My Dearest Enemy (28 page)

"Teresa's having her babies!" Merry said breathlessly. Outside a peal of lightning struck close to the house. As if on cue the rain began a torrential downpour. The oil lantern she held in her hand knocked against her skirts, sending her shadow capering across the wall.

"Where's Mrs. Kettle?" Lily asked, rising and moving past the distraught girl. Mrs. Kettle had played midwife before to women whose birthing had come early.

"At her daughter's in the village."

"Drat." With Francesca fast asleep down the hall that left Merry, Kathy, Miss Makepeace, Evelyn, and herself.

Miss Makepeace was bound by her wheelchair and Evelyn fainted at the sight of blood. Merry kept crossing herself and muttering prayers.

"For heaven's sake, Merry," Lily snapped. "She's having a baby, not a demon."

"I can't help it, ma'am," Merry mewled. "I'm sorry, but I can't. I can't bear to see her what with my time's comin' so soon. I don't want to know what's going to happen! I'll be where she is soon enough and oh, miss, she's screaming out like she's being ripped apart! Don't make me go in there, miss! Please!"

"Quiet, Merry," Avery commanded. "No one's going to
make
you do a bloody thing. Just do as Miss Bede says. Without the noise."

His implacable tones had the desired effect. Merry dabbed at her eyes and sniffed loudly but nodded and turned to Lily for instruction.

"Where's Teresa?" Lily asked.

"In her room."

"And Kathy?"

"Last time I seen her she was, ah, heading for the stables, miss," Merry said.

"In the middle of the night, in a storm?" Lily asked.

Merry nodded meekly. "She, ah, she"—she swallowed—"she frets after the horses."

"It's Billy Johnston, isn't it? And last month it was that wainwright in town," Lily said, already striding through the door toward the servant's staircase. "It's not enough that she's already pregnant. What sort of idiot flits from one failed relationship to another? What can the girl be thinking?"

She was all too aware of Avery following silently behind her, like some paladin guarding her. In front of them Merry silently held the lantern aloft to light their way. Silently. Merry. Incompatible terms.

"Merry?"

"Not much thinking going on, I 'spect," Merry offered sheepishly. "That what starts up between a man and a woman is a powerful thing."

Lily paused and stared at the little maid in dismay. "Not you, too, Merry! Has every woman in this household taken leave of her senses?"

"Well, Todd Cleary down to town says he wouldn't mind having a baby in his house if it come with me as its mum…" She trailed off into a blushing, head-ducking, spasm of giggling delight.

" 'Wouldn't mind?' I can see it would be difficult to refuse such a marvelous offer," Lily spat out sarcastically. Only the loud, angry wail echoing down the narrow servant's stairs saved Merry from further scurrilous remarks.

"Be off to the kitchen with you," Lily said. "There's enough light to find your way." She took the lantern from Merry's hand. "I want hot water and soap. Clean linens, lots of them, the sharpest knife you can find, and a brazier full of hot coals."

"Yes, ma'am!" As soon as Merry disappeared down the hall Lily began climbing the steep stairs. She'd gone halfway up when Avery bumped into her.

"Where do you think you are going?" she demanded.

"You seem a bit shorthanded. I can help. I've…" For some reason he stopped and when he spoke again his voice sounded odd, doubtless from the acoustics of the narrow stairwell. "I've been present at childbirths before. I may be able to assist."

"That won't be necessary. I can handle it," she said.

He didn't argue. He simply scowled fiercely as though engaged in some internal argument and finally said, "I'll wait outside her door. If you should require any assistance, anything at all, a strong arm, more water, a sharper blade, you'll ask."

She met his level gaze with her own. "I'll ask," she answered and climbed the rest of the stairs.

Another loud, unhappy wail shook the walls as Lily pushed open the door to Teresa's room. The poor woman lay atop a sodden mattress propped up on her elbows, the mound of her belly so high it nearly obscured her face, her hair sticking straight out from her head like the braids of a rag doll.

"Where the hell has everyone been?" she demanded.

"Excuse me?"

"I've been up here bellowing my head off for an hour," Teresa announced testily. "Am I supposed to have this baby all by my—" Her words dissolved into an angry howl as she doubled up, clutching her stomach.

"Good God!" Lily heard Avery gasp from the open door behind her. "Is she dying? Should I get a doctor?"

"No!" she said impatiently, snatching a washcloth from the rail at the foot of the bed and wiping the writhing woman's brow, "and no. The nearest doctor is in Cleave Cross twenty miles away and she's not dying, she's having a baby."

"I am so dying!" Teresa howled in protest. Lily ignored her. She'd been present at quite a few births in the last five years, enough to know that feebleness was far more worrisome than wrath.

"I thought you said you'd been present during childbirth before," Lily said, looking over her shoulder at Avery.

"I was." He shuffled in the doorway, his big, broad frame bright against the back hall. His shirttails were still outside his pants. "I did. But she was… she was a great deal quieter than her." He pointed at Teresa.

