Andrew: Lord of Despair (23 page)

“She has contractions, but they are not regular, and they haven’t started coming in any predictable pattern. She says it doesn’t feel right, and while I’m no expert, I have to agree. She’s in a lot of pain, very tired, and there’s little progress.”

Andrew polished off his tea in gulps and then started on Astrid’s. “Is the opening to her womb dilating?”

This went beyond blunt, and yet, that Andrew knew what to ask was an enormous relief. “Only a doctor would be able to determine that, and I am certainly not a doctor.”

“Has her water broken?”

“It has not,” Astrid replied, a hot blush creeping up her neck.

“That might be part of the problem. If you break her water, the whole business might get under way in earnest, though some think it can hasten infection.”

“And if I break her water, assuming I could figure out how to do that safely,” Astrid replied, “and that doesn’t get the whole business under way, might it not hurt the babies?”

“Astrid,” Andrew said gently, “you’ve likely read the same treatises I have nearly memorized. Labor might not be progressing because the babes are dead. Breaking Felicity’s water will not make them any more dead.”

Astrid sat back, breathing having become a challenge. “You mustn’t let Gareth hear you talk that way, and I can’t say I like it much myself.”

“Nor do I. You look exhausted. Why don’t you rest while I look in on Lissy?”

“I’ll rest later.” She didn’t want to let him out of her sight, and she didn’t want to rest while her sister’s life might be slipping away.

***

Andrew gave in to his tired, beautiful, gravid wife, and let her accompany him as he marched himself up to Felicity’s room. He knocked once, then let himself in.

The stench nearly gagged him.

Felicity lay in the big bed, her great belly mounding up under her nightgown. The room was hot, the air foul. Gareth sat by the side of the bed, holding his wife’s hand. While Andrew stood just inside the door, Astrid slipped her hand into his, and despite the heat, Astrid’s fingers were cold.

This wasn’t the reception Andrew had expected, not by a long, wide shot, but Andrew squeezed her fingers gently. Hope lanced through him, hot, light, and irrepressible. He savored it as he held his wife’s hand, then tamped it down to be examined later, when less trying circumstances might reveal it for folly.

“Andrew,” Gareth said quietly. “I suppose Astrid sent for you.” His voice was devoid of emotion, but his face told a tale of exhaustion, bewilderment, and grief.

The staff would be of no help, it being rare for servants to marry, much less marry, have children, and know enough of childbirth to be of use in this situation. Hence, Gareth’s unwillingness to abide by convention and leave Astrid to contend with Felicity on her own.

“I was about to send for Andrew,” Felicity said, her voice scratchy with fatigue. “For Astrid,” she clarified.

She was conscious, at least, and that counted for something.

“I’m here now, Felicity,” Andrew said, “and I see there is much to be done, so let’s be about it, shall we?” He slipped his hand from his wife’s grasp and approached the bed.

“
Don’t you touch her
,” Gareth snarled.

“Gareth…” Felicity chided quietly.

“He’ll hurt you if he touches you,” Gareth said, not taking his eyes off his brother.

“And you will hurt her if you insist she continue to lie in those soiled sheets,” Andrew shot back. “Her own mother did not die in childbirth, you know. That poor lady died of the ensuing infection caused, no doubt, by the unclean conditions of the birthing chamber.”

“I tried to tell him that,” Astrid murmured. “We have to keep things clean here, but he doesn’t want Felicity to have to move.”

“What is the damned point?” Gareth bit out.

“The point,” Andrew said gently, “is that your wife would be safer and more comfortable if you would let us see to her hygiene. Astrid, open the window, please, would you?”

Astrid hopped to comply, and then stood by the window, her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at Gareth like a particularly determined female terrier might regard a tomcat.

Heedless of his brother’s scowl, Andrew came around to the far side of Felicity’s bed and propped a hip on the mattress. Her lovely face was drawn in exhaustion and pain; her hair was matted to her temples. Her complexion was worse than pale.

