her breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and moaned in pain.

“Come, Charles,” Lucien murmured, breaking into his shock. “Let’s leave the women to this.”

“I can’t leave her, she needs me.”

“And so does your daughter. Let the women settle and tend to Amy. You can return as she gets further along.”

They went downstairs and into the Gold Parlour where Charles was both surprised and enraged to find O’Devir sitting in a chair, head bent to his hands.

His thick, savage mane of curly black hair had come loose from his queue after their brief fight and through it, Charles thought the man might be praying.

For what, he couldn’t imagine, and immediately thrust it from his mind as the Irishman looked up.

“Is she—”

“She’ll be fine,” Lucien said smoothly. “My dear Ruaidri ... perhaps you can ride down to Ravenscombe and find Dr. Highworth? Bring him back with the utmost haste?”

Charles bristled. “Why are you asking him? He’s not familiar with the area. He can barely ride a horse. Ask Gareth or Andrew, they know where to find the doctor.”

“I am asking Ruaidri.”

The Irishman was on his feet. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I can go immediately.”

“What are you, mad?” Charles exploded.

“Gareth is with the children trying to calm them down, Andrew is likely upstairs in bed trying to catch up on missed sleep, and Ruaidri obviously wishes to make himself useful.” Lucien turned to the other man.

“The doctor—” He casually pulled out his pocket watch and consulted it.

“— is in the habit of taking his midday meal at Crawley’s pub at the top of the hour.

He particularly enjoys the kidney pie and is likely to linger until at least half one unless, of course, he is called out by someone in need of his services. If you hurry, you’ll find him there.”

“Crawley’s pub?”

“The Speckled Hen. It’s the only one in the village. You’ll see it across from Green.”

Ruaidri, willfully blocking out Charles’s sputtering horror, nodded.

He was grateful to Lucien for sending him on a mission and even more grateful to get away from Charles.

This visit to Blackheath was becoming unbearable.

He saw the fresh anger, this time mixed with fear, coming into Charles’s eyes, and turning on his heel, slipped silently out of the room, not wanting to hear any more of the argument.

Moments later, he was in the stables, where a groom met him and asked him what he might need.

“A horse,” Ruaidri said. “The fastest one you have.”

The groom’s eyes were suddenly wary. “That would be Armageddon, m’lord.”

“I’m no lord, just a captain, and I’ll take him.”

“But ... but Captain, he’s—”

“Unless he’s lame, throw a damned saddle on him and bring him out. I need to get to the village as quickly as possible.”

Eyes widening, the groom tightened his mouth, nodded, and melted off into the shadows.

Ruaidri began to pace. His jaw was killing him, and he wished with all his heart that the blow his brother-in-law had landed had been the end of it, the release of the other man’s resentment.

A cleared slate would’ve been a fierce fine thing.

Lucien had come to him as he’d been gathering up the sodden boats, commended his restraint once more—“Unlike Charles, I know what your fists are truly capable of.”— and lamented all of it with the hope that things would improve between them.

Now, with his wife in labor, Ruaidri feared things would never improve.

He paced and paced some more. All the more important the fastest horse in the stable be brought out. If there was even the remotest chance of Lord Charles softening toward him, even just the smallest bit—

Jesus, Joseph, an’ Mary.

Ruaidri took one look at the savage black beast being led out and felt the blood stop in his veins.

Shit.

The animal reared up, striking out with his forelegs, and was brought down by the chain that the groom, obviously fearing for his life, had threaded through the halter.

Black as the pit of hell, eyes wild and ringed with white, nostrils extended in huge square tunnels that sucked in air all the way to their fire-red insides, hooves plunging and tail flung up over his back, the stallion let out a long, piercing scream, and in a motion that was part corkscrew, part buck, and part murder attempt, sent his hind legs flying out behind him to connect with a stall door with a ringing clash.

“Ehm... ”

“This is Armageddon, sir. Belongs to his Grace. Nobody else rides him.”

Nobody else with anything but a death wish would even want to try , Ruaidri thought, his palms beginning to sweat.

“Want me to find another mount, Captain?”

The horse reared up again, striking out with one foreleg, his head snaking toward the groom in a vicious bite.

Yes. Please. Oh, please.

“No, of course not,” Ruaidri said shortly. “Tack him up and do it quick. There’s no time to waste.”

Amy lay in a cloak of pain, her belly, her back, even her tailbone on fire.

She felt the contractions coming closer together now, and through her agony, saw Eva, Juliet, and Nerissa hovering around and above.

The duchess sat on the bed beside her, holding her hand, and as pain gripped Amy and she opened her eyes, panting and breathing hard, her sister-in-law cleared a sweat-drenched hank of hair from her forehead and leaned close.

