Heartless (26 page)

There were more exclamations and much laughter over that particular part of the announcement. Lord Severidge's attachment to his home was something of a joke in the neighborhood, and Agnes's unadventurous spirit was well known to her family. But it appeared to be a decision they had made jointly and it appeared to please them.

Anna knew a few moments of terrified panic, which only long experience with such feelings enabled her to control.

“You are leasing Wycherly Park?” she asked William.

“To a fine fellow,” he said. “Colonel Lomax. He has been with his regiment in America and is recently retired. You will all like him, as I live.”

Anna exhaled slowly in relief.

She prepared herself quietly for her confinement, concentrating all her energies, all her love on the child inside her. She lived alone inside her own mind as she had done during those two years before her marriage.

And she missed her closeness to Luke with a gnawing emptiness.

T
HE
dowager duchess sat in her own apartments, steadily working at her embroidery. Doris and Agnes walked outside—though not too far from the house—and then returned and sat together in one of the downstairs salons, wondering rather nervously, rather excitedly, what it must feel like. Perhaps, Doris said, Agnes would find out for herself in a year or so's time. Agnes turned pink-cheeked. Emily escaped from her nurse and found a corner of the conservatory in which to curl up. Ashley found her there and smiled gently at her, sat down beside her, and held her hand. After a while she tipped her head sideways to rest her cheek against his shoulder. Henrietta joined Luke in the library but withdrew to her own rooms when it became apparent to her that he was totally unaware of her presence.

Luke was pacing.

Anna was in her bedchamber, in her bed, in labor. It had started soon after she retired the night before. As soon as she was sure, she had gone through to Luke's room instead of ringing for her maid. He had leapt out of bed rather as if someone had poured scalding water over him and had carried her back to hers despite her protests that she was quite capable of walking. Soon her maid was with her and Mrs. Wynn, and the physician had been sent for. No one else had been disturbed. Anna had hoped that by morning they could all waken to the announcement that an heir had been safely born.

But in the morning she was still laboring and it seemed that it would never come to an end. She could hear the peevishness in her voice as she begged to have windows opened, to have a cool, damp cloth applied to her face, to have someone rub her back. But she could not alter the tone of her voice or the demands it made. It seemed to belong to someone else—someone out there. Anna herself seemed to be hiding far inside herself, hiding from the pain, from the anxiety, from the impatient excitement, and from the fear of dying or—even worse—the fear of the baby's dying.

And then about noon, not that Anna was in any way aware of time by that point, the nature of the pains changed and the voice that did not seem quite to belong to her was yelling in panic for the physician. And all became pain after that and frenzied pushing and great gaspings for air in the brief moments of respite. And somewhere beyond, soothing voices and instructions that she followed blindly.

And then the final burst of pain and pressure and the warm gush and the indignant squawking.

Anna found herself crying helplessly and laughing and reaching out her arms for her blood-streaked, crying, ugly, beautiful child.

Luke stopped his pacing when the library door opened and Mrs. Wynn appeared and curtsied. He glared at her, pale-faced.

“Her grace has been safely delivered,” she said, smiling at him, “and mother and child are ready to receive you, your grace.”

He stared at her for a moment, wondering if the buzzing in his head was what people felt when they were about to faint. And then he strode past her without a word and took the stairs up to the next floor two at a time, something his grace had not done in fifteen years, Cotes observed to Mrs. Wynn as they watched him go.

The bedchamber was quiet except for the unfamiliar fussing sounds of a newborn child. Luke did not see his wife's maid curtsy and leave the room. He was standing very still just inside the door, his eyes on the bed, where his wife lay looking at him with wide eyes, a blanket-bound bundle in the crook of one arm.

“Luke.” Her voice trembled slightly and her eyes slipped from his. “You have a daughter.”

A daughter. He heard that buzzing again for a moment and felt air cold in his nostrils. A daughter. He kept his eyes on his wife.

“You are well?” he asked.

“Yes. Just tired.” Her voice was flat.

