His Californian Countess (13 page)

Which was why Miriam Trimble smiled broadly and said, “How romantic and how good you are for him. I can see it already. I told him I thought he were sickening and should stay home. He wouldn’t be put off, though. A man on a mission, he was. It seems to have all worked out for the best.

“You would never have met had he listened. My heart aches that he was so frightened for Meara, though. And considering that his snake of a cousin showed up in the East lookin’ for him, ’tis glad I am he weren’t sick at home. I perish to think what might have happened if Alexander Reynolds had got it into his head to take advantage of Jamie when he was in a weakened condition.”

“His cousin Alex? But Jamie is so distressed over their rift. He blames himself for it.”

“Amber, luv, let me speak my mind. I don’t trust Alexander Reynolds. Never have. And I’m askin’ that you don’t tell Jamie he’s in America. There was always something sneaky about that one. As if he was sayin’ one thing and thinkin’ and doin’ another. I’m not tellin’ you what to think of him if he shows himself. For your sake and Jamie’s and Meara’s, though, you be careful of that one.”

Amber nodded. “I will. But I also know we cannot judge a man by the actions and character of his father.
My best friend married the son of a mine owner. He is as different from his father as night is from day.”

“Jamie don’t agree with me, either, but you mark my words,” Mimm said, “and be careful if you ever do meet up with him.”

“You must tell Jamie his cousin came looking for him. He will be so relieved.”

“I can’t. I sent him off on a bit of a wild-goose chase to New York City when I knew Jamie was on the clipper. Jamie will be so angry, but I didn’t dare let Alexander know Meara was all alone with just servants.”

“But you are more to Jamie than that.”

“I know that, but Mister Snooty Reynolds might not. I didn’t think it a wise chance to take. Now, what is it you wanted to talk about, lovie? I can see all is not well. What has you so troubled?”

This time a bit more haltingly, Amber tried to explain how she’d been feeling. The tiredness. Her tendency to end up in tears at the slightest provocation. Then she asked Mimm what to do other than see a doctor.

“Well, I think you
are
needing a doctor, but don’t worry so. ’Tisn’t anything time won’t cure on its own eventually—say in eight or nine months,” she added, her eyes sparkling with mirth.

Amber didn’t think she could stand feeling like this for…“Eight or nine months? You think I could be expecting? But I had my courses.”

“Don’t always matter.”

Excitement surged through her. A child? A child of her own? No, a child of hers and Jamie’s. Amber’s heart swelled and she blinked back tears.

“I’d say ’tis nearly certain.”

“I have to find out.” Amber sniffled. “How do I find
out for sure? I don’t know what doctor to trust here. You have no idea how awful the doctor was on that ship. I wouldn’t have asked him about a hangnail.”

Mimm chuckled. “Not to fear, lovie. I know exactly who you should see. Met him when last we were in San Francisco. About two years ago it was. Dr. Malcolm Campbell. I would imagine he would be glad to come here for the wife of a fellow classmate from Edinburgh. I will send for him at once and then you will have wonderful news for our Jamie.”

He’d said he wanted more children. Would this make her more important than Helena? Help her supplant the other woman in his mind? “Don’t tell him,” she said in a rush of anticipation. “It should come from me. He’ll be pleased, don’t you think? Oh, I do so hope he will.”

“Amber, take a breath. Did you see him with his Meara? The love in his eyes and she isn’t even—” Mimm took a breath “—the child of a woman he loved.”

As if I am? The woman Jamie loves is married to Brendan Kane and I can’t even tell him so.
Keeping Helena’s secret had become harder and harder.

“I’ll be back in a few moments,” Mimm was saying in her no-nonsense way as she bustled toward the door. “I’ll send a message and ask Dr. Campbell to come about eleven. We should be done with your interviews by then and Jamie isn’t due back until twelve. That ought to give us time to get this bit of business taken care of.”

Amber walked out of the bedroom, vastly relieved yet frankly terrified by the prospect of giving birth. Children had always been her dream, but the reality of actually producing them hadn’t been quite so real until now.

It was suddenly paramount in her mind. That and the other piece of information the doctor had given her. Jamie had already asked him to come look at Amber. She had troubled him as she feared.

“There now, that wasn’t so terrible, was it?” Mimm asked. She met Amber halfway across the parlor, having shown Jamie’s friend, Dr. Campbell, to the door. She held out both hands and Amber grabbed on like Miriam Trimble was a lifeline that could keep her from sinking into a dark pit of fear and uncertainty.

