She wanted to throw herself into his arms. He held his shoulders so rigid, his arms so firmly crossed over his chest, she curled her fingers into tight fists at her side instead. She wanted to cry out that there was nothing to forgive, but that wasn’t the redemption he sought. She wanted to tell him she’d spoken to Mary, that she knew and understood everything now, but the anguish buried deep inside him wouldn’t be dug out with words.
She uncurled her fists and spread her fingers over her belly, deliberately drawing his attention there as she spoke, her voice firm, her conviction strong enough to protect all three of them. “I’m not going to die.”
His eyes came up, filled with tears that refused to fall. His jaw moved a few times, struggling with the words, before he could say, “You are not going to die. I willna allow it.”
Breghan released a long, weightless sigh. Her gaze landed on the pew and the lumpy parcel wrapped and bound in thin leather.
“I wanted you to have some of your belongings around you,” Arran said. “Janet helped me pack.”
“So, you didn’t come here hell-bent on strapping me to your horse and dragging me home?” she asked with a smile.
“Bree…” He started to shrug, then shook his head on the ghost of a grin instead. “Not back to Ferniehirst, no, but I would have dragged you into this church if you hadn’t come willingly.” He closed the distance between them in two strides and pulled her into his arms. One hand slid beneath her hair to cradle the back of her head and the other settled at the small of her back. Holding her to him, his head bowed over hers, his heart thudding against her cheek. “The priest is on his way, darling, our child willna be born a bastard.”
Not our child willna die a bastard. Hope swelled in her heart and spilled from her lips as a soft, gurgling laugh against his chest.
Three months later, Breghan was far too testy to remember that warm, cosy joy. “When he said he wouldn’t allow me to die,” she told Janet crossly, “he actually meant he wouldn’t allow me to walk, eat, talk or breathe.”
Janet raised a brow at her from where she stood by the window.
“He’s suffocating me,” she complained.
“He’s worried.”
“Last night he carried me to bed and then pulled a chair up so he could keep watch while I slept.”
“He’s mad,” giggled Janet. She turned back to look outside with a sigh. “They all are.”
“What’s he done now?”
“He’s building us a home.”
“He’s what?” Breghan moved to the window and peered over her shoulder. Broderick was bent over double, knee-deep in a trench he was digging along the East perimeter wall.
“First he insisted we be betrothed for three months, which I accepted. Now he says we can’t get married until we have a place to live.”
“Well, it won’t take him that long to build a cottage, will it?”
“When he asked Arran for permission,” Janet said grumpily, “your husband said it was high time Ferniehirst had married quarters and he could build a whole damn wing if he wanted.” She turned to Breghan. “He’s building the whole damn wing.”
“He’s scared to death of marriage.”
“There’s only one thing that scares him more,” Janet declared with the confidence of a woman who already knew she had her man, “and that’s losing me. He can have his wing, but I intend to enlist every available man to help him build it.”
“Broderick won’t like the enlisting part,” Breghan predicted with a smile.
“Precisely.” Janet twitched her skirts and headed for the door.
At seven months, the baby kicked so hard, Breghan gasped and clutched her side.
Arran dropped the pile of logs he’d been stacking on the hearth and rushed over. “What is it?” He knelt in front of her, his eyes dark as slate, his jaw so taut he could barely speak. “Are you in pain? Is something happening?”
Breghan had to wait for the cramp beneath her ribs to release before she could speak, and by that time Arran’s shouts had summoned the entire castle to his aid.
“It’s too soon,” Janet cried as she ran into the room.
Bryan almost fell through the doorway, then he stood there with a nervous frown, suddenly undecided what to do now that he was here.
Even Gardie came charging up with all his lads in tow. “Should I be boiling the water now?” he asked breathlessly.
Breghan rested her head on the back of her chair and groaned, “The baby kicked.” Her feet were swollen, all her inside organs were shoved up against her ribs and a fire burned constantly of late all the way from her belly to her throat. “Nothing’s happening. There’s no pain. I just want to be left alone!”
The room emptied as suddenly as it had filled. When Arran pushed up from his knees, however, she grabbed his hand and guided it over the flurry of movement inside her womb. He felt the familiar kick and some of the worry fled from his eyes.
