Destiny's Kiss (16 page)

“No!” she gasped. “Not now! Not yet!”

She bit her lip as she slumped against the table. It could not be! The baby should not be born for months yet. It must not be born now.

Raising her head, she looked at the bedroom. “Philippe,” she whispered, knowing he could not hear her. “Philippe, please …” Her knees buckled beneath her. Wetness coursed down her legs as she collapsed into blackness.

Philippe was roused by the sound of suffering. Not his own, although his head ached viciously. Then whose?

“Lirienne?” he called, but his voice was barely more than a whisper.

There was no answer. Maybe it had been only the wind he had heard.

The moan came again.

That was not the wind.

He pushed himself to sit. Impossible. He crawled out of the bed, his sweaty clothes trying to bring the covers with him. Was Lirienne sick, too? Through his pain, he had been aware of her by the bed, placing those cool cloths on him. If she had sickened, he must tend to her.

He panted as he tried to rise to his hands and knees. That was impossible, too. Dragging himself toward the door, he called, “Lirienne?”

He cursed when he saw her lying on the floor. She writhed in obvious pain. He knew it too well. Somehow, he got to his feet and lurched to her. He knelt beside her, putting his fingers on her forehead. He frowned. She was not burning with fever.

If she had not been infected by his illness, then—?

“No!” he moaned when he saw the blood staining her dress. Had she been attacked? He lifted her head onto his lap, and her arms dropped as if all life had fled from her. Only the rapid rise and fall of her chest told him that she was alive.

Suddenly she stiffened, her fingers gripping his shirt. Agony twisted her face as she opened her glazed eyes.

“Who did this to you,
ma petite
?” he whispered.

“The baby … the baby …”

He choked back a curse. Philippe de Villeneuve had done this to her. Taken her from her loving family, married her, gotten her with child, then had become ill so she strained herself taking care of him.

“I'm sorry, Philippe.” Every word made her wince. “I know you wanted this baby. Forgive me, Philippe. I love you so much.”

“Don't speak. Save your strength to save our baby.”

She gave an almost unperceivable nod as she leaned her head against his chest again. Overwhelmed by her unquestioning trust and the love she should not be speaking of, he faltered. He could not carry her into the bedroom. He could not leave her. He needed help.

The door came open. “
Mon Dieu
!”

He looked up. “Goyette, help me! She's—”

Another man pushed past Goyette, who seemed frozen by the door. Beneath the cropped, white hair, the man's skin had bronzed to the color of rich mahogany. He stated in a German accent, “Dr. Eiler. Herr de Villeneuve?”

“Yes! My wife is losing our child. Help us.”

Dr. Eiler put a hand on Philippe's shoulder. “Will do what I can.”

He nodded as soon as he could puzzle out the words through the doctor's thick accent, looking back down at Lirienne's strained face to hide the horror at the thought of losing the baby … and Lirienne.

Afternoon was fading into evening while Philippe sat, listening for Lirienne's voice beneath the steady rumble of the midwife's, who spoke a bit more French than the doctor. Neither spoke English, and he understood very little German. Before he had rushed away to tend to his betrothed's funeral, Goyette had apologized, saying Dr. Eiler was the only doctor he could find in a city overwhelmed by yellow fever.

Philippe strained to hear what was happening in the bedroom. Why was Lirienne so silent? When Lucien's first mistress had given birth, her screams had been loud enough to be heard beyond the walls of the birthing room.

Lirienne made no sound.

He rose and paced. Back and forth, back and forth, from the hearth to the table. He ignored his weak legs.

Why was she making no sound?

He whirled as the door opened. “Lirienne?”

Frau Wirt motioned for him to come into the bedroom. Lurching past her, he nodded to Dr. Eiler, but looked at where Lirienne's inky hair was tangled on the pillow. In her eyes were remnants of her suffering. When they lowered, he closed his own. The baby must be dead. Pushing himself forward, he clasped her hand as he bent and kissed her cheek lightly.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, tears glittering like faceted jewels on her eyelashes.

“I know.” He did not release her hand. “Dr. Eiler, how soon will she be able to get up?”

