“Astrid,” Felicity began when Gareth had reluctantly left the room, “I suggest you get some rest. Dr. Mayhew won’t arrive until well after midnight, and Gareth is determined to keep me company. If this takes more than a few hours, somebody will have to spell Gareth with the bedside duties.”
“You want to be alone with your husband this evening,” Astrid concluded. “I think he would like that too, and I would not want the task of separating him from you. I will go, but I will sleep in my dress and expect to be wakened when the doctor gets here.”
And for all the prosaic, practical nature of their exchange, neither of them had raised the real issue: Dr. Mayhew might not be able to come, not with this snowstorm, and the village midwife might not be able to come either.
The next thing Astrid knew, Gareth was shaking her shoulder none too gently.
“For God’s sake, Astrid, wake up.”
If Gareth were in her bedroom in the dead of night, then matters were dire indeed.
“I’m awake,” Astrid muttered, sitting up. “Is the doctor here?” she asked, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.
“The damned doctor,” Gareth growled as he handed her a shawl, “is not coming. The roads are barely passable, and this storm has apparently provoked half of titled Society into whelping their little ladies and lordlings. Better yet, the damned midwife is apparently halfway to the South Downs, attending somebody or other’s ill-timed birth. Your sister needs you.”
“I’m on my way,” Astrid said, suppressing a shudder. She hurried from the room, Gareth following with his branch of candles. When she reached Felicity, her sister was in distress but hiding it as well as she could.
The room was hot and stuffy, Felicity’s forehead damp, and her hands clammy.
“Shall I open a window, Lissy?” Astrid asked in as normal a tone as she could muster.
“Please. And I need some water.”
“I’ll fetch it,” Gareth said, disappearing out the door.
“If he’d stood there two more seconds, I could have told him to bring a basin and towel,” Astrid muttered. “Let’s get you walking, shall we?”
“Yes. I’ve sweated all over the sheets, and I am sick of this bed, but, Astrid?”
“Yes?” Please no last wishes, not so soon. Not ever.
“Gareth is terrified. You must be patient with him.”
“I will be the soul of forbearance.” Provided Gareth was the soul of accommodation. “Now, are you having contractions?”
“They started around midnight, real contractions, not just twinges and grabs and pains, but my water still hasn’t broken.” Felicity paused beside the bed and drew in her breath on a hiss.
“How far apart are they?” Astrid asked, glancing at the mantel clock.
“Sometimes they are five minutes apart. Sometimes they pile up, one right after the other. This isn’t like having James or William, Astrid. It isn’t like them at all,” Felicity said, resuming a ponderous walk around the room.
“I suppose twins will be different,” Astrid observed, trying to mask a growing sense of distress. She’d attended a few births, and she’d read some treatises in preparation for the delivery of her baby, but compared to a doctor or midwife, she knew little.
And Gareth knew even less.
“I’m back,” Gareth said, “and I am not leaving this room for another fool’s errand, you two.”
“Fine, then you can walk with your wife while I change the bedsheets,” Astrid suggested. When she’d completed that task, Astrid tarried in the hallway, the load of sheets balled up before her. She’d been present at William’s birth, but so had Dr. Mayhew, and it hadn’t been snowing.
“I want my husband,” she informed the cold, dark corridor. She added the sheets to a growing pile of soiled linen, found a footman to deal with it, and sent up a prayer for her sister.
When Astrid returned to the bedroom, Felicity was looking tidier, but no more comfortable, and Gareth looked quietly panicked.
“Shall we get you back into bed, Felicity?”
“Not bed, please. I am already sick unto death of that bed, and labor has not yet begun in earnest. Let’s walk.”
So she walked.
She walked with her husband.
While he read to her, she walked with her sister.
She rested on the chaise lounge, and she walked a bit more. By dawn, Felicity was too tired to walk, and she reported that her feet ached as badly as her back. She’d had one period of strong, regular contractions, but they subsided as weak light suggested that somewhere beyond the snowstorm, the sun had gained the horizon.
