David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) (27 page)

“On board ship, when a storm hits, it’s the same. Nobody argues, grumbles, or complains about the cold coffee. The entire ship, officers, crew, and even passengers labor to the limit of their strength to bring the ship through safely. I’ve seen it with serious illness too. Have you done this before?”

This? Violated every principle of propriety because David had been the one to ask? “I have attended some lying-ins, though I would hardly call myself experienced.” Mama had been experienced though, and she’d discussed childbirth very frankly with a daughter who could also well have ended up as a vicar’s wife.

“Medically, it’s rarely complicated.” David’s grip on her hand grew painfully tight. “But, Letty?”

“Yes, my love?” Endearments were not going to help, but that one had slipped out, and David looked more pleased than surprised.

“I want you… I want you to look after Gwen, of course, and Douglas might need some tending as well, but most especially, I want you to promise me—”

The coach hit a rut, pitching David’s heavy frame into hers. He smelled of soap, wet wool, and worry. He righted himself slowly, as if mashing his body into Letty’s were a fine idea, one he parted with reluctantly.

“Look after
me
,” he said. “I haven’t done this since… for quite a while, and I care for these people. I would not be doing this, but the local midwife is a horror, and there is no one else to help.”

And thus, the nature of the real problem began to reveal itself.

“Why shouldn’t you be doing this?” Letty asked. “I’ve heard you rattling off nostrums and prescriptions. I’ve seen the number of medical manuscripts littering your desk, David. You are, whether you admit it or not, a trained physician with a thorough knowledge of surgery. What kind of looking after are you asking me to do?”

“Don’t let me kill anybody. Please God, don’t let me kill anybody.”

This was not a request so much as it was a prayer, and Letty was no angel to grant such a boon. She brought his knuckles to her lips and kissed his hand.

As if he
could
take a life. “I will not let you kill anybody, David. I will not.

“Thank you.”

Her calm, her confidence in him, seemed to buoy him somewhat, at least to the extent that when Douglas, the present Lord Amery, ushered them into his home, David could muster a semblance of good cheer.

“Thank God you’ve come,” Douglas said. “This has been going on since last night, and Guinevere is quite uncomfortable.” Given what Letty knew of his lordship’s personality, dear Guinevere had likely been shouting down the rafters in her “uncomfortableness.”

David shook Douglas’s hand then held it between both of his. “You know Mrs. Banks. She has relevant experience, and Gwen will be glad of another woman.”

“Mrs. Banks.” His lordship bowed and turned for the stairs, his manner suggesting Letty could have been a dancing bear and she would have received the same perfunctory courtesy. “Guinevere is in the guestchamber. She claims this is a spectacularly untidy business.”

David shot Letty an amused look, while a bewildered footman stood by. His lordship had forgotten to afford his guests time to remove their capes and hats, so they extricated themselves from their outer clothing as they climbed the steps.

“Exactly what time last night did Gwen start having contractions?” David asked.

“Approximately eleven minutes after midnight,” Douglas replied, as if failing to note the seconds involved a gross oversight on his part. “We’d just gone to sleep. She woke, and her belly was mounding up, but she wasn’t doing anything to make it mound up, and she couldn’t stop it from mounding up. She said this was the way Rose had started as well. I’m babbling.” He stopped outside a heavy oak door and closed worried blue eyes. “I don’t mind telling you, I am terrified.”

When David seemed not to have any rejoinder to this heartfelt confidence, Letty patted his lordship’s arm. “Her ladyship is too, while the child is merely impatient to be born. Trust Lord Fairly and your wife. These things happen literally every day, and you did go through it once before.”

Douglas peered at her, as if noticing her for the first time. “I did?”

“When you were born,” David supplied. “As did we all. Now, chin up, old man. You have a wife to reassure, and a birth to endure.”

The viscount knocked on the door, waited a moment, took a deep breath, then sauntered into the room, all appearances of fatigue and worry apparently left outside the door in anticipation of a trip to the rubbish heap.

“Guinevere?” he inquired pleasantly. “Haven’t you had this baby yet?”

***

Two miles beyond the Welbourne driveway, Letty was still ominously silent, having withdrawn in some way David loathed. She’d been all calm good cheer in the birthing room, her competence soothing David, Gwen, Douglas, and probably—once the lad had made his appearance—the baby.

A healthy, robust boy, thank the Deity.

“Are you relieved to be away from the happy family?” David asked, staring out the window on his side rather than study Letty’s impassive expression. They sat side by side, not touching.

“Relieved, though not because Lord and Lady Amery were in any way ungracious. I simply didn’t belong there, under normal circumstances. I am pleased, however.”

“Pleased?” Letty
did
belong with David’s friends, who had treated her with more warmth and appreciation than even the sentiment of the moment had required. She did not belong at his brothel.

“They love you so, David. They have worried over you, and not known how to be family for you. I am pleased to see you are not alone.”

Letty had come to his rescue, risked horrendous awkwardness, and subjected herself to a front-row seat at the most intimate, loving moment a family might share, and yet she was pleased for the man who had dragged her there.

“You don’t want me to be alone, as you are alone? No one to love you, to be family for you, to worry over you?” Seeing Letty with the new baby had done this to him, made him fierce and angry and determined—more determined.

“I am not alone,” Letty said wearily, “and please do not let us fight merely because we were together these past two days in a new way. I won’t trespass on that. You needn’t toss me off the property in anticipation.”

He wanted to marry her, not send her packing. “What are you talking about?”

She reached for the grab strap while the coach rounded a corner and David took her free hand in his.