“Felicity, do I have your permission to try to help here?” Andrew said, taking her free hand. “You should not lie in these damp sheets, breathing this nasty air, and allowing the situation to overwhelm your determination. But I will defer to your wishes.”

Andrew kissed her hand, but saw her glance over at Gareth, who was scowling down at her from the other side of the bed.

“I am not asking Heathgate,” Andrew said gently. “His fatigue and his love for you have put him beyond reason.” His grief, too, which Andrew did not dare mention.

“And he can still hear you perfectly well,” Gareth said, turning his back on his wife to sit on the bed near her hip. “Help Felicity if she will allow it, but I will not leave her.”

Felicity reached out a hand to touch her husband’s back. “Gareth…”

He turned to face her. “I won’t leave you. I cannot. Not this time.”

“You can,” Felicity said, holding his gaze. “I need to talk to Andrew and Astrid for a moment in private, Gareth, just for a moment.”

The look he sent Andrew promised slow, painful death to any who troubled his wife, but he kissed her hand and left the room.

Felicity closed her eyes and sighed, whether in relief or despair, Andrew could not tell. “Talk to me, Andrew,” she said, her voice holding a spark of determination. “Tell me what you’re contemplating.”

“Astrid is expecting, and thus I’ve made it my business to read every medical treatise I could find in French, English, Italian, Latin, or German on the subject of childbirth. I’ve talked at length to Fairly on the same subject, and even discussed this scenario exactly.” An awkward, fraught, frankly frightening discussion, though Fairly managed it with brisk applications of Latin and a few peculiar sketches.

“The first thing I’d like to do is investigate the positioning of the babies. If they are not lying properly, then the solution might be easy, if a bit uncomfortable to effect. Prior to that, we need to get you cleaned up.”

He gave directions to Astrid regarding the latter necessity, and left the sisters in privacy to see to it. When he exited the room, he was surprised to see Gareth slumped against the wall, sitting on the floor, fast asleep.

Thank ye gods. Andrew fetched a blanket from a spare bedroom to drape over his somnolent brother, and went in search of the housekeeper. When he returned, he brought clean sheets, clean towels, and two empty buckets.

“Gareth has been gone for some time,” Felicity said, her gaze on the cracked window. A sliver of cool, fresh air eddied around the room, and the fire danced higher in the hearth as a result.

“Your husband, God bless him, has fallen asleep at your threshold,” Andrew said, setting down his burdens. “I propose we leave him there for now.”

“My husband will not thank you—”

“Felicity,” Astrid interrupted. “Gareth would not let me open the window, for pity’s sake. He isn’t thinking clearly, and he needs rest.”

And Gareth shouldn’t be in the damned birthing room in any case, while Andrew felt… as if this were the one place he should be.

“You need to know, Andrew,” Felicity said, “my body has given up. I haven’t had a strong contraction for more than an hour, and my lower back is one unending ache. I have made my peace with the probable outcome here.”

Had he ever been that brave? No, he had not. Not yet.

Andrew did his best impersonation of the Marquess of Heathgate in a royal taking. “Then shame on you, because what you call making your peace, I call giving up, and I won’t allow it. You may be quite sanguine about the notion of seeing your babies in heaven, but you would leave me on earth to contend with my grieving brother, and that is a task I will not take on willingly.”

He left her to ponder that, while he explained to Astrid what needed to be done.

“We are going to turn a baby? You and I, who have little in the way of medical training or experience?” She leaned against him then, and he savored the trust of it. “I cannot do this, but I shall do it, regardless.”

Perhaps they’d adopt that as their family motto. “That’s my lady. Get out of your gown, put on a clean shift, and scrub your hands with lye soap.”

“I can do that.”

“I am going to fetch more hot water, so be quick about it.” Because Astrid was as much in need of rest as Gareth or Felicity, and the babies needed to be born sooner rather than later.

