Yvette and Gregor rushed to her.
The Scot swept her into his arms and, without hesitation, marched through the gawking onlookers.
Yvette hiked her skirts to her calves. “Ewan, send for Midwife Gilchrist and Doctor Paterson at once.”
Isobel’s and Aunt Giselle’s eyes meshed in horrified unison before the two dashed from the hall, Flynn scarcely a breath behind them.
God, be merciful, he prayed, taking the stairs two at a time, knowing even as he sent up the silent plea, his prayer was already far too late.
No, no, God, no!
“No,” Angelina sobbed into the soggy pillow, pounding it with her fist again. “It’s so unfair.”
She’d lost the baby.
A boy. A precious, darling boy.
Doctor Paterson concluded the pitiable mite had been much too small and poorly developed to ever have survived. Losing the baby had been inevitable.
Guilt gnawed at her, nevertheless.
Had she caused this? Did her body reject her son because she’d been furious and resentful when she first learned of her pregnancy? Had her hatred of Charles adversely affected the child growing in her womb? Or had the babe sensed she feared raising a son alone?
She asked the midwife those same questions, refusing to spare herself any discomfort.
Compassion brimmed in Midwife Gilchrist’s warm brown eyes. She’d taken Angelina’s hand, patting it soothingly.
“Lass, ye had nothing to do with the loss of the bairn. Sometimes the Good Laird, for reasons we’ll never know or understand, sees fit to take the wee one to heaven before it’s ever born. Such was the case with yer laddie.”
“But I was shamefully bitter and angry in the beginning. Maybe—”
“Don’t torture yerself with such thoughts, lass.” Doctor Paterson shook his shaggy head. “Ye are a healthy young woman with a strong constitution. There was naught ye could have done to prevent this. Frankly, I’m surprised ye carried the bairn as long as ye did.”
That had been hours ago.
Angelina didn’t care that everyone in the keep likely knew she’d been expecting when she married Flynn. Didn’t care they no doubt speculated whether he fathered the child, given he’d been enamored of Miss Farnsworth mere weeks ago.
Lady Ferguson offered a glass half full of a cloudy liquid. “Drink this, dear. It will help you sleep.”
Eyes red-rimmed from crying, and her arms piled with soiled linens, Murphy had been sent below to have some soup and tea. Her weeping only added to Angelina’s despair.
“I don’t want it.” She turned her face away and stared at the wall. She didn’t deserve to sleep, to forget her little one.
Fate was Satan’s black-hearted mistress. To take the baby a scant hour after Angelina shackled herself to a stranger. A man in love with someone else.
A soft knock jarred the chamber door.
“Please, I don’t wish to see anyone,” Angelina whispered against the bedding.
Most especially not Flynn. What would she say to him?
By-the-by, I don’t need your name or protection any more. Feel free to take up with your former love.
He’d fulfilled Uncle Ambrose’s demand. The wager would be canceled. No need for them to stay married remained.
Angelina vaguely recalled Gregor carrying her above stairs and Flynn hovering near her bed. He’d held her hand and whispered encouragement, his handsome face etched with worry and something else. He hadn’t left until the doctor and midwife hustled in and shooed everyone except Murphy and Lady Ferguson from the room.
“Let me see who it is, chérie, non?”
Angelina found Lady Ferguson’s soft, French accent oddly comforting.
Her ladyship patted Angelina’s shoulder. “Flynn’s been beside himself, pacing the corridor this whole while.”
Not sequestered in a nook, professing his love and comforting the distraught Miss Farnsworth?
Angelina had learned her name. She pitied the young woman whose humiliation must be only marginally less than hers.
The door vibrated again.
“Oui, just a moment.” The swishing of material as Lady Ferguson glided to the door revealed she intended to answer the summons.
The heavy door whisked open accompanied by a low creak. “I’m sorry, Flynn.”
Lady Ferguson tried to gently dissuade him. “She’s not feeling quite up to visitors yet. I’m sure you understand. Perhaps later this evening?”
“I must see her. She shouldn’t be alone in her suffering, and she knows no one else here. Please.” Gruff emotion reduced his voice to a rasp.
Fresh tears seeped from beneath Angelina’s lashes. Her shoulders shook with renewed grief.
He possessed a good heart and didn’t deserve her snide speculations.
She pressed her swollen face in the mattress to stifle her sobs. From the desperation in his voice, she almost believed he felt something for her. At this moment, she so needed someone who did. The tiny rudder guiding her choices and decisions for the past weeks no longer existed, and she was utterly lost.
Tomorrow or the next day or the next, she would worry about her future.