A daughter. He approached the bed cautiously and shifted his gaze to the bundle. Through the opening of the blanket he could see a fat little slit-eyed face, blotched with red. Dark, wet-looking hair. One little hand. Tiny but perfectly formed with five little fingers and five fingernails. Blotched like the face.

His daughter. His and Anna's. He was a father. No longer alone and a law unto himself. No longer even just part of a couple, responsible for the well-being of the woman he had taken to wife. He was a father. Head of his own family. With a daughter who was his own flesh and blood.

He reached down as in a dream, slid his hands beneath the bundle, one spread beneath the little head, and lifted it. There was no weight at all. None except the weight of the blanket, it seemed. But it was warm and soft and it made those fussing noises and the unfocused eyes examined the world through the narrow slits.

God! Oh dear Lord God. There was life between his hands. Human life. A life he had helped create. A life for which he would be responsible for years and years to come.

His child.

His daughter.

Love, Luke found, though he was not fully conscious of the thought, returned in a powerful rush and grabbed his heart in a vise and did not let go. Love was the most intensely exalting emotion life had to offer, and the most frightening. Fear and exaltation mingled and were indivisible, the one a part of the other. Love was what made life worth living. Not the pursuit of pleasure, but love. Love, which involved the full spectrum of human emotions.

Love came surging back to him in the form of a little bundle of humanity held in his hands. Not even a particularly beautiful little bundle. But his and Anna's. Their daughter. Their treasure beyond price. After a few moments, slightly turned away from the bed, he could no longer see what he held—it had blurred before his eyes. He could only feel the warmth and the miraculous featherlightness of love and hear its mutterings.

“Luke.” The trembling voice behind him was thin with misery. “I am so sorry.”

“Sorry?” He blinked his eyes and looked over his shoulder.

“Perhaps there will be a son next year,” she said.

He understood her misery in a flash. And it was perfectly reasonable. It was why he had married her. He had made no secret of that at the time, fool that he had been. Could he have ever been so incredibly stupid?

“Anna.” He turned fully toward her. His voice was little more than a whisper. “I cannot begin to think of next year. Only of today, of this moment. We have a daughter. She is beautiful. Look at her. She is beautiful.”

“You are not too disappointed?” She looked up into his eyes at last, her own filled with hope and pleading.

“Disappointed?” He set the baby carefully back in the crook of her arm, seated himself on the bed, and touched the back of one finger to a fat little cheek. “Anna, I wanted a girl. Duty dictated that I hope for a boy. Inclination had me secretly wanting a little girl. This particular one.”

She was crying then, one hand spread over her face, making clumsy attempts to muffle her sobs.

“Did you really believe,” he asked her, “that I would be disappointed in her and perhaps even reject her because she is the wrong gender?” And yet she had no reason to believe that he would feel anything for any of his children, even his sons, beyond a satisfaction at having perpetuated his dynasty. He had told her repeatedly that he was incapable of love.

How could even he have known that he would love again? That he would love his own child almost from the moment of its birth? How could he have known that that miracle—and that terror—awaited him?

“I was so h-happy,” she wailed. She swallowed. “I was so very happy when she was born and when I saw her and held her. It did not even matter to me, only that she was alive and whole. I wanted you to come and see her, and then I remembered.”

“I believe you need to sleep, Anna,” he said. “You are exhausted. But know that I am pleased with our daughter, that I could not be more pleased if you had been delivered of triplet boys.” She sputtered into unexpected and shaky laughter. “There will be time for sons, my dear, but if we have none I suppose the world will somehow keep on turning. What are we going to call her?”

“I have not thought of girls' names,” she said. “I was foolishly convinced 'twould be a son. Catherine? Elizabeth? Isabelle?”

“Joy, I believe,” he said. “Lady Joy Kendrick with a few lengthy middle names to add consequence. Do you like it?”

“Joy?” She bit her lip and then smiled at him for the first time. Anna's smile, a little teary-eyed and tremulous, but full of sunshine. “Yes. Joy.”

