Patrica Rice (37 page)

Later, properly situated upon the bed with Blanche cuddled against him, he marveled at the strength of this delicate female. An odd rippling sensation beneath his hand where it rested on Blanche’s belly drew his startled gaze downward. He cupped his hand around the pearl-drop shape of her abdomen, feeling the gentle movement. In wonder, he caressed the place where his child lived and moved, and a bond deep inside him pulled taut and irreversibly connected him to his wife and the child she carried.

Michael lifted his head in wonder, and Blanche’s lips curved.

“He likes traveling,” she informed him. “You will have to take him everywhere.”

His hand trembled as he caressed her there again. The child kicked, creating a bulge in one side. The knowledge that a living, breathing infant rested there shook him so deeply he couldn’t breathe. “What if he’s too big? He’s already too big! Dammit, woman, you can’t carry anything like that until when? December? He’ll tear you in two. We have to find a physician.” Frantically, he rose on one elbow. “You shouldn’t be here now. I have to take you back to London and the best physicians. I don’t want to lose you. How could I have done this to you? I’m sorry, love, I didn’t know. I wish I could take it all back.”

Laughing softly, she tugged him down and Michael collapsed against her, burying his face against her throat, holding her tight while he tried burying his foolish fears.

“I feel fine. The physician assures me everything is normal. Maybe we’ll have a Christmas baby. Shall we call it Holly if it’s a girl?”

He knew she tried distracting him, but nothing could distract him now. He couldn’t let her go. He’d hold her until the child was safe in their arms. How would he get her home? They couldn’t stay here.

“Michael?” She tugged at his hair again. “Did you hear me? Shall we call her Holly if she’s born on Christmas?”

“Holly. Yes.” Rattled, he collapsed against the pillow and stared at the ceiling. He must be going mad.

With golden hair streaming across the pillow, she watched him with concern. “Michael, it’s fine. Really. You needn’t worry. Tell me what you would name a boy. If you really think to call yourself an earl, you must think of something properly noble for your heir.”

Heir
. My God, should he survive this, he would have an earldom and an heir. Or he would wake soon on a cornhusk cot in a cabin in Kentucky. He didn’t even have a name. How could he have an heir?

Blanche giggled at his stunned expression and kissed his cheek. His jaw muscles clenched beneath her touch. Her sweet herbal scent wafted around him, and he wrapped his fingers in the long tendrils of her hair. His shaft had already arisen to the occasion, and Blanche wasn’t one to let it go unnoticed.

Closing his eyes and groaning at the immensity of the universe and the laughter of the gods, Michael filled his newly-healed hands with her hair and tugged Blanche’s mouth down to cover his.

Michael had no idea of the depth of his exhaustion until a frantic knock on the door in the hour before midnight left him too groggy to do more than grunt in reply.

“Michael!” Fiona’s voice rang through the panel. “Seamus says as they’re burning the mill!”

“It needed burning anyway,” he muttered into the pillow, absorbing Blanche’s warmth against his side. Dammit, Barnaby was supposed to give him another day.

“Michael! Hurry, His Grace is searching for you.”

In other words, the duke didn’t know Blanche’s place of residence, or he’d be personally pounding at that door. With a sigh, Michael swung his legs over the side of the bed. Blanche sat up and sleepily wiped the hair from her eyes.

“What is it?” she murmured, yawning.

“Why is it no one calls me mister?” Michael complained insensibly as he reached for his trousers. “The brat stands out there shouting my given name to all and sundry. Could she not use a ‘sir’ or a ‘mister’ or something?”

“That’s because no one knows which ‘mister’ you are today. O’Toole? Lawrence? Or have you decided on MacDermot this morning?”

“Nicholas,” he declared firmly, reaching for his shirt.

“What?” Even half asleep, Blanche understood the waywardness of that reply.

“Nicholas. If the child is a boy born at Christmas, we should call him Nicholas.” He tugged his trousers closed and began buttoning them.

Blanche giggled and donned her nightshift. “You are mad. What does Fiona want at this hour? Must you go?”

“Probably not. There is little enough I can do now. If I had any sense at all, I’d climb right back into that bed with you. But Fiona will most likely take a hatchet to the door should I try.” Trying to speak calmly, Michael sat down in a bedside chair and pulled on his shoes.

“Michael! Are you awake? I’m coming in there if you don’t answer this minute.”