"Could we possibly have a bit less chatter," Teresa panted. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm trying to have a baby here! And what the hell is
he
doing here anyway? He's nothing but a filthy, slimy
man
!" She snatched the damp cloth away from Lily and hurled it at Avery. He ducked. With a splat it hit the wall behind him.

Avery stared at the maid in shocked offense. He'd always thought Teresa rather liked him. He'd carried her up and down stairs, he always asked after her health and greeted her pleasantly and here she was, wriggling her way back up on her pillow and glaring at him as though he were personally responsible for her current distress.

"He'll stay in the hall," Lily assured her soothingly.

"No," Avery said with a little less assurance than he would have liked. He retrieved the wet towel, edged into the room, dropped it into Lily's extended hand and backed out again. "I'm staying here. At least until you have Merry here should you need any help."

Teresa let out another howl of pain.

Lily glanced at Avery whose face had turned ashen. So much for the intrepid explorer's much vaunted courage, Lily thought unable to hide a grin. She left Teresa, vowing gruesome mass retribution on certain parts of men's anatomy, and shoved a wooden chair across the floor in Avery's direction.

"You might as well sit before you faint," she said.

"I'm not going to faint," he said, sounding as though he was trying to convince himself rather than assure her. "I have never fainted in my life. I will not faint now."

"Hey!" Teresa had rallied once more. "You said he has to stay in the hall."

"Gladly," Avery responded, kicking the chair back into the black hallway and sinking down on it. In the gloom of the hall he looked like some giant, sullen gargoyle.

"Hush there," Lily crooned, returning to mop Teresa's brow. "You're doing a splendid job, darling. Splendid. You are so wonderfully brave."

"Like I have a bloody choice!"

Heels beating a rapid rhythm on the stairs announced Merry. She shoved her way past Avery into the room, water sloshing from the copper kettle in one hand, a small, closed brazier swinging in the other, and linens draping her upper body like a fresh mummy. A hunter's skinning knife hung from the belt at her waist.

"I got everything, Miss Bede," she said breathlessly. "Everything."

She unloaded the brazier and kettle at her feet, tossed the sheathed knife on the foot of the bed and shrugged out from under the winding length of what looked like fresh bed sheets. She took one glance at Teresa, who'd begun moaning again and asked, "Can I go now?"

"Coward!" shrieked Teresa.

"I better go now." Merry's head bobbed up and down unctuously. "I'm just upsetting her."

"Fine," Lily said, unsheathing the blade and holding its glinting surface up to the candlelight, eyeing its lethal edge with satisfaction. It flashed wicked silver.

Avery felt his head swim.

Granted leave to flee, Merry fled.

"You're not going to use that on her?" Avery whispered in horror.

"She won't feel a thing," Lily assured him and closed the door in his face.

For Avery the next hour seemed to last forever. Sporadic bouts of cursing were followed by long, tension-filled silences. On several occasions Avery was treated to graphic and imaginative vows regarding what Teresa would do to the fellow who'd impreg-nated her if he should ever have the misfortune to cross her path again.

Soon even these vociferous pledges ended and only Lily's low, calm murmurs could be heard punctuated by sounds he associated with incredible exertion. He withdrew Karl's watch from his pocket and noted the time and as he did so he wondered how many of Karl's forefathers had marked the birth of their children by it. He wondered if he, too, would someday watch the minute hand creep around the ivory face accompanied to the sounds of Li—of his wife's labor.

The door swung open. Lily stood in the doorway, holding a tiny parcel in her bloodstained arms. Behind her, Teresa lay on the bed, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. His head swam.

"Here," Lily said. "Hold the baby close, she needs to be kept warm."

She? Avery peered down at the bundle Lily still held out. He couldn't see anything. Certainly not something that resembled a "she," not even a pre-she.

"I haven't got the brazier ready for her yet."

"What," he asked, "are you going to bake her?"

She laughed—a sweet, sweet sound. "No. I'm going to set up a little bed before it for them, to keep them all toasty and warm. Usually we'd put them in the bread warmer in the oven but the oven's gone cold."

"Them?"

"Yes." Lily beamed. "Teresa's having twins."

Teresa stirred in the bed behind Lily. She glanced over her shoulder. "Here. Take her and keep her close."

Mutely, numbly, he accepted the tiny creature she placed in his arms. She rewarded him with an encouraging smile. "That was easy, wasn't it? Next one seems to be taking his sweet time in making his appearance," she confided, leaning closer. "But it'll be fine. You'll see."

Why was she consoling him? It was just a baby, for God's sake. He could hold a baby.

"Are you going to help me or stand about all night talking to that maaa—" Teresa bolted straight up in the bed and grabbing hold the iron rails on either side, threw back her head and howled.

"Teresa tells me she's Irish," Lily said. And on the enigmatic and casual comment closed the door on him.

Avery stared down at the baby's dusky purple little face scrunched up like a badly darned sock. One of his palms engulfed her entire head and most of her upper body. He'd seen freshly whelped pups as big.

Carefully, he moved some of the linen from around her face. She wriggled and a tiny fist punched its way up from the loose cloth. In amazement, Avery stared at the minuscule hand, perfection in the sliver of nail tipping each minute fingertip, the wrinkled palm, the delicate wrist.