Sleeping with the Enemy: Lords of Lancashire, Book 4

by Barbosa, Jackie

  “Fine,” she reassured him. “My back is a little sore, that is all.”

  Freddie Pearce, who was sitting on a nearby chaise inspecting the dainty pistol her husband had gifted her, looked up sharply. “Your back?” she repeated with a decidedly ominous note in her voice.

  All adult conversation in the room ground to a halt, although the children’s voices continued unabated.

  Laura waved her hand dismissively. “It comes and goes. I assure you, I am perfectly well.”

  “Did you say it comes and goes?” Sabine asked from near the doorway. She had excused herself some minutes ago to put Claudia, her four-month-old, down for a nap and had apparently returned just in time to overhear the beginning of the conversation.

  Tish, whose back had been turned because she was busy overseeing Eugenie’s efforts to button up a new pair of elbow-length white satin gloves, spun around and declared, “You can be perfectly well, my dear, and still be in labor.”

  “Labor?” Laura sputtered. “What? No, don’t be absurd!” She had been in labor before. Granted, that had been almost eighteen years ago, but she remembered quite well that the pains had been…

  Oh.

  Yes, when the contractions had truly become strong and sustained, they had been concentrated in her abdomen, but at first, she had mostly just felt an occasional twinge in her back. Unaware of the significance, she’d ignored the discomfort and gone about her business, which back then had meant washing the dishes from luncheon and starting on dinner.

  Sabine smiled sympathetically as she saw comprehension dawn on Laura’s face. “It may be some time before things get started in earnest, but I’d say we will have a new member of the family by morning.”

  Laura shook her head. “No. It must be a false alarm. Sh—” Breaking off because only she and Geoffrey knew about her intuition that the baby was a girl, she started over. “I am not due for another week at least.”

  She looked at her husband for confirmation of this obvious fact, but he was staring down at her wide-eyed and open-mouthed. No help at all there.

  “Babies come when they please,” Freddie announced triumphantly. She glanced over at her husband and added, “Even in the middle of snowstorms that keep the midwife from arriving in time to do the catching.”

  Conrad flashed her a knowing grin, but then, seeing Geoffrey had gone more than a trifle pale, said, “But fortunately, it is clear as the proverbial bell today without a flurry in sight.” Stepping to Geoffrey’s side, Conrad put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and added, “Steady on, man. It’s likely to be hours yet.”

  The last few adult exchanges seemed to have penetrated the aural cavities of the younger members of the family, for a palpable hush fell over the room which was pierced, a few seconds later, by a disgusted exclamation of, “Babies! I hate babies,” from four-year-old Jasper Pearce.

  Thomas rushed to scoop the boy up off the floor. “You do not hate babies,” he told his son sternly, but his twitching lips indicated he was having trouble keeping himself from laughing.

  “Babies?” squealed another child—one of the younger girls, though Laura couldn’t distinguish between them, as there were five between the ages of seven and ten in attendance.

  “Just one, I hope,” Laura muttered at the same time Artemisia said, “Just one baby, I’m sure, Annabelle. But it seems you may have a new cousin very soon.”

  A chorus of oohs arose from the girls, most of whom had received baby dolls as their gifts.

  Louder, Laura said, “This may be a false alarm.” Please, let it be a false alarm. I want to eat at least something for dinner!

  Tish shook her head. “I don’t think so, my dear.” Turning to her husband, she said, “You had best send one of the footmen to fetch the midwife. We don’t want Conrad delivering another baby because we waited too long.”

  “Now see here,” Conrad objected with feigned outrage, “Duncan’s head was hardly dented at all when I dropped him. And it’s perfectly round now.”

  “Papa!” the aforementioned boy, who was perhaps twelve or thirteen, whined. “Stop telling people you dropped me when I was born. You didn’t.”

  “You’re right,” Freddie said soothingly to the younger of her two sons. “Your father more than rose to occasion. Conrad, you oughtn’t tease the boy.”

  “Still,” Tish interjected, “I think Laura would be happier with a midwife in attendance than Conrad. To say nothing of Geoffrey.”

  Chuckling and nodding, Nash crossed the room to pull the bell that would summon the butler.

  “Really,” Laura protested, “I am sure it will be hours bef—” And then she felt a sudden warm gush of liquid between her thighs.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Geoffrey paced the floor of Nash’s library, desperately trying to wear out his worry and impatience. For the hundredth time since the women had bundled Laura upstairs to await the midwife’s arrival, he looked up at the ceiling and asked no one in particular, “What could be taking so long?”

  The four men in the room looked at him and shook their heads in amused sympathy. “It hasn’t been very long at all,” Thomas said gently. “Not even five hours yet.”

  It seemed like an eternity.

  Nash sighed in agreement. “Every one of my children took more than twelve hours to arrive. It’s devilish difficult to wait, though.”

  “I don’t know why they insist in keeping fathers away from their own children’s births,” Walter said musingly. “You were there for the enjoyable part of the process, after all.”