Michael cocked a wry eyebrow. “You see?” He turned toward the door. “Faith and you needn’t scream like a banshee, Fey-onah, my own,” he shouted. “Be after fetchin’ that nuisance of a brother of yours and we’ll ride out there.”

They heard her running down the hall in reply. Michael had been in that derelict mill often enough to know they hadn’t a chance of saving it.

“You can’t stop a fire, Michael,” Blanche whispered, confirming his fear as she climbed from the bed and pulled on a wrapper. “There’ll be no one inside at this hour. Let Neville handle it.”

Grimacing, he started to say something reassuring when he caught a movement at the window from the corner of his eye.

Instantly, Michael swung in front of Blanche and edged her backward toward the door. Behind him, she gasped as a man’s boot appeared over the sill. A moment later, Barnaby stood there grinning, a long-barreled pistol in his hand.

“Well, isn’t this nice? I didn’t hope to catch both the lady and her lover.” His grin tightened into a grim line as he recognized Michael. “I suppose it’s your fault my man returned without the money. The lady’s paying the price for that. You’ll not get another farthing from that mill. If you want to keep the rest, I’d suggest you persuade the lady to sign a note I can take to the bank. I’ve a ship waiting for me and no wish for delay.”

“Leave the room, Blanche,” Michael said coldly, backing her toward the door while he kept his gaze on the enemy

“I think not.” Barnaby shifted the pistol. “The lady will stay with some friends of mine until I have the cash, a sort of security against your tricks, O’Toole.”

“You’re a few names behind, Mr. Barnaby,” Blanche said laughingly from the safety of Michael’s back. “I think he’s worked his way up to Earl of Aberdare now and is appropriately addressed ‘my lord.’”

“Out, sweetheart,” Michael warned. “He can’t shoot you through me, so leave and warn Fiona. Just this once, do as I say without arguing.”

“Make one move through that door and I’ll blow a hole through your beau, my lady,” Barnaby warned.

“You’ve only the one shot, nodcock,” Michael mocked, knowing Blanche hesitated. “Shoot me, and the whole inn comes running. Are you planning on dragging a pregnant woman out the window and down the street with half the town on your heels?”

With relief, he felt Blanche easing toward the door. Just another few steps...

Blanche grabbed a pillow from the bed and flung it. Barnaby dodged.

Prepared, Michael seized the chair he’d sat in moments ago, His fingers wouldn’t close enough to form a fist, but they could close around a chair back. He swung it hard, smashing it against Barnaby’s jaw. The man groaned, stumbled sideways, then again staggered toward him.

Michael lashed out with his booted foot, and Barnaby’s soft parts crushed beneath his toes. With ease, he tumbled the older man backward.

“Damn, but I felt that.” A voice laughed from the same open window Barnaby had entered.

Finally, Blanche fled. Michael scowled at the grinning faces of Seamus and Eamon O’Connor. He pointed at the man writhing on the floor. “Tie him up, and you don’t need to be gentle. I’m after Blanche.”

Seamus climbed through the window first. “Fiona and the duke are downstairs. They’ve two husky men on the way up and the magistrate on his way. Eamon caught the weasely chap over at the mill.”

Michael tested the strength of a bed sheet, then ripped it in half. Throwing half to Seamus, he ripped his half again. “I still think the Americas too good for the lot of you. If I didn’t despise Anglesey more, I’d hand you over to him.”

“Methinks his bark is worse than his bite,” Eamon said quietly behind the quickly angering Seamus. “You’ve to learn control of that temper, lad.”

Seamus ripped his half of the sheet with resounding force.

“You’ve a sister to look after, same as I’ve a wife,” Michael reminded him. “If something happens to you, what becomes of Fiona?”

Eamon laughed and replied for him, “She’ll marry the bloody duke. Our Fiona lands on her feet, she does. But I’ll take Seamus in hand if you can get his lands back. That is what you’ve told them, isn’t it?”

Michael peered suspiciously at the former officer. “How do you keep the army from drawing and quartering you?”

In perfect French, Eamon replied, “The French Eamon died on the field of battle. They know naught of the Irish.”

“Are you certain you’re not kin to young Seamus?” he asked, tugging a knot tighter.

“We’re a close knit lot, we are,” Eamon enigmatically agreed.

Michael heard booted feet pounding up the stairs. “I’ve no idea what my wife has done in my absence, but I’ve given my word. I’ll do what I can to retrieve the lands. Do I have your word that you’ll keep the clodpole in hand until he grows up?”

