Page 16 of The Homecoming (The De Montforte Brothers #6)

Chapter Twelve

“ P ush, Amy. Push! ”

Amy, her arms hooked around Charles’s neck as she hung from him in an attempt to move things along, cried out in pain as the next contraction gripped her.

Her pelvis felt as if it were being split apart, and she felt the baby’s feet pressing against her stomach, forcing a flood of nausea.

Sweat ran from her face. With her head bent and crying in pain, she could not see that her husband’s pallor rivalled that of her bedsheets, and he looked ready to either bolt or pass out.

“Let’s get her back into the bed,” Juliet said as Amy uttered a particularly loud cry. “I think the baby’s coming. And fast.”

Eva went to the window. “Where on earth is Dr. Highworth?”

“God only knows, but we don’t have time to find him or even a midwife,” Celsie said, peeling Amy off her husband’s neck. “We’re women. I’ve whelped litters. We’ve all had babies. This is up to us—and to you, Amy.”

They got her back into bed. Charles, not wanting to stay, not wanting to leave, had never felt more helpless in his life.

He took his wife’s hand as Celsie and Juliet urged her to push with everything she had, Eva bathed her forehead and cheeks with a cold cloth, and Nerissa, worried, rushed to the window to look out for Dr. Highworth’s arrival.

Fool husband of hers probably got lost, Charles thought bitterly. Or is halfway to London to pawn the ring he obviously stole. What the hell was Lucien thinking in sending the rotten bugger? I should just go myself, right now, before it’s too late—

“ Charles! ” his wife cried out, then screamed again as waves of pain rippled over her abdomen and stole the breath from her lungs. She squeezed her eyes shut, clenched Charles’s hand so hard it nearly broke his fingers, and let out another piercing cry.

Don’t faint, he said to himself. Don’t faint, don’t faint—

“I see a head,” Celsie said from beyond Amy’s bent knees. “Push, Amy. Push, when the next contraction hits.”

Amy, panting, eyes clenched in agony, managed to find her voice. “Does the baby look all right? Fully formed?”

Celsie grinned. “I can only see his head.”

“Or hers,” Juliet added wryly.

Nerissa, the drape caught in one hand, let out a relieved shout. “Dr. Highworth’s coming!”

“Another push, Amy! Push!”

“Come on Amy, here comes the head!”

“ Push! ”

Amy emitted another hoarse cry that ended on a guttural scream. Charles shut his eyes and silently prayed.

“The head is out!”

“Another push, Amy! Come on, you can do it!”

Another long cry from his wife, and birthing noises that Charles didn’t want to think about, and then the most blessed, welcome sound of all.

The high-pitched, ear-splitting wail of a newborn.

“Congratulations,” Celsie said, beaming. She wiped the baby down with a towel and then held the squalling bundle up for all to see. “You have a baby boy.”

It seemed like only a moment later that Dr. Highworth himself, huffing and puffing from his full charge up the stairs, burst into the room with his medical case and competent, reassuring presence.

“Well, well,” he said brightly, looking at the grinning women, the new father leaning against the bedpost with blood leaking from a cut and swollen lip, and the exhausted mother lying back against the sheets.

“It appears my services weren’t needed, after all.

Is there anything you de Montforte ladies cannot do? ”

The duchess grinned. “I cannot for the life of me, think of anything.”

“Is the afterbirth out?”

“It is, indeed,” Celsie said importantly. “We managed quite well, didn’t we, ladies?”

The man laughed. “You mean to say I was summoned from a perfectly delightful meal for nothing?”

Amy, the baby on her chest and covered by a blanket, looked up at him with her huge dark eyes. “Actually...”

“My wife is concerned that the baby came too early,” Lord Charles said. “As am I. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to examine him, make sure he looks as he should.”

The doctor raised a brow as he eyed Charles’s bloodied lip.

“It is my professional opinion, my lord, that if anyone here needs medical attention, it’s you,” he said genially, and grinned as the father flushed with embarrassment.

“But let me see your son. We’ll put to bed any doubts as to his health and heartiness, shall we? ”

Charles gently lifted the baby from his mother’s arms and gave him over to the doctor. He saw Amy’s anxiety in her eyes. Felt it echoed in his own heart.

“This is no tiny little lad,” the doctor said. “One of the bigger ones I’ve seen in some time. Oh, no, Lord and Lady Charles, I would say this fine fellow didn’t come early at all. If anything, he’s late.”

Amy shut her eyes in relief and Charles, thinking of how his animosity toward Ruaidri O’Devir had kicked off the labor pains, felt a horrible stab of guilt.

“And what is this strapping young man’s name, eh?” the doctor asked.

Amy looked at Charles, and Charles looked at Amy, and the two of them offered the doctor a sheepish smile.

“We were so convinced it was going to be a girl, that we didn’t even consider a boy’s name.”

The doctor laughed, gave the baby back to his mother, and straightened.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said jovially.

“And if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a kidney pie down at Crawley’s that, if I hurry, will still be warm by the time I get back there.

Good day to you all and congratulations, Lady Charles. Lord Charles.”

Charles leaned down to kiss his wife, and feeling the weight of every emotion known to man pressing down on his head, his shoulders, his very heart, decided to leave her in the care of the women until he could collect himself.