And still, her water hadn’t broken.
Seventeen
“I miss Aunt Astrid.”
In Rose’s voice, Gwen heard the telltale whine of a child confined to the house for too long. “I miss her too, but eat your toast and eggs, poppet. If the snow lets up, we might make a snowman later today.”
Rose did not eat her toast. She kicked the rungs of her chair, sending an air of discontent wafting through the breakfast parlor. “Aunt Astrid likes snow. She would play with me in the snow if she were here.”
Across the table, Andrew stirred his tea. He’d put a piece of toast on his plate ten minutes ago, and it sat there, cold, unbuttered, not boasting even a smidgen of jam. That he was awake at such an hour was a testament to the way a storm could put one bodily at sixes and sevens.
“I miss her too,” Andrew said, surprising Gwen. He rarely came to the table anymore, rarely contributed to conversations. He shaved only often enough to avoid scaring Rose.
“You should go see her,” Rose said, plucking the toast from Andrew’s plate. “This needs butter and jam.”
Andrew stared at the child as if she’d spoken in Hottentot. Gwen wrested the toast from Rose, slathered both butter and preserves on it, then set it back on Andrew’s plate. “Don’t pester Cousin Andrew, Rose. The weather is dangerous, and I’m sure your aunt will be fine. You were born in the middle of a snowstorm, you know.”
The natural self-absorption of the young took over. “I was? Did it snow this much?”
“Almost, and your great-grandfather said it wasn’t unusual to have the first crop of lambs come during a good storm. Nobody stirs around much when the weather’s acting up, so the little ones can arrive safely.”
Across the table, Andrew paused with his teacup halfway to his mouth. He set it down untasted and rose to go to the window.
“You didn’t say excuse me,” Rose informed him. “Can I have your toast?”
“May I,” Gwen corrected. Something about Andrew’s posture was alert though, alert in a way she hadn’t seen since he’d sent Astrid away. The day was bleak, the kind of day when everything was hues of gray, white and frigid.
“Andrew, at least drink your tea.”
“Mama, you didn’t say please. Cousin Andrew should please at least drink his tea,” Rose instructed from around a mouthful of Cousin Andrew’s toast.
Andrew glanced over his shoulder, not at Gwen, but at Rose. “She was born during a snowstorm?”
Gwen nodded, the memory made vivid by the heavy snow blanketing the gardens beyond the window. “Grandfather was right, too, about the lambs. When a storm’s coming, it often provokes the livestock to bearing their young. It doesn’t make sense, what with the cold, but sometimes, it has to warm up to snow, you know? In that sense—”
Andrew was already headed for the door. “I’m going for a ride. If I don’t come back, assume I’m at Willowdale with my wife.”
About damned time. “I’ll fetch you a flask,” Gwen said, rising and following him. As she left the breakfast parlor, Gwen heard Rose scrambling down from her chair.
“Mama, you didn’t say excuse me either.”
***
Astrid’s concern mounted as the morning wore on, bo
th for Felicity, who was tiring markedly, and for Gareth, who was becoming equally exhausted. The close air of the birthing room reeked of sweat and desperation, and the servants had learned not to linger anywhere nearby.
“Heathgate,” Astrid interrupted his reading, “would you be good enough to order us a tea tray?” He went without protest, having taken on the post of drudge-at-large, likely because it allowed him to feel useful. As soon as he’d quit the room, Felicity sank back against the pillows on a sigh.
“Thank you,” she said in a low, tired voice. “Astrid, listen to me, please, because he’ll be right back in here in a moment, pacing and fussing. If things get bad, I want you to send for Andrew.”
Astrid swallowed past the lump of fear stuck in her throat—things were already bad—and opened the drapes enough to see that… she couldn’t see anything, save a white landscape as bleak as it was beautiful. “Why send for Andrew?”