Dr. Eiler said something which Frau Wirt translated, “He says very slow, Herr de Villeneuve.”

“We leave for our new home along the Susquehanna next week.”

Frau Wirt gasped, “You have lost the child. Want to kill her, too?”

“Of course not,” he retorted, wishing his brain were clearer. Nothing he said was coming out right. Taking a slow breath, he held it, then said, “Our whole future is invested in this trip.”

Lirienne put her other hand over Philippe's. Gazing up to see the strain lining his face, she whispered, “I will be able to go. I promise.”

“And I should be back to my usual intolerable self by then.”

She smiled. Nobody infuriated her as Philippe did, but no one else could make her smile as he did when everything was going wrong. He was not the perfect prince of a fairy tale. That man she had held in her heart for so many years, but she must banish that fantasy and learn more about this man who shared her life … for now.

The doctor mumbled as he turned away to repack his bag of herbs and evil-looking instruments. He motioned for Philippe to join him in the other room.

Clucking sympathetically, Frau Wirt came back to the bed and patted the covers. “Be careful, Frau de Villeneuve.”

“Careful?” she whispered through the flood of grief.

“You want child. Herr de Villeneuve wants child. You heal. Heal first.” She paused, and Lirienne knew she was searching for the right words in French. “Be in his arms, but not bed. One month, maybe two. Heal.”

“Philippe—”

“Dr. Eiler tells husband. Will be all right.” She smoothed the covers again. “Rest.”

Lirienne nodded as Frau Wirt bustled out of the room, closing the door. Leaning back, she recalled how a woman at the Fortiers' estate had lost a baby like this, then had been told she could never bear another. Would it happen to her?

She looked up when the door opened. Philippe staggered into the room. His face was as pale as her pillows. Not just from the illness, because his eyes were dim with the grief she had seen when he spoke of his brother. When she held out her arms, he drew her to him and held her as she wept for all they had lost.

Twelve

“
Mon Dieu
!”

At Philippe's gasp, Lirienne did not look out from beneath the canvas draped over the wagon. She noticed it had stopped, but all her attention was on the woman lying beside her.

“Push now, Jeanne. Push,” she whispered. Holding a blanket ready, she called, over the cackle of chickens in the crates on one side of the wagon, “Agathe, help her!”

With a scream that was as shrill as those of the beasts she had heard crying out in the forest on their trip north, the laboring woman struggled to obey. She moaned when the baby emerged. Smiling, Lirienne wrapped the newborn to keep it from getting cold on this chilly day. A pat brought a soft cry from the baby.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Agathe asked, peering over Jeanne Davignon's shoulder.

Lirienne smiled at Agathe Suchard, who was almost as round as Jeanne had been. The three of them were the only women who had come north to the settlement, because the others had remained behind in Philadelphia for the winter. “A boy.”

“A boy?” gasped Madame Davignon. “How wonderful!”

Placing the baby in his mother's arms, Lirienne blinked back tears. She so wanted to have a moment like this of her own when she held her beloved baby, but how could she when Philippe had not as much as kissed her since they'd started north along the Susquehanna?

“You must be jesting!” The hard voice pierced the canvas.

She recognized it as Monsieur Davignon's. The man was even more imperious than Philippe at his worst. With a wry grin at Agathe, who giggled, she slid off the back of the wagon to tell him he was the father of a thriving son.

“This is not what we were told would be waiting!” That distressed voice belonged to Yves Suchard, Agathe's older brother.

“It should be fine enough for you, even if I cared about your opinions.”

Lirienne came around the wagon to see Yves, who was only slightly taller and more round than his sister, glaring at Vachel de Talebot. Her eyes widened. The Suchards, who had purchased Percival Goyette's share when he'd decided not to come north after Veronique's death, had been servants on the de Talebots' grand estate east of Paris. Clearly Monsieur de Talebot did not intend to allow them to forget that.

Philippe stepped between the men. “Vachel, you cannot blame any of us for being shocked by this.” He flung out his hand.

She gasped as she looked beyond the men. Less than a dozen huts made of logs were set in neat precision along one side of the clearing. The chicken house on the Fortiers' estate had been grander. Then, as she took another step on the frozen grass, she realized each window had glass in it, and the doors were hung on brightly shining hinges. A chimney claimed one wall of each cottage.