At present, all she wanted to do was yield to the grief laying siege to her heart and mourn her nameless son. The injustice of his loss tormented her. She almost welcomed the bitterness that taunted her soul.
A firm, yet quiet click announced the door shutting.
The mattress dipped a moment later as Lady Ferguson sat on the other side of the bed.
Such a kindhearted, nonjudgmental woman.
She smoothed the bedding around Angelina’s shoulders, brushing the moist curls from her cheek with calloused fingers.
Calloused fingers?
Angelina’s breath caught.
Flynn.
She breathed in his familiar musky, slightly spicy scent.
“Go away. Please, go away.” Hunching her back, she buried her face in the once crisp linen. The scent of heather teased her nose.
Instead of leaving, Flynn stretched out behind her and wrapped one powerful arm around her waist, wedging the other beneath the pillow cradling her head.
A moment later, his warm breath heated her nape.
His lips touched her neck in a comforting whisper of a kiss.
“I’m so sorry, Lina.” The low timbre of his voice trembled with sorrow. “Is there anything I can do?”
She shook her head as crying wracked her once more.
Flynn held her against his solid length, his body a safe haven, a wonderful cocoon of protection as she vented her heartbreak.
At long last, her store of tears exhausted itself. She opened gritty, swollen eyes.
The chamber, now dimmed by purplish evening shadows, sat silent except for Flynn’s even breathing.
Did he sleep?
Drawing in a shaky breath, Angelina wiped her face with the sheet, having long since lost track of the handkerchief Lady Ferguson had provided.
Flynn shifted until he lay on his back. He turned her toward him and tucked her into his side, her head resting on his broad shoulder. He nuzzled her hair.
“Would you like to have a service for the baby? Reverend Wallace offered to officiate. Sethwick’s carpenter made a tiny coffin, and Isobel and Kitta padded the interior, lining it with a piece of McTavish plaid.”
Emotion threatened to overwhelm Angelina again. Unable to respond, she scrunched her eyes closed, biting her lower lip. The coppery taste of blood bore witness to her effort to contain her sorrow.
When she didn’t answer, Flynn ran one hand along her arm and shoulder in a soothing caress. “There’s a lovely view of Loch Arkaig from Craiglocky’s cemetery. Aunt Giselle has a white tea rose she’d like to transpla
nt beside the baby’s grave.”
“White for innocence,” Angelina whispered through dry lips.
“Yes. Also honor and reverence as well as remembrance. A white rose is symbolic of heavenliness too.” Flynn uncrossed his ankles, stretching his muscles for a brief moment. He breathed out a long sigh.
What was he thinking? Why wasn’t he consoling Miss Farnsworth instead of her?
“Why are they being so kind to me?” Angelina mumbled against his shoulder. “Surely they have deduced my circumstances and know I was well along with child when we exchanged our vows.”
“Shh, Lina.” Flynn placed a long finger on her lips and lifted his head to peer into her eyes. “That was no fault of yours.”
Tenderness unlike anything she’d ever experienced from a man radiated from his sympathetic eyes. Or maybe the deepening shadows caused her imagination to seek that which didn’t exist.
He relaxed against the pillows again. “They are kindhearted people and feel for you. That you grieve for your child makes your tragic loss much more devastating. They only seek to ease your pain, and thereby their own, in some small measure.”
Could she leave her baby here, only visiting his grave at irregular intervals? In time, likely never coming anymore, forgetting the precious darling might ever have been?
After she and Flynn separated, returning to Craiglocky to visit her son’s resting place would be awkward for everyone.
As if reading her mind, Flynn nuzzled her hair again.
“Unless you’d prefer to have the babe buried at Lambridge Manse in the family cemetery. I could arrange for him to be transported there tomorrow, though Doctor Wallace advised it will be at least a week before you’re capable of traveling. You’d miss the infant’s burial, but we could have a service once we returned.”
That sealed it. Angelina refused to have her son’s tiny body laid in the cold, uncaring earth without his mother there to wish him a loving farewell.
She stared at Flynn’s jaw, lightly shadowed with stubble. She didn’t deserve anyone’s compassion. If she hadn’t been heaven bent on marrying Charles so quickly, she might have learned his true nature, might have discovered he was already married.
And she might have been spared the agony of losing a child and the loneliness of a marriage of convenience.
Where would that have left Flynn? He needed this marriage every bit, if not more, than I did.
“I should like to name my baby and perhaps have a stone carved for a grave marker.” Angelina dared to meet Flynn’s eyes for a moment before focusing on his strong jaw once more. “Maybe one with an angel or a cherub?”
“I think that’s a splendid idea. Do you have a name in mind?” He tenderly kissed her forehead, hugging her to his chest.
Angelina shook her head. “Do you know one that means cherished or dearly loved?”