Andrew returned, bearing ten more gallons of hot water and sheets that had been recently washed and bleached. He spread a sheet on the birthing stool with a thickness of towels underneath.

“Time to get busy, Lady Heathgate. Up you go, and all that.”

Moving Felicity from the bed to the birthing stool took considerable effort. The slightest change in position, and she was in agony, leaving Andrew and Astrid on either side of her to half carry, half walk her across the room. Just as she lowered herself to the stool, a contraction hit.

“It appears,” she gasped, “they aren’t quite done yet.”

“No,” Andrew said, “and that is very encouraging.” He took most of her weight in his arms as she carefully lowered herself to sitting. “And now we have to see if the babies need to be turned.”

One baby did need to be turned, exactly like one of Andrew’s small namesakes in northern Italy. The process was uncomfortable, so uncomfortable, Felicity passed from consciousness, and that was probably all that allowed Andrew and Astrid to align matters properly.

Astrid sat back on her stool, surveying her sister’s pale face. “Andrew, I think we did it… The baby has moved.”

Andrew eased his grip on Felicity’s belly, expelling a breath he’d been holding for far too long.

“Good work, Astrid,” he said, offering an encouraging smile. “I suspect there are children to be born here very shortly.”

“Hurts,” Felicity said, opening her eyes moments later.

“Yes.” It hurt Andrew’s heart to see such suffering and courage, hurt him to think of his brother exhausted in the hallway, hurt him to know Astrid was dealing with all of this, when her own time wasn’t far off.

“You moved the babies,” Felicity said, frowning.

“You can tell?”

“Oh yes, I can tell. Holy smiling Jesus, Andrew…”

Before that contraction had passed, her fingernails had dug crescents into the back of his hand.

“This is right,” Felicity said wonderingly when the pain had passed. A smile bloomed on her tired face. “Oh, Andrew, this is right. This is like when James was born. It feels like the pain is pushing the babies
down
. I want to push the babies down.”

“Fairly said you might,” Andrew replied. “Is it time to summon the nursery maid?”

“Yes, please. And open the window more. I need air. The babies need air.”

When Astrid was in position to assist with the next contraction, Andrew went out into the hallway, sent a footman trotting for the nursery maid, and squatted beside his sleeping brother.

“Gareth.” He shook him by one muscular shoulder. “Heathgate…” Then more loudly, “
Brother…
”

Gareth’s eyes flew open, and Andrew could see the moment when reality intruded on waking awareness. “My wife?”

“Is busy right now, delivering your children. She’ll soon be asking for you.” Andrew stood and extended a hand to his brother.

Gareth let Andrew pull him to his feet, but stood as if dazed. Andrew turned him by the shoulders toward the master bedroom. “Tidy up, Heathgate, and pull yourself together. You will soon be introducing yourself to my newest nieces or nephews.”

He gave his brother a small push, then watched as Gareth squared his shoulders and marched off in the direction of clean clothes, a hair brush, and a few minutes of privacy in which to compose himself.

Felicity was far from out of the woods. She’d lost blood, and infection was always an issue. But she and Gareth had both been spared the awful choices Fairly had described, and for that Andrew would always be grateful.

And gratitude was something he hadn’t felt in any unreserved sense for almost half of his life, though it flooded every corner of his heart now.

“Gareth, wake up.” A voice at Gareth’s ear roused him from the daze he’d been in, for he’d refused to let sleep claim him again. His hand remained wrapped around Felicity’s fingers, his face pressed to her shoulder.

Her chest still rose and fell with slow, shallow breaths.

“She’s asleep,” Astrid said, “and you need to rest as well, or you’ll be no use to either her or those children.” Astrid’s voice was gentle, a light of compassion and sorrow in her eyes.

Gareth scorned Astrid’s forgiveness, and he would not tolerate any from his wife, for he had been
no
use
to Felicity. No use at all.