Seamus offered a loud objection which Eamon promptly ended by slapping his hand over the boy’s mouth and dragging him toward the window. “I’ll see him occupied until you clear his name. Until next time.”

Their departure coincided with the Duke of Anglesey’s assault upon the chamber door.

* * *

“Neville thought you were having a fit,” Blanche said several days later.

In the privacy of their Dublin chamber, Michael wore tailored trousers and an open linen shirt, adopting attire somewhere between his gentleman’s pose and his street magician’s disarray as he waited for the Irish court to decide their fates. He felt as if he had one foot in two worlds and a good breeze could topple him.

His Grace had stepped in as Blanche’s representative in the negotiations between the mills and the workers. After Michael dragged him through the city’s slums, the duke had been forced to see the workers as faces with names and starving children, and could no longer preach the profit motive so boldly.

He could almost grant that Neville would ultimately do better in the negotiations. Michael knew he leaned too far in the direction of the workers and would probably bankrupt Blanche.

“I was,” he retorted to Blanche’s laughter. “I think I shall slam my head against walls on a regular basis. I know I shall if you do not go home where you belong. You’re like to have that babe in the midst of a courtroom.”

“I’ll go home when you do.” His wife shrugged, then picked up a stitch of her knitting.

“And how does Neville’s investigation of our marriage lines go?” he asked tauntingly, distracting himself as he paced the perimeter.

“I am very definitely Mrs. Lawrence, at least,” she said with a hint of glee at her cousin’s expense. “There’s not a solicitor in London who can break the trail of evidence you left behind. They’re working on the name problem, however. I dissuaded Gavin from signing a sworn statement that you are his brother until we have the court’s decision on the MacDermots. If you change your name again, we may have to repeat our vows. The solicitors are uncertain of the legalities as yet.”

“You are not sorry we married?” he demanded.

She rested her hand on the upper curve of her belly. “I had some choice?”

“You did,” he answered emphatically. “I gave you two years to make choices. You chose me. You may regret your decision, but you cannot tell me you had none.”

She smiled knowingly. “No, I cannot tell you that. And I do not regret my choice.”

A knock at the door intruded, and William O’Connor entered. Instead of greeting the duke’s daughter, as was proper, he stopped before Michael and bowed. With stiff formality, he righted himself and offered his hand. “Your lordship.”

“Cut line, O’Connor,” Michael demanded, resuming his pose against the mantel. He’d just discovered his hands would close sufficiently to fit around the candlesticks, but he disliked attempting the juggle with company present. “What stones have you overturned?”

The man practically danced in his shoes, rocking back and forth and eyeing him with complete approval. “Just like your great-grandfaither. Stern man, he was, but with the devil in him just the same.”

“Such knowledge makes you a hundred years old,” Michael answered scornfully. “We have no audience here. You needn’t put on a show.”

O’Connor raised his eyebrows. “The seventh earl lived to a ripe old age. I knew him well. Admittedly, I knew the eighth earl better, and his children more so, but I’ll not have ye doubt me. Ye have the looks of your grandfaither, just as young Seamus does. Of course, your grandmother was a MacDermot also, a second cousin, so the line runs true in both.”

Michael noted that Blanche took in this blarney with wide eyes and eager anticipation. The old man was good, but the subject too painful. “Just tell me how the court is buying this faradiddle,” Michael demanded. “Will they consider my claim?”

“Of course they will consider your claim. How could they do elsewise? I’ve shown them the letters from your da, sent from the wilds of the Americas, giving the date of your birth and that they named you Michael after your great-grandfaither. I’ve shown them letters saying Colin MacDermot and his wife, Kathleen, went to America to meet the Lawrences, who were old friends of your great-grandfaither. Black sheep the Lawrences were, but the Earl of Aberdare had befriended them once, and he called in the favor.”

Even though they all knew the tale had been woven from loose threads, the old man appeared to be enjoying his drama. He cackled and paced. “The Lawrences were not easy folk to find, it seems. It’s a sorry tale that Colin and his wife did not catch up with them until Kathleen had birthed their son and was weak from travail. The Lawrences found a home for them in the hills between Kentucky and Virginia. But an epidemic caught the town, and Kathleen died first. Colin died nursing her, but not before he’d sent the little one away before he could catch the disease too. Of course the court believes me, especially after I showed them the picture in the old family book. They’d no choice but to believe.”