“Amy,” she said firmly, and her compelling green eyes were inches from Amy’s own. “Dr. Highworth will be here any moment. You need to push with the contractions. Stop fighting them.”

“It huurrrts ,” Amy managed as another seized her, doubling her up and causing a flare of nausea. “I can’t.”

Juliet was there, taking her hand and rubbing it. “You can’t hold the baby back.”

“You can’t hold it in, either,” Nerissa said.

Celsie, looking sleep-rumpled and obviously summoned from her bed, was suddenly in the room. “Amy, we’re all here. Listen to us. Stop fighting this and go with what your body is trying to do.”

“But it’s not ready to come out,” Amy gasped, through her tears of pain. “Our doctor said the baby wouldn’t be coming for another month, and—”

“It has been my experience that when it comes to matters of women and babies, doctors don’t always know what they’re talking about,” Eva said.

“Then why bother sending for one?” Amy managed, and then gasped on another wave of pain. “Please ... just bring my husband to me ... I want Charles.”

“Your husband is not likely to be the most soothing presence at the moment,” Juliet said. “He’s a wreck. Lucien has him downstairs.”

“Then surely something’s wrong, if he’s a wreck...”

“He was a wreck when you had little Mary too,” Juliet said sagely. “And she was born strong and healthy. As this baby will be.”

Amy shut her eyes and tried to sink back into herself, seeking the cocoon of darkness and rest before the next contraction came.

“Charles,” she said under her breath. “Please bring him to me.”

Captain Ruaidri O’Devir had been in savage sea fights where men had been blown to bits.

He’d risked his life many times over smuggling guns and food to the desperate colonists in Boston before war had finally broken out that fateful day in April of 1775.

He’d faced execution, he’d nearly died when an English marksman had shot him down on the deck of his own warship, and he’d been a knife-swipe away from meeting his maker when Lucien de Montforte had caught up to him following his abduction of Nerissa.

All that and more, but never had he faced the fear, the very real feeling that he would not live to see the sunset, let alone the morrow, that all but paralyzed him as he clung to the black stallion’s neck as the animal thundered down Blackheath Castle’s drive and then hit the road to Ravenscombe.

The long black mane lashed his cheeks, stung his eyes, whipped across his mouth with every stride.

Ruaidri gave up trying to sit back and with the horse’s motion; instead, he leaned over the animal’s neck, watched the dirt and verge flying past its shoulder and the pounding hooves beneath him in a dizzying blur, anchored himself with both hands in the flying mane while clinging to reins that had become all but useless, and hung on with everything he had.

He had a dim idea where he wanted to go, and as the stallion’s great body pounded beneath him, he hoped the creature would stick to the road and not veer off into a field. Just get me to the village , he thought. If I can’t stop ye, at least I can fall off, and if I survive, find this doctor...

He didn’t know how long he clung to the animal but soon enough he heard shouting through the noise of wind in his ears. Doors slamming. He raised his head and realized they were already in the village, and people were running out of cottages, alarmed.

“That’s ’is Grace’s horse!”

“Who’s that riding ’im?”

“Whoa, there! Whoa!”

The stallion slowed, the tattoo of his hoofbeats changing and Ruaidri, never one to let an opportunity slide, took hold of the reins and pulled back, trying to get the horse to stop. “Whoa, ye bloody bugger, whoa!”

The horse fought him hard, shaking his head, and as he began to lose his seat, Ruaidri saw a burly man lunge forward and grab the reins just behind the bit.

The animal reared up, Ruaidri felt himself tumbling off, and the ground came up to slam the breath from him as he hit it, the reins torn from his grasp.

He lay there, stunned.

“Someone, get Dr. Highworth!”

Ruaidri pushed himself onto his side and glared at the great beast that had brought him here at a speed unknown to nature.

The hellish thing was now fretting in circles around the man who held it, head high and ears pinned back, nostrils flaring red and its tail flung over its back.

Several men came up to him and helped him to his feet.

He stood there bent over, his hands on his knees to still their shaking and finally catching his breath, looked up to see a man in a black coat being hustled toward him from out of a pub, a napkin in his hand as he wiped at his mouth.

“Dr. Highworth?” Ruaidri gasped, straightening to take the fellow’s hand.

The man was still chewing. “At your service, sir.”

“My name’s O’Devir ... I come from the castle ... Lady Charles is birthin’ her babe and ye’re needed as quickly as ye can get there.”

The doctor’s horrified eyes shot to the black stallion.

“You expect me to ... to ride that thing?”

“I was hopin’ ye have a proper conveyance because there’s no way on God’s green Earth I’m gettin’ back up on that divil’s back, myself. Someone here can walk him back to the castle. Now, let’s go. There’s no time to waste.”