He touched a knuckle to his daughter's cheek again before getting up and leaning across her to kiss his wife on the mouth. “Thank you, Anna,” he said, “for Joy. She is a precious gift. Sleep now. I shall send your maid to you.”

•   •   •

She
was exhausted, Anna thought after he had left. But she was not sure she could sleep just yet. There was too much of a tumult of emotions still churning inside her. She turned her head to gaze at the baby. At her daughter.

Joy. He had named her Joy. He had called her a precious gift. He had said that he had hoped for a daughter. He was neither disappointed nor displeased.

And he had looked at his daughter, at Joy, with a light in his eyes she had not seen there before. He had not been lying just to make her feel better. He had meant what he said.

He loved their daughter.

Perhaps, she dared to think, oh, perhaps there was hope. Perhaps there was a future. A future with Luke and with Joy and with more sons and daughters, though she could not at the moment contemplate a repetition of last night's and this morning's ordeal.

But she would go through it again and again if she could have Luke back. There had been such a distance between them in the past three months. Today was the first time he had kissed her in three months. Perhaps now he would come back to her. And perhaps that other was all at an end. She was a wife and a mother. Perhaps
he
would leave her alone now.

Perhaps there was hope.

“Oh lawks, madam,” her maid said, tiptoeing across the room toward the bed a few minutes later, “don't weep, then. Was his grace harsh with you? 'Twill be a boy this time next year, I vow and protest. And her such a quiet little thing, poor mite. Just arrived too soon, she did, alack. She should have waited for a brother to come first.”

Anna smiled through her tears at her little bundle of joy.

•   •   •

“Whoever
ordered the ringing of the church bells this afternoon must be severely reprimanded,” the dowager duchess said at the dinner table the evening after her granddaughter was born. “I trust you have seen to it already, Lucas.”

He looked at her keenly. “I ordered the ringing of the bells, madam,” he said, “to announce the birth of my firstborn child.”

“You should have consulted me first, Lucas,” she said. “The church bells are only ever rung at Bowden to announce the birth of sons. A wrong message was sent today.”

“No,” he said, “'twas the right message. The message that a child has been born here to the Duchess of Harndon. You, madam, have said nothing to me today beyond an enquiry about Anna's health. Ashley shook my hand and Doris kissed me and Agnes made her curtsy to me, but all three of you looked warily at me as if afraid of appearing too delighted. Henrietta actually commiserated with me. The servants have been subdued, almost as if there had been a death in the house. Only Emily hugged me and kissed me and cried all over my cravat and then smiled at me and told me with her eyes how happy she was for me.”

“Emily does not understand,” Henrietta said gently, “how important it is for a man in your position to have an heir, Luke. Poor Anna. She must be feeling very sad. I will have to try cheering her up.”

“It is to be hoped,” the dowager said, “that she will do her duty next year.”

“Do you mean, Mama,” Doris asked, “that the church bells rang when George and Luke and Ashley were born, but not when I was born?”

“They will ring for your wedding, Dor,” Luke said and watched her eyes widen in astonishment at his unconscious use of the old shortened form of her name that he had used when she was a child. “And they will ring for every child of mine regardless of gender. There is a child upstairs with Anna. Our daughter, whom we would not exchange for a dozen sons. I shall send to Theo and Lady Sterne and Royce and Anna's other sister with the announcement and with the hope that they will be able to attend her christening.”

“After all, Luke,” Ashley said, grinning, “you do have an heir. Not that I covet the position, I make all haste to add.”

“I have no immediate plans to marry,” Doris said, eyeing Luke warily.

“But you will,” he said. “It has ever been my observation that the loveliest and most eligible of ladies fall prey to Cupid's darts sooner or later. And you are both, Dor.”

She flushed with pleasure and looked down at her plate.

“Cotes,” Luke said, addressing his impassive butler, who stood at the sideboard with a footman, “you will open three bottles of wine for the servants' dinner following this, and you will have the health of Lady Joy Kendrick toasted. You will inform my servants that it is a birth they are celebrating. If I see one long face on the morrow, it will be dismissed from my service along with its owner. Is that understood?”