“Gareth will need him if matters continue in the present vein,” Felicity said, fingers plucking at the counterpane. They’d graduated from the embroidered, monogrammed sheets to everyday sometime during the night. “I’m tiring, Astrid, and these children are not nearly close to being born. If anything should happen to me, Gareth will need his brother, but he won’t send for him if he thinks it would create awkwardness for you.”
Astrid left the drapes open, some daylight being better than none. “If anything happens to you, I will need Andrew. But you mustn’t think like this. Sometimes birthing takes its own time.”
“That might be true,” Felicity allowed, smoothing a hand over her belly, “but this birthing isn’t right somehow.”
Gareth came in, not bothering to knock. “What plots have you two been hatching?”
“I have been asking for Felicity’s permission to order you off to bed for a nap, but she won’t give it—yet.”
“Damned right she won’t. The tea tray will be up in a bit.”
He went to the window, the one that had periodically been opened to clear the air in the stifling room, the one that admitted such feeble light, and stared out into the pale gloom.
“Still snowing, and there’s at least a foot on the ground already. We haven’t had snow like this in several years, and now it won’t stop.”
“It will be beautiful,” Astrid asserted. “And the sun will come out, and these babies will be safely born. But right at this moment, I need to excuse myself, so both of you behave in my absence.”
She let herself out into the blessed cold corridor and collapsed against the wall, despair swamping her last reserves of strength.
I am going to have to send for Andrew and hope he can—and will—come here. Even if Astrid could get word to him, and even if he were inclined to come, Andrew would be risking his life to attempt to cover five miles in such a storm.
***
The horse was crazy. Andrew had no other explanation for the enthusiasm with which Magic trotted—actually trotted—down the driveway. Granted, the riding stock had been stall-bound for the past day, and some excess energy was likely to have accumulated, but Magic was churning through the snow like an exuberant colt.
The result for Andrew was a stinging headwind, but he knew better than to try to overpower the will of a horse intent on movement. Besides, they needed to make use of the daylight, or the journey would turn into a suicide mission after all.
Fortunately, the wind was working for them, sculpting drifts on one side of the road, while creating troughs on the other. This boon proved invaluable, and after the second mile, Magic had apparently fixed his internal compass on their destination. Traveling in this direction, they also cleared the longest stretches of open road first, when Magic had the most energy. The closer they got to Willowdale, the more thickly the trees bordered the road.
By the three-mile point, Magic was willing to proceed at a walk, and by four miles, he was down to a plodding crawl through a sea of white. In the saddle, Andrew had lost feeling in all of his extremities, and had begun to consider he might not ever see his wife, his brother, or his mother again.
When faced with the possibility of death, he found dying had no appeal.
None.
This conclusion hit him like the proverbial bolt from the blue when Magic took a misstep and plunged to his knees in nearly four feet of drifted snow. The horse was oddly still for a moment, and Andrew had a sick premonition his flighty, neurotic gelding was about to roll in the snow, complete with saddle and rider.
“Up,” he commanded quietly. Magic heaved himself to his feet and waited for the command to walk on.
In hindsight, Andrew acknowledged that his own fears had nearly drowned his common sense. Magic had merely been waiting for the command—patiently, obediently. The neuroses and insecurity resided with the rider.
But in that moment, when Andrew had contemplated three-quarter ton of horse rolling over his chilled bones, he’d felt a panicked desire to live, and live happily, if that were possible. And if it weren’t, he’d find a way to live contentedly and gratefully. Somewhere, he’d find the courage to face his demons and make peace with them.
The alternative, letting his fears and regrets submerge any hope of a decent future, certainly hadn’t borne useful fruit, he admitted as Magic began to move as if aware he was approaching a familiar stable. The horse kept to a walk, but it was an enthusiastic, businesslike walk that made short work of the remaining mile, despite the gathering wind, stinging snow, and miserable footing.
Andrew had to bang on the barn door and holler at length before old Bekins peeked out from the smaller door.