Monsieur de Talebot snarled, “This is the best that could be done in such a short time. We needed to finish the Grande Maison for the queen and her family.” He pointed to a building that was twice as big as the others and was covered with clapboards. “If you wanted to have shelter when you arrived …” He shrugged.

Before the argument could begin again, Lirienne stepped forward and said, “Monsieur Davignon, your wife has been delivered of a healthy boy.”

“A boy?” His scowl became a grin as the other men began to congratulate him.

When Philippe glanced toward her, she saw the hunger in his gaze. Hunger for her or only for a son to claim his title after him? She did not care, for she yearned to be taken into his arms and led to ecstasy. The month that Frau Wirt had warned them to take care had passed, along with another, and still Philippe treated her with the kindness of a brother. Nothing more.

“Why don't you go inside while I start unloading the wagon?” he asked.

“Which one?”

He frowned as he looked at the log cabins. “I don't think it matters.”

Lirienne heard the fatigue in his voice. And discouragement, for this was not what he had envisioned. She understood, because she had hoped the houses here would be like the small clapboard ones they had seen in the villages on the way north. Glancing around, she saw the men staring in mute shock at the settlement.

She hurried to the back of the wagon and called, “Agathe, will you come with me?”

Nodding, Agathe climbed out of the wagon. Her mouth grew round as she looked about, but Lirienne did not give her a chance to speak. Taking her hand, she led her to the door of the first cottage.

She opened the door and said so her voice would carry to the appalled men, “Welcome, my friend, to
maison
de Villeneuve.”

Agathe giggled nervously as the others turned toward them. When Lirienne gave her a sharp jab with her elbow, Agathe said, “Th-thank you. I hope you will visit us soon at our house.”

“Which is where?”

Agathe's voice glowed with sudden joy. Whirling away, she grasped her brother's hand and ran to the next cabin. She laughed and said, “Right next door.” She threw her arms around Yves.

Philippe glanced at them and quickly away as he carried into the house a box that held the dishes they had purchased in Philadelphia. When Lirienne followed him inside, her breath caught as she saw the dismay on his face. They had paid for furniture to be waiting for them. A rickety table looked as if it had been dragged over the mountain trail. A bench and a single chair were the only other furniture in front of the fieldstone hearth. On the wall, a shelf looked as if it had been hung by a lopsided carpenter. Opening one of the two doors on the other walls, she saw a narrow bedroom with a bed set in front of a surprisingly wide window. The other door led to a lean-to and then into the yard, where a barn with no door stood.

“At least the floors are wood,” she said as she pulled off her cloak and hung it over the chair. They would need to get some pegs up soon. Going to the hearth, she smiled. “And someone laid a fire for us.”

“I'm sorry,
ma petite
.”

She laced the fingers of one hand through his. When he tensed at her touch, she did not let him draw away, pretending not to notice. Her other hand rose to his cheek. “Philippe, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

“This—”

“This is where we begin.” She smiled. “After all, how can things not get better from now on?”

A grin quirked his lips before they stiffened again. “I'll get the rest of our things.”

As she opened the box of dishes, she wondered what she had said wrong now.

Snow frosted the mountains, imprisoning the clouds in its icy grip. As the sunlight burned coldly into the morning, finger-thin spirals of woodsmoke filtered skyward from the cabins scattered along the curve of the river. It was a sight Lirienne had come to love.

She tossed a handful of corn to the chickens in front of the barn. With a shiver, she hurried back into the warm house. She could have been so happy in her new home, because it was hers and Philippe's. No parade of de Villeneuve ancestors had lived here. Her smile wavered as she saw the crumpled quilt and pillow on the wooden bench. Unless Philippe stopped sleeping alone near the hearth, no de Villeneuves would inherit this after them.

As she began breakfast, she wondered anew how he could be so animated when he was with Vachel de Talebot and so distant at home. The eggs sizzled in the cast-iron pan while the smell of coffee filled the room. Cutting two slices of bread, she put them in the skillet with the eggs. She pulled the pan, on its short legs, away from the fire so the food would not burn.