“Your hands are like ice, lovie. It’s going to be fine. Women have been doing this since Eve. And Jamie? Oh, but isn’t he goin’ to be so happy. But you’ll need to tell him soon, himself having asked Dr. Campbell to come have a look at you already.”

Amber nodded. She was reasonably sure Jamie
would
be thrilled. Just seeing him with Meara, the way he made sure he spoke on her level and had turned a simple breakfast into an adventure, made Amber love him all the more. Seeing him with Meara had reminded her of her own father. He’d had that same ability to make Amber feel loved and cared for more through his actions than his words.

But Amber was an adult woman now and she needed those words from her husband. Jamie had never said he loved her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure she would believe him if he did. Helena Conwell’s name on his lips loomed like a specter in her mind.

Maybe giving him another child to love would bring him to love her the way she did him. Maybe if he held a child that was the product of her love for him, he would love her back just as powerfully.

J
amie handed Amber into the elevator, then surreptitiously checked his coat pocket for the velvet pouch holding the rings and his breast pocket for the box containing the pearls that matched the ones he’d given Meara. He checked even though it was perhaps the tenth time he’d done so since he’d finished dressing.

He glanced at Amber. She seemed miles away, but a slight smile tipped her lips, giving him hope that having met and spent the day with Meara and Mimm, she’d relaxed about her new role in all their lives.

“Meara is quite taken with you. So is Mimm,” he said, watchful of her reaction.

Her smile grew. “She’s a lovely child. Kind and generous. You and Mimm have done a wonderful job raising her.”

“She does have a tendency to be a chatterbox, I’m afraid.”

“A chatterbox I can handle. I was afraid she would be spoiled and demanding. I should have known any child of yours would be adorable and sweet as she can be, but you seem to have plans to spoil me so…”

“You couldn’t ever be spoiled enough. You deserve everything I can give you for all you’ve done for me already. You stepped in and promised to protect her.”

“A promise I told you at the time I wouldn’t have to fulfill.” Amber looked up at him and her smile turned to a teasing grin as the elevator doors opened onto the lobby. “If she is such a chatterbox, why did you trust her with this morning’s secret mission? Where
did
you go, my lord? I couldn’t get her to tattle. Each time I tried to trick a location out of her, she caught on in a blink. She wanted very much to please me, yet her loyalty is firmly in your camp.”

Jamie gaped at her, a bit of fear tightening his gut. “Are we to separate into camps, then? My intent was that we were to be a unified happy family. At least that was my hope,” he said, a bit alarmed by the meaning of her last statement.

“As is it my hope,” she said, her smile gladdening his heart. She saw family life as he did then. And he also realized she no longer spoke of ending their association, thank the good Lord.

Placing his hand at the small of her back, Jamie directed her through the lobby toward the American Dining Room. With a suppressed smile, he noted that her breath caught a bit at his touch. All he need do was continue drawing on that attraction until she couldn’t do without his nearness.

“I’m very much afraid you have had no experience with families, my lord. It is a foregone conclusion that we ladies must align ourselves against the males.”

“I thought it was just you and your parents until their deaths. Then you went to live with your aunt and uncle who’d been childless.”

The headwaiter met them then as they stepped through the doorway of the elegant white-and-gold room. Decorative marble columns and arches reached upward to a coffered ceiling. Opulent gold brocade fabric covered the wall within the series of ornamental arches marching around the perimeter of the room. The elegance of the architecture formed the perfect background for tables covered in snowy-white cloths, fine bone china and gleaming silver flatware.

“Your lordship, your table is ready. This way, please.”

Jamie was pleased the man remembered him and hoped it meant he’d remembered his other instructions for the evening. The room easily seated well above five hundred, but Jamie had wanted privacy so he’d bought the surrounding tables. It wasn’t the sort of extravagance he usually indulged in, but the private dining rooms had previously been reserved and he wanted Amber all to himself on this special night. And he didn’t want their conversation overheard by anyone.

The man led them to a back corner and a table for two. He pulled out a chair, smiling at Amber. She returned his smile then looked around distractedly, clearly enjoying the loveliness of the room. But in Jamie’s mind and heart, the beauty of the surroundings paled in comparison to Amber’s.