“I love her too,” Astrid reminded him. And he heard what she mercifully hadn’t said: I need to say good-bye to my sister, just as you need to say good-bye to your wife.

After the hell of the past twenty-four hours, he owed Astrid that much. “I will be back.”

He rose from the bed, feeling aged and hopeless at the sight of his sleeping wife, so pale, but at least at peace. The emptiness that threatened him was beyond tears, beyond sorrow. Felicity had held on, and fought, and fought, finally bringing their children into the world. But she’d labored in vain for too long first, becoming dangerously exhausted and offering up too much of her life’s blood to bear their children.

He kissed Felicity’s cheek, then made himself walk away from the bed. When he gained the chilly corridor, the house was dark, the servants abed. A few candles had been left lit in sconces, but silence, cold and oppressive, pressed in from all sides.

He moved toward the stairs, thinking to walk out the front door and breathe in the cold night air. To perhaps keep walking, until he could walk no farther, breathe no further.

But someone sat near the top of the stairs, hunkered like a child intent on spying on grown-ups in the entryway below.

Andrew, waiting for him, with the patience and selflessness Andrew had shown him in years past. His brother, his friend, his entire surviving adult male family. The sight made Gareth even more sad, his heart more leaden. He got exactly one step past Andrew on the stairs before sinking down on the step below him, exhaustion and sorrow colluding to halt all progress toward the oblivion and darkness beyond the door below. Gareth wrapped his arms around his knees and bowed his head.

***

Andrew waited in the gloom, dreading to hear what his brother would tell him. The euphoria of having assisted with the birthing had faded as the nursery maids had scurried in to help Astrid with the new arrivals, and Andrew had been left alone in the dark to wait and pray.

“My dear wife,” Gareth began in a rusty whisper, “has given me…”

Gareth’s breathing hitched, and Andrew’s heart broke.

“She has given me,” Gareth went on, “two beautiful, fat, squalling babies. The younger, a daughter, we have named Joyce… in honor of my unworthy self…”

Another pause, while the silence of the house absorbed these quiet, desperate words.

“And a son, named Penwarren, in honor of the boy’s dear uncle… I am much concerned…”

Andrew waited, fearing to hear the worst, wishing he could spare his brother the words, knowing it was Andrew’s place, his burden, and his privilege to be the one Gareth spoke them to.

“I am much
afraid
,” Gareth corrected himself, “that my wife is soon to give her life, so I might have… our children… to love.”

He had pushed the words out, spoken so Andrew would know the terrible pain to befall the household, but he was still laboring to form more words. “Andrew…”

Andrew reached out, unable to let his brother grieve in isolation. He settled a hand on the back of Gareth’s neck, trying to communicate whatever paltry comfort his love for his brother might be.

“Andrew… if it hadn’t been for my selfish, thoughtless pleasures…”

“Hush. Just hush.” Andrew slipped his arm around Gareth’s shoulders while Gareth began to shake with silent, shuddering sobs. Andrew wrapped him tighter then, a fraternal presence the only rope he could throw to his weeping brother.

No words could comfort a sorrow as deep as this, a regret as deep as this. Andrew had lived with regret and sorrow for thirteen years, and he knew better than anybody the futility of comfort, the burden of despair, but he held on to his brother and hurt for him and cursed a God who would allow a man to love, then punish him for it so bitterly.

The heat that came from Gareth’s body enveloped Andrew. His brother’s weight at last grew heavy against his shoulder, and his body seemed to ease.

“Gareth, you love your wife, and she loves you.” Andrew’s chest constricted, for he’d nearly said: she
loved
you. Past tense. “She has no regrets, save that her health was not equal to this task. She does not blame you, and you must not blame yourself.”

“Ah, but I must,” Gareth said, easing away. He sat up, but he did not take himself from the circle of his brother’s arm. They sat thus, once again sharing grief.

“Listen to me,” Andrew began quietly, for now it was his burden and privilege to speak, while Gareth must listen. “The woman you love yet lives, and your children, thanks to her, live as well.”