Flynn was silent for a few moments. “Davy means beloved in Scots, and its Hebrew meaning is cherished. Many a mighty Scottish king has proudly born the name.”
He hesitated. “Davy was also my favorite uncle’s name.”
Beloved. Her son had been.
“Davy.” Angelina tested the name.
She sighed, as peace finally embraced her. “Perfect for a tiny innocent. Not too austere or pompous. Yes, that will do.”
Something seemed perfectly right about lying in Flynn’s arms, even though the reason was tragic. She closed her eyes, savoring the momentary tranquility. She’d been married twice, yet this was the first time she’d fall asleep encompassed in a man’s arms.
God let me sleep for a time and rest in blessed forgetfulness.
As she drifted into slumber, Flynn pressed his lips to her hair. “I’ve already spoken with Reverend Wallace. Once you’re better, we can move forward with the annulment.”
Chapter 17
Flynn’s thoughts clanged around in his head as he paced Reverend Wallace’s office. “So, is an annulment possible?”
“Are ye certain an annulment’s what ye be wanting, yer lordship?” The reverend scratched his nose, his keen gaze peering deep into Flynn’s soul. “Seems to me, ye be mighty attached to that lovely lass, even if the bairn wasn’t yers.”
There’d been no way to keep that particular a secret. Not with Devaux-Rousset in residence. Flynn used discretion with whom he shared the truth, and as for those he hadn’t taken into his confidence, well, he didn’t give a blacksmith’s damn what they thought.
“It’s her happiness I’m concerned with.” He slapped his hat against his thigh.
Angelina’s happiness above all else.
“We wed so my father’s gaming debt would be cancelled, saving me and my family from social and financial ruin.” He paced the short distance from the cleric’s well-used desk to the door of the holy man’s office. “And, so Angelina wouldn’t have to carry the shame of bearing a child outside of wedlock.”
Reverend Wallace balanced his rickety chair onto two legs, folding his hands atop his ample girth. The chair groaned and creaked.
Flynn feared the hefty man of God might topple backward at any moment.
“I’d say that be most unselfish of ye both.”
“Hardly,” Flynn scoffed, planting his hands on his hips.
“At point non plus, we selected the best solution to two wholly undesirable situations. We know precisely what we agreed to and selflessness didn’t figure into the equation. Ours is a business arrangement—a matter of convenience.”
That wasn’t altogether true. Protecting his family had motivated him.
Angelina had acted to safeguard her baby.
He supposed some might call that noble. He definitely hadn’t planned on developing an attachment to her this early on. Perhaps after a few months, but a dab beyond a week?
Preposterous.
Yet, he had. And considerably more than a simple attachment.
He loved her.
In any event, it mattered not. He relaxed a shoulder against the diminutive window overlooking the church’s graveyard. Three chickens scratched and pecked at the weeds amongst the dirt.
“She thought she was married to the child’s father.”
Why did he offer up that morsel?
He knew perfectly well why. He didn’t want the rector to think poorly of Angelina.
“Ah, I see.” The cleric resumed his calm regard. His silence hung heavy and reproachful in the minute office.
Flynn quirked the corner of his mouth as a scruffy kitten crept up on one of the unsuspecting hens.
“You advised yourself, Reverend, our best hope of acquiring an annulment is now, when there are witnesses who can swear that the marriage hasn’t been consummated.”
He turned from the window and considered the clergyman for an extended moment.
“True. The longer ye wait to begin proceedings, the harder it be to attain one.” Reverend Wallace seemed intent on scraping a bit of something from beneath a thumbnail before studiously examining his other fingers.
“Have ye considered where Lady Bretheridge will live in the meantime?” He tugged his earlobe. “She canna very well reside with ye. If she stays here, and ye return to England, I can attest to separate residences. In fact, that would strengthen her plea for an annulment, if ye abandon her.”
Leaning his elbows on the desk, he clasped his hands together, almost challenging Flynn.
Abandon? Bloody hell.
Flynn returned his attention to the chickens poking about. The kitten pounced and missed. The intended target squawked her outrage, charging after the diminutive ball of fluff.
“I thought I’d let her decide . . .” He shrugged a shoulder.
Angelina deserved some joy.
Waterford would protest, no doubt. Given the babe’s death, the lo
ut had as much leverage as a strand of wet straw in manure.
In the days since Angelina lost her son, Flynn had written Fleming, sending along the letter bearing the witnesses’ signatures Waterford had mandated.
The duke promptly signed the settlement contract. He gave it to Fleming who trotted off to Flynn’s man of business in London.
Triumph and Treasure (Highland Heather Romancing a Scot Series Book 1) Page 21