  “I have been there,” Conrad pointed out with a snort. “I was terrified and completely unprepared.”

  “But you managed. And Freddie told me she insisted you be there when Honora was born because she knew you wouldn’t want to miss it.”

  “Well, it seemed silly to keep me out after I’d delivered Duncan, didn’t it? But this is Geoffrey’s first. He might be shocked or outraged.”

  Geoffrey laughed bitterly. “You think being there for the birth of my child would permanently damage me? You have some inkling of what I’ve seen in twenty-five years as a soldier, don’t you?”

  “Just so,” said Walter, slapping his palm against the arm of his chair, “isn’t it ironic that in this one sphere, we are meant to be weaker sex who simply cannot handle hardship or pain? Someday, I predict both men and women will come to their senses, and fathers will be in the birth room as a matter of course.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Thomas grumbled. “You got all your children the easy, painless way.”

  “There is nothing easy or painless about going from having no children to having seven within a week. But you are right that I have no experience with suffering through the uncertainty of my wife giving birth. Though, as a vicar, I have spent rather more time than any of you in the company of other men who were.”

  Geoffrey had completed several more circuits of the library while his brothers and friends argued amiably. Now he stopped in the middle of the room and cocked his head to one side, listening. No, he wasn’t mistaken. Someone was definitely coming down the main staircase. In a hurry.

  Rushing to the door, he flung it open, which brought him face to startled face with his sister, Freddie.

  “Oh,” they both said, more or less in unison.

  “What is—” Geoffrey began.

  “Laura wants—” Freddie started.

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  “You first,” Geoffrey said.

  “Laura wants you to come upstairs,” she said, a bit breathless.

  His brow knitted in confusion. “So the baby is here?”

  Freddie shook her head. “No, but soon will be. Laura wants you with her.”

  Geoffrey glanced at each of the four men in the room. Every one of them gave him a look of both puzzlement and encouragement. “But I thought…”

  “That you’d have to wait until the babe was born,” his sister finished for him. “But Laura decided she wants you
to be there, and if you don’t hurry, you will miss it.” Grabbing him by the elbow, she pulled him toward the hallway.

  And that was how Geoffrey came to sitting beside his wife, holding her hand and mopping her forehead with a cool towel when she gave the final, arduous push that brought their child into the world. There was a long second of silence, and then the sweet cry of the newborn’s first breath.

  As the midwife expertly cut the cord and swaddled the infant, she announced, “’Tis a girl, sir.”

  “Told you so,” Laura said, tired but smug.

  “I never once doubted you.” He kissed her cheek. “But you did have a fifty percent chance of being right.”

  Laura rolled her eyes and gave him a weak punch in the biceps, then held out her arms as the midwife transferred the baby into her arms.

  She was tiny, his daughter. He had seen babies before, of course, but never one just seconds old. Her skin was pale and slightly mottled, and her eyes were scarcely more than slits so their color would be impossible to guess at. Wrapped as she was, he could not see her hair, either, though he had glimpsed a few dark curls on the top of her head before it had been covered.

  His heart expanded like a balloon, so filled with emotion he feared it would burst. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen—except, perhaps, his wife. He had thought himself blessed beyond measure already. He had been wrong.

  “What will you name her?” the midwife asked.

  He and Laura had discussed names before, of course. They had decided, however, to wait until the child was born to choose the right name for this child. But the name that came to his head now was one they’d never considered. It was, however, the right name.

  “Grace,” he said hoarsely. “We will call her Grace.”

  Epilogue

  Plattsburgh, New York – May, 1818

  Gravel crunched in the narrow drive that fronted the newly completed house. Built in the federal style of whitewashed brick, the door and windows stood open to allow the fresh spring breeze to blow through the rooms, which still smelled faintly of paint and varnish.

  “Papa!” Grace Elizabeth Langston shouted at the sound, jumping up from the floor where she had been playing with her rag doll and bolting toward the front door.

  Laura dropped her sewing into the basket and leaped from her chair to chase her daughter. The carriage pulling to a halt outside probably had Geoffrey inside it, but if it was someone else coming to call, there was likely to be a scene when the child realized her beloved papa wasn’t yet home from his trip to Albany. Catching the little girl round the waist just before she reached the doorway, Laura lifted the curly-headed cherub into her arms and walked out onto the porch.

  The plain black carriage was, as she expected, a hired vehicle, and the driver tipped his hat to her in greeting as he pulled the horses to a halt.

  She waved back at the young Black man. “How are you today, Mr. Carver?”

  “Well as water,” he replied with a jovial wink.

  Grace squirmed in an effort to escape. “Papa!”

  “Yes, Miss Grace,” Carver said with a grin, “I’ve got your papa for you.”

  The carriage door opened, and Geoffrey emerged head first, the bright sunlight glinting off his hair as he descended.

