The Raven Prince (Princes #1)(62)

A little over three hours after the doctor had arrived, Mrs. Stucker, the midwife, blew into the room. A short, rotund woman with red cheeks and black hair, now liberally sprinkled with gray, she was a welcome sight.

“Ho! This is a night for babies, it is,” the midwife said. “You’ll all be glad to know Mrs. Lyle has another boy baby, her fifth, would you believe it? I don’t know why she even bothers to call me. I just sit in the corner and knit until it’s time to catch the wee one.” Mrs. Stucker took off her wrapper and a great many scarves and threw them over a chair. “Do you have some water and a bit of soap, Meg? I do like to wash me hands before I help a lady.”

Dr. Billings was looking disapproving, but he made no protest at the midwife seeing his patient.

“And how are you, Mrs. Fairchild? Holding on well, despite that ankle? My, that must have been painful.” The midwife laid her hand on Rebecca’s tummy and looked at her face shrewdly. “The babe’s eager, isn’t it? Coming early just to aggravate his mother. But you’re not to worry about it. Babies sometimes have minds of their own about when they want to come out.”

“Will he be all right?” Rebecca licked dry lips.

“Well now, you know I can’t promise anything, luv. But you’re a good, strong lady, if you don’t mind me saying so. I’ll do my very best to help you and that baby.”

Things looked brighter after that. Mrs. Stucker got Rebecca to sit up in the bed because “babies slide better downhill than up.” Rebecca seemed to regain hope. She was even able to chat between pains.

Just as Anna felt as if she were going to drop from fatigue right there in the chair, Rebecca began to moan deeply. At first Anna was terribly alarmed, thinking something must be wrong. But Mrs. Stucker wasn’t perturbed and stated cheerfully that the babe would soon be there. And indeed, in another half hour, during which Anna came wide awake, Rebecca’s baby was born. It was a little girl, wrinkled and small but able to bawl quite loudly. The sound brought a smile to her mother’s exhausted face. The baby had dark hair that stood on end like a baby chick’s fluff. Her blue eyes blinked slowly, and she turned her head to Rebecca’s breast when she was snuggled against it.

“Now, then, isn’t that about the prettiest baby you’ve ever seen?” Mrs. Stucker asked. “I know you’re tuckered out, Mrs. Fairchild, but perhaps you’ll take a little tea or broth.”

“I’ll go see what I can find,” Anna said, yawning.

She slowly stumbled down the stairs. When she got to the landing, she noticed a light gleaming in the downstairs sitting room. Puzzled, Anna pushed the door open and stood there a moment, staring.

Edward sprawled on Rebecca’s damask settee, his long legs hanging off the end. He’d removed his neckcloth and unbuttoned his waistcoat. One arm draped over his eyes. His other arm stretched to the floor where his hand almost enveloped a half-empty glass of what looked like James’s brandy. Anna stepped inside the room, and he immediately raised his arm from his eyes, belying the impression that he had been asleep.

“How is she?” His voice was raspy, his countenance ghastly. The fading bruises stood out starkly in his pale face, and the stubble on his jaw made him look dissolute.

Anna felt ashamed. She’d forgotten about Edward, had assumed he’d gone home long ago. All this time he’d been waiting downstairs to see how Rebecca fared.

“Rebecca is fine,” she said brightly. “She has a baby girl.”

His expression didn’t change. “Alive?”

“Yes.” Anna faltered. “Yes, of course. Both Rebecca and the baby are alive and well.”

“Thank God.” His face hadn’t lost the strained look.

She began to feel uneasy. Surely he was overly concerned? He’d just met Rebecca tonight, hadn’t he? “What is the matter?”

He sighed and his arm returned to cover his eyes. There was a long moment of silence—so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer the question. Finally, he spoke, “My wife and babe died in childbirth.”

Anna slowly sat down on a stool near the settee. She hadn’t really thought about his wife before. She knew he’d been married and that his wife had died young, but not how she’d died. Had he loved her? Did he love her still?

“I’m sorry.”

He lifted his hand from the brandy glass, made an impatient movement, and then let it settle on the glass again as if too weary to find another resting place for it. “I didn’t tell you to elicit your pity. She died a long time ago. Ten years now.”

“How old was she?”

“She’d turned twenty a fortnight before.” His mouth twisted. “I was four and twenty.”

Anna waited.

When he next spoke, the words were so low she had to lean forward to hear them. “She was young and healthy. It never occurred to me that bearing the child might kill her, but she miscarried in her seventh month. The baby was too small to live. They told me it would have been a boy. Then she started bleeding.”

He took his arm away from his face, and Anna could see that he was staring sightlessly at some inner vision.

“They couldn’t stop it. Doctors and midwives, they couldn’t stop it. The maids kept running in with more and more linens,” he whispered to the horror in his memory. “She just bled and bled until her very life bled away. There was so much blood in the bed, the mattress was soaked through. We had to burn it afterward.”