He slipped quietly from the room.

Out in the hall, emotion overcame him and he pulled out a handkerchief to dab at his eyes.

He could not contain his thoughts. His feelings.

Even his tears. Sorrow, that his loss of control had led to Amy’s suffering.

Anger and suspicion, that the ring was still missing.

Exhaustion, from the helpless horror of watching his wife go through something so very difficult.

Shock that the baby had come now when they hadn’t expected him for another month.

Fury that Lucien had possibly risked Amy’s life by sending O’Devir to save the day in what had been a futile attempt to endear the knave to Charles.

He clenched his fists and inhaled deeply, trying to sort through the noisy confusion that were his thoughts.

Had that been Lucien’s intention? Had he chosen O’Devir in order to make him an unlikely hero?

Charles wouldn’t put it past him, and the whole thing felt reminiscent of the sly manipulations his brother had employed when Charles had returned from America a damaged and broken man.

He took another deep breath and tried to get himself under control, tried to sort out what was real, what was imagined, and what was even possible.

He went to his own apartments, freshened up a bit, and hearing the excited barking of that infernal puppy, decided to go downstairs. If nothing else, he needed to quiet it so his wife could sleep.

And he needed to tell the daughter he’d left so frightened, so traumatized by his own awful behavior, that she had a little brother.

Ruaidri sat out on the grass, watching the sun sparkling on the moat.

He picked up a stone, skipped it across the surface with a flick of his wrist and watched it sink. Stared into the water without really seeing it. Tossed another stone. Presently, he became aware of someone approaching.

“I thought I might find you here,” his wife said, sitting beside him.

“And why’s that, mo grá ?”

“Because it’s water. You are a mariner. You’re drawn to it like a bee to a flower.”

He smiled, picked up another stone, and skipped it. “How is Lady Charles?”

“Amy is fine,” she answered. “Safely delivered of a baby boy with a head of pale gold hair like his father.”

Ruaidri nodded. Good, then. At least something about this visit was going right.

“I’m disgusted about the way Charles is treating you, Ruaidri.” She reached up to touch his jaw. “It’s breaking my heart.”

“Ah, well,” he said with a shrug, because really, there wasn’t anything else to say.

She nestled up against him, and he drew her close. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder, and he leaned his against the top of her head. For a long moment, neither spoke.

“I wonder what’s going on at this very moment back home in Newburyport,” she mused, following his stare into the sparkling water.

“I was just wonderin’ the same thing.”

“Do you miss it, Ruaidri? Home?”

He thought of their new brick house some three thousand miles away with its commanding view of the Merrimack River, decorated with elegant but tasteful furnishings they had chosen together.

He thought of the way the rising sun touched their bedposts in the morning and filled the room with the clean white piercing light that only a home near the sea could have.

He had had that house built for her, on land that he himself had purchased, and it had only been possible because he, the lowly son of an Irish fisherman, had become successful enough to make it happen.

No humble cottage, no row house or rented room or worker’s shack, but a big, splendid, beautiful home that was the pride and joy of a duke’s daughter.

Oh, aye, he missed it. And he missed the shipyards and how they came alive in the morning with the sounds of axes, hammers, and saws.

He missed his cousins and friends and neighbors, and he missed the salt air and he missed Newburyport itself, a place where he had finally set down roots with the woman he loved.

Home. He yearned for it as he had never yearned for Ireland.

Home. Away from this godawful, stuffy, and ostentatious place where he didn’t belong, didn’t fit in, and had caused the family nothing but pain.

“Aye, I miss it, Nerissa.”

She let another long moment go by and he sensed she was trying not to cry.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said quietly.

“About?”

“Ending our visit and going home.”

He turned to look at her. “So soon?”

She nodded but didn’t meet his eyes. “Yes.”

“Come now, lass. We only just arrived ... ye haven’t seen your family in a year and a half.”

“I know. But ... it’s not the same.”

“Of course it’s not. Everything changes,” he said gently. “It’s part of life. We can never go back to how things were when we were children.”

“It’s not that,” she said, still looking out over the water.

He reached out, touched her jaw, and forced her to look at him. “What is it, love?”

Her eyes were bleak and suddenly filling with tears.

“It’s Charles,” she said brokenly. “I cannot bear to see how he is behaving, how he blames you for everything wrong in the world, how he just can’t get over or past the events that led you and I to each other.

Why can’t he be happy for us?” She wiped at an eye.

“We should’ve made this journey earlier, before his animosity had so much time to set.

Before it had become such a ... such a part of him.

” She turned and looked at him. “I was wrong to ask you to bring me here, Ruaidri. I was wrong to assume that all of my brothers would forgive you ... and not subject you to this ... this abuse.”

He pulled her close. “Come now, lass, ’tisn’t as if he’s put a knife to me throat as Lucien did,” he said, trying to make light of the moment.

“It feels as if he’s put a knife to mine. The situation here is awkward, ugly and rapidly deteriorating, and I love you too much to keep you subjected to it a moment longer than I already have.”

“What are ye saying, lass?”

“I’m saying I’ve had enough. More than enough. That when we go back inside, I will quietly begin packing. I would like you to take me home.”