Gareth shook his head, but Andrew hadn’t finished. He went on in a detached tone, but settled his arm more snugly around Gareth’s shoulders.

“I told you, not long ago, that when the accident occurred, I faced a decision.”

It was Andrew’s turn to pause, to gather the strength needed to push heavy, hurting realities into spoken words, and to labor those words into the darkness he shared with his brother.

“When the boat foundered, I faced a decision,” Andrew said. “I could throw the rope to either Mother or Father, but Father made that decision for me, at least.”

Another silence, laden with grief, pain, and despair.

“There were others in the water, however. Our uncle, our cousin, our grandfather… They were not close enough that I could have reached them. I am almost sure I could not have reached them.”

Andrew’s throat ached with dread, as if he could choke the words off at their source. Beside him, Gareth had gone still.

“Your fiancée, however, was within the range of my assistance, and screaming for help. Mother was swimming, while Julia had already begun to sink. I made a choice, Gareth, a deliberate, conscious choice to save Mother before Julia, to let Julia die, as it turned out, knowing…”

When Andrew was sure his brother would turn from him, Gareth shifted so he sat on the step above Andrew, and then Gareth’s arm came around Andrew’s shoulders.

“
She
carried
my
child, Gareth. Your fiancée carried my child
, and I let them both drown.” Andrew tried to turn from him, but Gareth wouldn’t allow it. He vised his arm around Andrew with a soft, bitter oath, and wouldn’t let go.

Andrew had thought himself beyond tears, beyond the ambit of regret and grief, but they rose up to drown him, just as surely as the sea had engulfed his unborn child. His body would not hold the despair inside him; there was neither air enough to breathe through the despair, nor light, nor love enough to heal it, and there never would be.

When he attempted again to escape his brother’s hold, Gareth let him go, but only far enough to sit up and fish out a handkerchief. Gareth’s arm stayed around his shoulders, and Andrew had the sense when Gareth withdrew that support, he, Andrew, would die. He would simply cease, collapsing from the weight of his guilt, weakness, and utter failing as a man, as a brother, a son, a father.

As a husband and a lover.

“I let the woman you were to marry, and my own child, die,” he repeated, contempt rising into his voice.

“I did hear you. I do not understand you.”

Gareth wanted to hear mitigating circumstances; that was why this companionable arm remained around Andrew’s shoulders, why the warmth of Gareth’s body still kept the chill and darkness of the night at bay. Andrew could offer no mitigation, but he could offer an explanation.

He needed to offer it, in fact.

“That summer, I was fifteen,” he said, struggling to reclaim an earlier tone of detachment. “Mother and Father marched me around to the usual series of house parties, in the hopes I might meet some of the fellows who would be in my form at university the next year. I found, to my surprise, I enjoyed these gatherings, because they were planned to allow the young people plenty of socializing. I polished my manners, and for the first time, the ladies—not the dairymaids and laundresses and more generous tavern wenches—but the ladies were susceptible to my flirting.”

“You were a lamb to slaughter,” Gareth bit out.

Andrew went on as if his brother hadn’t spoken.

“I began that summer as a virgin in the most literal sense. I met Julia and was delighted, delighted beyond my wildest dreams, to find she was willing to accommodate me in the loss of that burden. At twenty years of age, she was to me a sophisticated lady, and that she’d bestow her favors upon me, miraculous.

“Imagine my surprise, when that selfsame woman appeared with her parents at our family gathering in Scotland, claiming she was pregnant with our cousin Jeffrey’s child. Of course, she soon took me aside and explained it would be better for all were my son to be raised as the heir to the marquessate, and I, craven, witless, conscienceless coward that I am, said nothing. I
did
nothing, not when talk arose of wedding her to you, not when she let Jeffrey believe the child was his, not when Jeffrey protested that he could not be the father. There was never a man who behaved as dishonorably as I.”