“Saint Scholastica’s bones, lad,” he exclaimed. “Get ye and that damned beastie in here!”
Magic, of course, had to shy and attempt a rear when the door rolled back before his eyes, but it was a tired, halfhearted display brought on by proximity to his former surroundings.
“None of that, you,” Andrew admonished. “You’ve done well thus far. I am inclined to let the lads spoil you rotten.”
Bekins shot a skeptical look at the horse. “You want me to look after the beast, then?”
“Look after him like the prince that he is, Bekins. He kept his head when I was losing mine, and comported himself like a perfect gentleman when any other horse would have tossed me into the nearest drift.”
“Master Andrew?” Bekins said, when Andrew would have left for the house. “Tell her ladyship we’re all pulling for her.”
Andrew had guessed rightly then. The shift in weather had brought on Felicity’s travail, and Andrew had arrived nearly too late to be of any use.
***
Gareth closed Mrs. Radcliffe’s novel, the heroine having once again been carted off to some unlikely location, there to languish and pray in hope of rescue. “I wouldn’t be eager for birth if this were the sort of drivel I could expect outside my mother’s womb.”
Felicity shot him a glare, while Astrid pushed away from the window and headed for the door. Even a potentially tragic birthing did not overcome some bodily necessities.
“I will leave your wife to your tender attentions, Gareth, but be warned, the pains are getting worse. I’ll be back shortly,” she said, closing the door softly behind her, knowing Gareth and Felicity wanted the privacy, and knowing—more to the point—Astrid’s nerves were frayed past endurance.
Her feet hurt, her back ached, her eyes were gritty with fatigue, and still, the wretched weather meant no help would be forthcoming. None.
The air in the corridor was cold enough that the chill penetrated Astrid’s clothing. She made her way to the kitchen, where she found not one soul, not even the pantry mouser, with whom to share her fears.
Astrid sank onto the hearth, no prayer occurring to her, save for a prayer that her husband might be faring better than she.
“My sister is going to die,” she whispered to the empty room. Dried herbs and limp
curtains obscured what little light might have penetrated from the window, and likely to conserve fuel, the hearth gave off only meager heat. The empty kitchen felt more like a crypt than the thriving center of a busy manor house.
“She’s weak, she’s made no progress for the entire night, none of the learned treatises have anything useful to impart, and I am no use to her at all.”
Worry was making Astrid sick, oppressing determination every bit as thoroughly as grief had once upon a time oppressed all hope of a happy future. “I want my mother.” Then more softly, “I want Andrew.”
Wanted him with an ache as great as any Felicity was enduring.
Astrid did not dare close her eyes, lest she fall asleep on that hearth. A commotion from the back hallway gave her the impetus to struggle to her feet, for the servants must not see that she’d lost heart.
“Halloo the house! Has everybody deserted their post because of a bit of snow?” That voice, the sardonic confidence of it, sent sunbeams of sheer gladness piercing the fatigue and worry darkening every corner of Astrid’s soul.
“Andrew. Thank God you are here.” Astrid was across the room and wrapped in his arms in an instant. Tears started, much to her horror, but Andrew only held her more snugly in his embrace, bringing with him the scents of damp wool, husband, and hope. He kept his arms around her, stroking her back gently, until she could muster her dignity.
“What could you be thinking?” She took his proffered handkerchief as he unbuttoned a cloak that still had snowflakes melting across the shoulders. “You must have been mad to attempt this weather. I could spank you, do you hear me? What are you doing here?”
“Thawing out, firstly,” he replied, finishing the process of removing his coat, hat, scarf, and gloves. “Where can we set these things so they’ll dry?”
Astrid bellowed for a footman from the servants’ hall to deal with the wet garments, then made a tray of hot tea, hot soup, fresh bread, and butter.
“Talk to me,” Andrew said, slapping butter on his bread. “And be blunt, as only you can be.”
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