“That’s your son,” she told him, smiling. She sighed. “He’s going to be every bit as impossible as his father.”
“It could be your daughter,” he murmured, his gaze holding hers with warmth and love, “reckless, stubborn and so goddamn beautiful.” His mouth covered hers in a deep, exploring kiss that sent fire through her veins as he stroked a gentle caress across her belly and to her sensitive breasts.
When he pulled back, she looked into his eyes, her heart smiling. “I love you too, darling.”
Arran grinned at her. “I didn’t mean to cause a scare. I promise to do better.”
Two days later Magellan arrived on a loaded wagon and escorted by ten of Arran’s men.
“I didn’t know we were expecting you,” Breghan cried in delight.
“Your husband sent his army with the order that I was to bring all my weeds, bones, witch books and any other magic at my disposal and if I dallied, he’d be collecting me personally. An option, apparently, I’d do well to avoid,” Magellan said, spreading her arms around Breghan’s enormous waistline in a hug. “We were coming shortly anyway. Your mother is waiting for the early January snow to settle. You should know, she’s packing for at least six months.”
“He promised to do better.” Breghan shook her head, laughing. “But I’m pleased you’re here.”
As she neared the end of her pregnancy, however, Arran grew visibly worse. His grins were strained, when he remembered not to scowl. He went riding off for hours every day and came back with a brittle temper that all felt except for Breghan. He climbed beneath the covers with her every night, but every morning she woke up to find him sitting on the chair beside their bed, watching her with an expression that was almost desperate, as if he forgot to look for a single moment, all would be lost.
“I don’t know how to help him,” she told her mother, who’d arrived a few weeks back. “He listens to all my reassurances but hears naught. He hardly sleeps anymore and the way he looks at me, committing every detail to memory, it’s breaking my heart.”
“There is always some risk in childbirth, darling.” Lillian folded her hand on Breghan’s and squeezed. “A man will worry, Arran more so than most.”
Magellan was less understanding. She’d endured Arran’s hovering for a month more than Lillian and decided to head him off at the bit. She called Arran into the chamber when Breghan was stirring from her afternoon nap and flung back the covers.
Breghan would have objected, but she was still half asleep.
“It makes no difference how robust or fragile a woman’s body is,” Magellan informed him. “Everything is dependent on her hips.”
Arran made a growling noise. Breghan simply raised a brow at the white-haired woman who was drawing a line across her hips in measurement, hips she hadn’t seen for herself in months.
“Breghan has the same broad hips as her mother, flat, wide and flexible enough to birth a foal.” She flicked the covers back and folded her arms. “Now go and get yourself some sleep so you can be of some use when your wife actually does ne
ed you!”
“That woman is a tyrant,” Arran grumbled when he came to bed that night. Breghan had taken to sleeping on her side and he spooned in behind her, folding his arm around her wide girth to support her belly and alleviate some of the pressure.
“She makes a valid point,” she said, snuggling further back into the concave heat of his body. “Remember why you chose McAllen’s daughter in the first place. You put your faith and trust in me before you’d even met me. I have always been, and will always be, McAllen’s daughter.”
Arran grunted, but it wasn’t long before his rhythm slowed into a deep sleep.
The next day, shortly after supper, Breghan’s waters broke. Fifteen hours later, she was breathing through waves of pain that came at increasingly shorter intervals and believing this would never end. Lillian wiped her forehead with a damp cloth, Janet held her hand and Magellan kept a close eye on the baby’s progress. Bryan was standing guard outside the door and Broderick had been tasked with keeping Arran in the great hall.
Throughout the night, throughout the endless spasms that refused to push the babe from her belly, Breghan held on to her determination. Arran wouldn’t come near her, near this room, until it was time for him to hold his babe.
“The first one always takes its time,” Lillian said in a soothing voice. “I promise it gets easier.”
Thomas Arran Kerr was born two hours after sunrise. Breghan burst into exhausted, loving tears when he was placed into her arms.
“I’m so proud of you, darling,” Lillian said as she cleaned every inch of the baby with a damp linen towel.