Still, Andrew felt the weight of his brother’s arm around him, the quiet bulk of Gareth’s presence at his side.

Soon would come the stiffening in outrage, the drawing away in horror.

“Gareth, don’t you understand what I am telling you? I dishonored a young woman, allowed her to lie about whose child she carried, failed to take responsibility when she became your chosen bride, and then committed murder, with the result that my perfidy might go unnoticed.”

“You intended to leave Julia floundering in the water once you got Mother into the boat?”

“Of course not, but by then…” Nothing but frigid green-black water, towering waves, the roar of the wind, and wreckage in all directions. “I no longer knew where to throw the rope, and I have no memory of how Mother and I made it to shore.”

In contrast to the mayhem of Andrew’s memories, Gareth’s voice was calm. “For half your life, you have thought yourself a conscienceless, rutting coward who murdered his own unborn child?”

“For half my life, I have known the truth about myself,” Andrew replied. To say it though, and to Gareth, had made a curious change. Andrew could finally breathe. He could draw air all the way into his lungs in a manner that had slipped from his grasp so long ago, and so subtly, he hadn’t noticed.

“Adam told me,” Gareth said. “He told me that woman had been after him and every other man in the family, including our grandfather. Grandfather was not affronted by her behavior, Andrew, why should you have been? Why did neither Adam nor I, nor Grandfather, nor Father, for that matter, think to protect you from her?”

Shock went through Andrew, a physical sensation not unlike an electrical spark. The shock of revelation, of learning something so far outside his imagined universe, his very body had to react. “What… are… you… saying?”

So Gareth repeated himself, his voice more firm.

“She as much as offered to bed down with the old marquess, and did with you, probably with Jeffrey, and who knows how many others. She certainly made a play for Adam, and for me. Adam told me I ought to bring it up with you, since he suspected she’d gone after you as well, but I argued with him, bitterly, thinking Julia would not have preyed on a mere boy. She wasn’t right, somehow, wasn’t… natural.”

“She claimed Jeffrey had enticed her with promises of marriage, but she assured me the child was mine. Adam and I argued over your betrothal to her, but even then…” Andrew had not told his oldest brother the truth in the course of that protracted altercation, but Adam had apparently had his suspicions.

Suspicions that cast Andrew as a
victim
.

“Had she been with child, Brother, as often as she spread her legs, she could not possibly have given you that assurance.” Gareth gave Andrew’s shoulders a shake for emphasis. “She apparently tried that ruse with Jeffrey, among others that we know of.”

Andrew seized on the single word:
ruse
. “What ruse? What do you mean?”

“She was no more with child than I am.”

“But, Gareth, there she was, the waves dragging at her, screaming to save our child, begging me…” Andrew’s breath constricted again, and vertigo threatened.

“I am telling you,” Gareth said, shaking Andrew’s shoulders again, harder this time, “
there
was
no
child…
You did not murder your unborn child, you did not betray me, you did not commit murder. You made mistakes, Andrew, mistakes common to adolescents the world over. And no one, not your own father, not your brothers, not the head of our benighted family, made any attempt to protect you from them.”

The very irascibility of Gareth’s tone was as reassuring as the weight of his arm across Andrew’s shoulders, and yet, comprehension would not coalesce into acceptance. “I cannot understand this. I cannot get my mind to absorb this version of my history. I cannot.”

“There’s more,” Gareth said, “but it will keep. I cannot believe you lived with these lies and falsehoods for this long. I am sorry, Andrew. I am so sorry.”

The arm around Andrew’s shoulders became a hug then, a simple, affectionate embrace Andrew found he wanted never to end. His brain could not focus enough to sort out the ramifications of what his brother had shared with him, not yet. But his heart felt lighter, able to beat freely, unburdened save for the task of sustaining his own life.

Andrew loved his brother again; he simply loved him, openheartedly, joyously. It would take time for the guilt and shame to fade, but if he and Gareth had time, they could arrive to that.