He cared for her deeply and knew his life was better for having her in it. He could scarcely look at her and not want to drag her to the nearest horizontal surface, though he’d thus far restrained himself quite a bit lest he shock her. His heart had ached when he’d seen how taken she was with Meara and how much Meara responded to the lavish attention Amber had given her so
far. He wondered if that wasn’t love. He wished he could just carelessly say the words, but he was loath to pin a label of something he didn’t fully understand on what he felt.

No, he couldn’t bring himself to say those words to her. Each time they made love his heart cried out to say it, knowing she needed to hear that, but his mind always overruled him and refused to let him give his feelings that name. He silently cursed his father, and Iris and his uncle, whose words and deeds always found a way to darken even his happiest moments. He fisted his hand under the table while he schooled his expression to one of utter contentment, determined not to allow those faithless people from his past to ruin the evening.

As soon as Jamie took his seat a waiter approached with a silver bucket and the bottle of champagne he’d ordered. When he’d popped the cork and poured it into the glistening crystal glasses, he retreated with a formal bow.

Amber looked a bit suspicious. “Are we to have a celebration?”

“A special night, I hope. Now tell me, what it is I don’t know about families and how you learned this when you lived a solitary childhood.”

“I had brothers until I was six. They died of fever when my parents did. My friend Abby in Pennsylvania had brothers. The Kanes welcomed me into their family circle often. Later, when my uncle sent me away to school, my friend Patience often invited me to her home. Her brothers were terrors and her mother gentle and sweet. In both families females presented a united front against the males. An infraction against one was an infraction against all. It was quite a lot of fun.”

He grinned. “Which means you are conspiring to win my daughter. I am to be the poor, lone, put-upon male of the household.”

Seeing her pearly-white teeth flash in her mischievous grin, he decided to give her the pearls first. “I purchased a gift for you,” he said and drew out the black velvet pouch. He laid it on her plate.

“Is this what your secret trip with Meara was about?” she asked as she opened the box. She gasped as she drew out the necklace, bracelet and earrings. “Oh, Jamie, they are beautiful.”

“Not half as beautiful as the ladies they were chosen for. They are twins to Meara’s except for the earrings. I suppose they go along with your theory of homes being a camp divided. Now your group has matching pearls to wear as a standard.”

“No. You don’t understand. Not divided. The two camps are united unless someone gets up to mischief.” She tilted her head, then her gaze narrowed. “Is there a traitor in the female camp already? Or a spy, perhaps. You are sure you had no other reason to purchase these than so Meara and I would match? Mimm hasn’t said anything, has she? Or anyone else?”

Once again she’d confused him. Perhaps she thought Mimm had noticed Amber had no jewelry of quality. “What would make you think she said anything about your need of such things?”

She smiled, a beaming grin that rivaled the cheery light from the gas sconces lining the walls. “I thought she or someone else might have let you know I have a gift for you, as well. Though I am afraid you will have to wait a rather long while to receive it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “A gift for me? How could you
have purchased a gift for me? I haven’t yet arranged for your allowance. I will tomorrow, of course. Though I suppose you wouldn’t have undertaken a trip as long as the one we just finished with no funds of your own along.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “But this is something I am…creating.”

Now he was truly confused. “As you did your green dress? You’ve decided to sew something for me?”

She laughed—really an adorably unladylike snort. “No, silly man. I am increasing.”

A shaft of elation shot through Jamie. “Increasing?” He grabbed her hands. If this heart full of joy wasn’t love, then what was it? “A baby, Pixie? We are to have a child? Truly?”

Amber nodded. “Mimm says it is why I have been so tired and weepy. I do apologize for my strange moods of late. I feared there was something much more serious and tragic wrong with me. Perhaps I will present you with a member for your camp to ease Meara’s inevitable defection.” Her eyes seemed to sparkle and her brows arched. “I will win her over, you know.”

“I will gladly remain the solitary male in our household as long as you are fine and the child is delivered safely. We must get you to a doctor. That is important, is it not? Iris had a doctor in residence with us.”

“I have already seen your friend, Malcolm Campbell.”

“Ah, the spy you worried about since I asked that he see you. When is it to be?”

“He promised not to tell you, but I wasn’t sure he would keep silent. He says toward the late part of March. Tell me, if he studied to be a doctor at Edinburgh, what was it you studied there?”

“Engineering.”

“Perhaps our son will be an engineer or architect like you,” she said dreamily. “He will be a handsome earl like his father, as well, I suppose.”

Jamie frankly hoped all their children were girls. Let the damned title pass to Alex. “Perhaps she will be a teacher like her mother. A shaper of minds.”