“I’m proud of me too,” Breghan whispered. She’d done it, she’d been so strong, but now she needed Arran. “Please…would someone please bring Arran to me?”
Arran’s face was whiter than the fresh sheets Magellan had just put on the bed. The hand he placed over hers shook uncontrollably and, this time, he couldn’t keep his tears from pouring down his cheeks.
She curled her fingers around his and held on tight, saying nothing, simple looking into his eyes until his trembling stilled, until his gaze moved lower to the babe resting on her breast, until he could form the words to say, “I thought it impossible to love you more than I already do, but now I know nothing…nothing is impossible.”
“Would you like to hold Thomas?”
“Thomas…” He trailed a featherlight finger along one plump cheek. “I have a son.”
“You have a son,” she agreed softly, shifting higher against the pillows so she could hand him into Arran’s arms. “We have a beautiful son.”
Arran cradled the baby to his chest, awkwardly at first, but then he came to sit beside her and she showed him where to put his hands. As she drew back, he caught her lips with his and kissed her gently. “I love you, darling, and already Thomas is more precious to me than life itself, but by God you are never putting me through this again.”
“I’ve just given you an heir,” she reminded him. “You owe me at least one boon.”
“Anything your heart desires,” he vowed.
She tilted her chin to him, brushing her mouth across the stony ridge of his jaw in a sweeping kiss. When she reached his lips, her kiss was playful, teasing his lower lip. “I love you, darling, and already Thomas is more precious to me than life itself, but by God you will give me a girl and we’ll keep trying until you do.”
Afterword
Birth contraceptives, some more effective than others, have been used by women since before the birth of Christ. Mediterranean writings describe vaginal suppositories of fruits, honey, cabbage leaves, crocodile dung, tree gums, wool and other organic matter. Ingesting herbs and roots such as Queen Anne’s lace, Pennyroyal, willow and rue was more commonplace, but desperate women even risked using potentially fatal herbs such as Belladonna and honeysuckle.
Libyans made great use of silphium, a variety of giant fennel, and modern studies on relatives of this fennel show about fifty percent effectiveness in preventing conception. Silphium was so popular, being exported far and wide, that the particular species became extinct by 400 CE. Thus it is speculated that silphium had far greater efficacy than the species that survived for our modern tests.
The other women’s health issue Arran and Breghan deal with is childbirth and Caesarean section. The Caesarean section is by no means a modern concept, although the operation wasn’t widely used until the introduction of hygienic medical practices and anaesthetics. Mothers were far too likely to die of shock, infection and internal bleeding during the operation.
As early as 3000 BC in Egypt, this operation was mandated to provide separate burials for the mother and babe. In ancient Rome, a Law of the Caesars sometimes prescribed this operation in an attempt to save a baby once the mother was dead. Caesarean section likely takes its name from this law rather than the rumour that Julius Caesar was born by this method.
In the Middle Ages, starting around the 1400s, there are documented cases of Caesareans being performed in an attempt to save both mother and babe, although as mentioned above the survival rate would have been poor due to the medical practices of the time.
The first reliable account of a successful Caesarean comes from Germany in 1610 when there is mention of a Swiss pork butcher who delivered his own child—using his carving skills—around 1500.
Scotland was not as advanced as the rest of Europe in the medical field, but physicians did travel to Europe to study the latest practices and share knowledge, such as the midwife’s father in The Devil of Jedburgh. The herbs Breghan takes to prevent conception would in all likelihood not have been one hundred percent effective as made out in this book. Although there is always the possibility that some herbalists might have had more reliable remedies. Because of the church’s opposition to preventing conception, most information in this regard was kept secret with little documentation.
About the Author
Claire Robyns lives in Berkshire, England, with her husband and twin boys. For so long as she has memories, she was either reading, dreaming about reading, or planning what she’d be reading next. Then one day she started dreaming about writing and that was the beginning of an amazing journey.
When Claire isn’t thigh-deep in laundry, shopping, cooking and general crowd control, you’ll find her head-and-heart-deep in the tangled lives of her characters.
Claire writes sensual historical romance and lighthearted contemporaries.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9316-2
Copyright © 2012 by Debra Valentyne
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