“I saw you practicing medicine, sir. You were brilliant, with Guinevere and Douglas both. You managed to bring a child into the world without…”

“Yes…?” He’d managed to assist Gwen and Letty to bring a child into the world, which was miraculous enough.

“You never…
saw
Gwen,” Letty said, dropping her voice. “Intimately. You didn’t see her. You didn’t put your hands on her privy parts.”

“She and Douglas are modest.” Most mothers were modest when attended by a male physician, and Letty had been stunningly competent in the birthing room. “It was nothing of significance.”

“To her ladyship, it was very significant.” The coach was steady, but Letty kept hold of the grab strap. “When you’re expecting, the experienced mothers tell you not to worry about the indignities of birth. They want you to think that having strangers see you naked, in pain, afraid, and unable to control your body will mean nothing when you hold the child in your arms. Those women mean it kindly, but they lie.”

David didn’t interrupt her, because Letty bitterly resented this kindly lie, as, David suspected, many first-time mothers did.

“You don’t forget, David. You don’t forget a minute of it, not the smells, the sounds, the mess, the loss of privacy. Yes, the arrival of the child is special, but it’s too easy to tell a mother that she shouldn’t mind a bit of what happens to her just because there’s going to be a child. She does mind. She minds very much.”

For long silent minutes, David watched the damp, green countryside passing by; then, without looking at Letty, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. When Letty let go of the strap and snuggled up to his side, he rested his cheek against her hair, her rosy fragrance steadying him for the next words to be shared.

“I was so scared, Letty. So hopelessly, mindlessly scared.”

She cuddled closer.

“The last child I delivered,” he said very softly, “was my daughter. She came early, and neither mother nor child survived long. I’d arranged for the midwife, because my wife did not hold me or my training in great esteem—and I would not have chosen to attend her in any case—but the child arrived in the middle of a storm, another damned storm, and my wife’s buggy had overturned. I had no time to fetch help.”

Hadn’t had time even to sober up the mother before the poor little mite had come into a cold, difficult world. He’d had time to pray and curse and hold his daughter as she breathed her last.

“I am so sorry, David. So very, very sorry. I am sure, no matter who had attended your wife, no matter how skilled, the outcome would not have changed. Nobody could have done better for your wife and child, and your willingness to attend them made a difference to them both. I know it did. You did the best you could, and that is all anybody can ask of us.”

Those were the words he’d needed to hear for almost a decade:
Nobody
could
have
done
better
for
your
wife
and
child, and your willingness to attend them made a difference to them both.
To hear the words from Letty eased a knot in David’s chest and created a lightness where rage had been.

The lightness, he realized, was sorrow—simple, common, everyday sorrow that, while painful, was somehow an improvement over years of silent rage.

***

Letty had lost her virginity in the vicarage garden on a summer night when the full moon had provided illumination nearly as brilliant as day. The better to enjoy the moonlight, she’d chosen a bench under a leafy rose arbor, a spot out of sight of the vicarage windows.

In hindsight, she could admit that a young man with whom she’d flirted on occasion, and kissed twice previously, might have convinced himself she’d been waiting for him; except she hadn’t been.

She’d been waiting for years, for
life
, for something beyond a bucolic congregation that gathered in a stifling church in summer and a frigid church in winter, each season bringing a particular sort of stench to the service.

Wet wool and coal smoke for winter, sweat in summer, and mud and manure for the in-between seasons, when rain and hard work were present in equal abundance.

Her handsome curate had kissed her that night, too, and at first the kisses had been sweet, if flavored with summer ale. And then the kissing had become different, accompanied by a serpent-like tongue invading Letty’s mouth, and fumbling hands insinuated under her skirt.

She’d thought she’d been committing the sin of fornication; in truth, her sin had been stupidity.

These thoughts were on her mind as she and David returned to The Pleasure House, the name of the establishment feeling ironic. No pleasure dwelled in that house. Unhappiness, rather, lived at that address, with its housemates despair, weariness, and deceit.

David handed her down from his traveling coach and did not immediately climb back inside. He was going to escort her to the door, at least, which was kind of him.

“Musette and Etienne are out of charity with each other.” His tone suggested the children were squabbling again, though Musette’s shrieks struck Letty as particularly desperate.

“Etienne flirts with all the ladies, but Musette cannot abide that he also flirts with the footmen.” Because even the chefs must serve up misery to somebody at The Pleasure House.

David offered his arm as they walked under the porte cochere. The day was warm and still in the way brought on by the season’s first few blasts of real heat, heat that caught even the bugs and birds by surprise.

“Shall I have a word with him?”

“It can’t hurt.” If David intervened in this altercation, it would mean he came inside, which on this day, Letty needed him to do.

“You’re sad, Letty-love. Is it the baby?”

Yes, it was the baby, and that David would understand that and bring it up was a comfort. “The child will suffer in this life. His parents will love him, but he’ll suffer much.”

David ushered her into the back entrance of the house and kissed her cheek, which meant they could hear Etienne’s rapid French counterpoint to Musette’s screeching. Etienne claimed Musette was impossible, an irrational, stubborn little creature, and he washed his hands of her.

Letty’s father had called
her
stubborn, so had the curate. “This is not one of their usual spats.”

The rest of the house was quiet, the way children knew to be silent when Papa had come home stinking of gin and spoiling for violence.

“Musette Martinique Duvallier!” David called, leading Letty into the kitchen. “What can this riot and mayhem be about?”

He’d spoken French, which had the effect of silencing the combatants for a few instants. They both began to speak at once, with the guttural and percussive diction of the French when in a temper.