“Why did you choose engineering?”

“I had to take up something and I like to build. To go from a concept, to drawing, to a tangible structure.”

“My friend Abby’s husband is a mining engineer. He wanted to make mining safe, but I’m afraid that will never happen. I’d like to send them and my uncle a wire to let them know of our marriage and that I am not with the family where I’d planned to be.”

He knew of the man she’d spoken of. He’d tangled with Joshua Wheaton. If Jamie hadn’t read the man wrong, he’d protected Helena with a pretend engagement until she’d reached her majority, then promptly smuggled her out of town with Amber’s help. Then he’d married the mother of his son the very same night. Jamie owed the man his thanks for doing what he’d been unable to do because of Helena’s distrust of him. And for sending Jamie on the voyage that had put Amber in his life.

“Do you want to tell those back home of the baby?”

She blushed a bit. “I’d like to keep it to ourselves just for a bit. I
will
send letters later and tell them, but right now I just want to do as I promised—let them know I’ve arrived safely.”

“We’ll go to the telegraph office in the morning. I’m sure your uncle and friends are anxious for word of you.” Her mention of Wheatonburg, Pennsylvania, reminded him that he’d made contact with detectives
that day in the hope of locating Helena. He needed to make sure she was safe and settled wherever it was she’d gone after leaving the small coal town. He owed her father that much.

Amber cut into the flaky crust of her apple dumpling after thoroughly enjoying a delicious dinner. The dessert fairly melted in her mouth. The atmosphere in the restaurant was regal, the waiters attentive. As was Jamie. She could have been the only other person in the room considering how undivided his attention was as he watched her. He’d not touched his cheesecake.

“Are you no longer hungry?” she asked, fidgeting under his intense scrutiny.

The left side of his mouth kicked up in a sensual smile. “Very.”

Her fork clattered noisily to her plate.

He chuckled. As often happened, that deep rumbling sound made her hungry for something more personal than the delicious apple dumpling she’d been enjoying so much.

“I have something else for you,” he said, his gaze blazing with aroused fire, but then uncertainty crept in. “I hope you like them. I can take them back if you’d like something grander.”

“I learned early in my life to cherish any gift.”

He nodded, took a small pouch from his inside coat pocket and dumped it into his cupped hand, then reached for her left hand and took off the onyx ring she’d worn since he’d placed it there and slid it back on his finger. She had an idea that she would now have a real wedding band. He slid a silver-colored ring on her finger and she could only stare.

It wasn’t a plain band as she’d expected from his talk of his purchase not being grand. Instead it was filigreed with daisy-shaped flowers, tiny sapphires and amethysts as their centers. Then he added another ring, also filigreed in the same way, but with three larger flowers, diamonds at their centers, the middle one larger than the other two. The same smaller daisy shapes as those on the band filled in around the larger ones, again with tiny amethysts or sapphires at their centers. It was like a delicate bouquet rimming her finger—the first flowers she’d ever been given.

She continued to stare down at them through sudden tears, then she looked up at him. “They’re the most beautiful rings I’ve ever seen.”

He smiled and sighed, clearly in relief, then he caught a tear as it slipped out of the corner of her eye. “Going with me to the jeweler was Meara’s secret. In all honesty it was she who chose them,” he admitted quietly.

“Is that why you seemed so unsure?”

He shrugged, but she knew from his intense expression that he didn’t feel in the least casual. This was of utmost importance to him. If so, then why wouldn’t he say he loved her?

She couldn’t say it first. She just couldn’t. After all, she’d entered this marriage clearheadedly. He’d been the one delirious and at the edge of death, desperate to leave his child into the care of someone he trusted. His continued silence left her with no choice but to conclude that his silence was still about Helena and that the rings—the marriage itself—was about making the best of a bad situation. Yet he’d said they came from his heart. Why did he have to send such mixed signals?

“I thought Meara would tell me how excellent my taste was and we’d be on our way,” he admitted, drawing her back to the topic at hand. “What I had in mind was something larger and well…ahem. Actually, the little tyrant overruled me. She called the ones I’d chosen ostentatious. I thought the jeweler would swallow his tongue. Where on earth did she get that word anyway?”

Amber bit her lip to help hold back her laughter. Leave it to Jamie to lighten a heavy moment. “I imagine she learned it from Mimm.” She rolled her eyes and made him laugh. “She seems a bit scornful of the upper crust.”