  That was all Grace could bear. She pushed with chubby hands to be freed, and with a sigh, Laura lowered her to the ground. The little girl dashed with astonishing speed for such a small child and barreled into her father’s legs. Ruffling her hair, Geoffrey swung his daughter up into his arms and then turned to retrieve his hat and valise from the interior of the carriage. The hat he placed on Grace’s head, to comic effect, and setting the child off in a fit of giggles as the brim fell over her eyes.

  After thanking and tipping Carver, Geoffrey climbed the stairs and bent to kiss Laura. “It’s good to be home.”

  “It is good to have you home. That one—” she nodded meaningfully at their daughter, “—refused to sleep while you were gone.”

  “Is that so?” He gave his daughter a stern look, which sent her into another burst of high-pitched laughter. Sighing, he shook his head. “She knows me too well.”

  As they walked into the sitting room, still sparsely furnished, as not all the items they had ordered to be made were finished yet, Laura asked, “How did it go?”

  Geoffrey removed the hat from his daughter’s head and set it on an end table. “We have a contract with the state that ensures us preferred access to the canals once they open, although no one will commit to exactly when that will happen. My guess is the Champlain Canal will be done before Erie, likely in ’22 or ’23.”

  “That will be soon enough. Our orchards won’t even be producing for another five years.”

  Upon returning to New York, she and Geoffrey had purchased the land adjacent to the Farnsworth farm that Laura had always hoped one day to acquire. At the same time, Joseph and his new wife, Amalie, had bought an existing orchard whose owner had died without heirs. Eventually, they would use the apples produced by all three farms to make cider with a new, larger press that would be installed in the original Farnsworth cidery, thereby reducing the equipment cost to the maintenance of only one machine. And once the canals opened, they would purchase barges and start their own shipping business, transporting not only their own ciders but other goods produced by local farmers and manufacturers. All in all, FLR Enterprises—short for Farnsworth, Langston, and Robinson—seemed to be getting off to a good start.

  Although her life now was a far cry from the opulence and leisure she had experienced during the fourteen months they’d been in England, Laura still marveled at how much her circumstances had changed. Not only did she now had a brand-new house with five servants—including a cook, a luxury she could not have dreamed of before—and a newly planted orchard with still more hired hands to tend it, but she had a husband and a daughter to love and cherish. She was still busy, of course, but now instead of working from dawn until dark, she had time for small amusements like playing with her daughter and reading the latest—and sadly, last—two books by A Lady, now identified as Miss Jane Austen, who had died the previous July. Sabine had sent the volume containing the author’s final two books as a Christmas gift. Laura was much enjoying them, though given Grace’s penchant for being everywhere and getting into everything, it was taking her rather longer than it ought to get through them.

  Leaving England and her new family and friends had been as difficult as she had expected, but hugging her son again had been worth the pain. Daniel had grown at least another inch and, alongside Joseph, had become an outspoken voice in the local abolition movement, which had succeeded along with other organizations throughout the state in achieving a legal end to slavery in New York…though not as quickly as any of them would have liked.

  But she still wondered, sometimes, whether her husband was as happy with their life in America as she was.

  “A penny for your thoughts.”

  She gave her husband a guarded look. “Do you regret it?”

  “Regret what?”

  “Leaving your home. Giving up your family and the life of leisure you could have had in England for…well, for a much less comfortable one.” The proceeds from the sale of Geoffrey’s commission would have been more than sufficient for them to have bought a house in town and lived there for the rest of their lives without raising their hands to work ever again. Instead, they had invested in purchasing the new apple orchard, planting it with saplings, and building this house. In another few years, they would be putting more of it into a new cider press and getting the shipping business off the ground.

  And Geoffrey had done all of it for her.

  Her husband crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. “Do you really believe I ever wanted to be an English gentleman? I spent twenty-five years avoiding that.”

  “True, but you did tell Daniel you had no interest in being a farmer,” she pointed out.

  Geoffrey shrugged. “That is true
enough. But you want to be one, and I want you to be happy. And from the moment I heard about the canals, the idea of starting a shipping business interested me. I am just as bad at being idle as you are, and there is so much in this country to do. To build. I honestly prefer it to England, however rough around the edges it may be.”

  “And knowing that you may never see your family again?”

  Shaking his head, he drew her into his arms. “The family I need to see is right here. I love my brothers and sister and my nieces and nephews, but I don’t need them like I need you. Or this rascal.”

  They both glanced down at their daughter, who had commandeered her father’s hat from the table he’d placed it on and was now using it as a makeshift carriage for her rag doll. Oh, dear.

  “My hat,” Geoffrey exclaimed with no mild consternation and released Laura so he could rescue the accessory from his daughter’s tender mercies. When the little girl protested, he grabbed one of his working hats from the stand near the front door to replace it.

  “It’s not as pwetty,” she said after examining it critically.

  “But you can keep it,” her father told her, and that seemed to satisfy her. He turned back to Laura. “Now, where were we?”

  Smiling up at him, she twined her arms around his neck. “Living happily ever after.”

  The End

  Also By Jackie Barbosa

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  The Lords of Lancashire Series

  The Lesson Plan

  Hot Under the Collar

  A Matter of Indiscretion