His father sent her a look of such astonishment, Hugh smiled. He clapped his hands, and she whirled around, joy lighting her features. Her golden-brown eyes glowed with warmth and yearning. That look…how it unravelled him. The pleasure she took in seeing him never ceased to astound Hugh, and this smile that lit her entire face threw him into disorder.
He’d learned that for a wife in the ton to display such obvious liking and admiration for her husband was intolerably bourgeois. Yet his wife did not seem to conform in that regard, either. She liked him…and did nothing to hide her feelings. Something inside him awakened, a terrible need he’d never felt before, and it was all for his wife.
She took a step toward him only to falter with a sharp gasp, looking down in horror at the unexpected puddle of water at her feet. A spasm of pain crossed her features, and she paled alarmingly. “What is happening?” she cried fretfully.
Hugh rushed to her side as she stumbled, and he swept her into his arms.
“I am too heavy,” she tried to protest, before groaning and leaning her head weakly on his shoulder.
He glanced at his father, who was scrambling to remove his leg from over the windows.
“I will send for the doctor and midwives right away!”
Her hands tightened around Hugh’s neck, and her eyes lifted quickly to his face. “Is it the baby?”
He was not sure and hated that he could offer no reassurance. Hugh strode from the room with her in his arms and toward the stairs. Phoebe moaned, the sound of distress squeezing around his heart.
“Dr. Edward said yesterday that it would be a few more weeks! Hugh, I am scared!”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead, wishing he had the words to communicate that he was with her and there was nothing of which to be afraid. He made his way to the stairs and toward their wing of the house as gently as possible. Once in the room, he deposited her on the bed in a reclined position, putting a few cushions behind her back and the headboard.
She lifted stricken eyes to his. “I am wet!” Then she groaned as another spasm gripped her.
He sat beside her. “All will be well. I am here. The doctor and midwives will be summoned immediately.” And he prayed that he was right. The terror striking his heart was one he had never felt before. But he composed his mien, only wanting to offer her comfort.
Servants bustled inside with basins of hot water and soft towels.
He stood and bowed briefly. “I will go and ensure all the proper orders are relayed.”
As he turned away, her voice halted him.
“Hugh?”
He whirled back to her. Her eyes were so vulnerable, sweat and tears glistened her cheeks, and she gripped the sheets on each side of her. “I am so very scared,” she said hoarsely. “I know it to be very improper…but will you stay with me, please?”
Always, he silently reassured her but could not bring himself to sign it, for his very understanding of himself and his wants and needs were rattled. Hugh walked over to the bed and climbed on, resting his back against the carved oak headboard. He gently tugged her to his side, and with a pain-filled moan, she rested her head on his chest. A few maidservants sent them shocked glances, but he ignored them and held on to his lady wife, offering her the support she needed and the connection he had not realized he craved.
“My baby is coming,” she murmured, her voice rough and fear filled. “I’ve looked forward to this day so very much, but now I feel shattered that I am so terribly frightened.”
He dipped and kissed her forehead, which was already sweat dampened. She shivered at times, then she sobbed as a pain he could not imagine held her in its grip. And he did not let her go, even hours later when the doctor and midwives came. They tried to push him out of the room, but Phoebe held on to his hands and screamed.
So he stayed, never taking his eyes from her face and lending her all the courage and strength she needed. He was there when she bit her lips until they beaded with blood, and he was there when a thin wail sliced through the air.
She squeezed his hands with such strength, he wondered where she found it because mere seconds ago, she’d been exhausted.
“She’s here?” she gasped, slumping back against the pillows.
He tried to withdraw his hands, but she held on valiantly. Hugh wanted to warn her they might have a son, but he wisely kept quiet. He was tempted to look away from her face to see what the midwives were doing, but he resisted. Phoebe’s eyes darted left and right as she watched them keenly, at times squeezing his fingers and other times rubbing his abused hands in a soothing gesture, but not once did she remove her regard from the doctor and midwife. And then a shadow fell over them, and a smiling midwife placed a cleaned, crying wrapped bundle on her chest and said, “Here is ye daughter, milady. I’ll summon the wet-nurse you’ve selected.”
An unknown feeling, a sensation of fear and awe, pulsed through him as he peered down at the small bundle in her arm. Phoebe remained frozen, her eyes wide as she too stared at the child. Tears rolled down her cheeks silently, and then she lifted her eyes to him.
The emotions he spied slammed into his gut like a fist and left him reeling for breath.
“Thank you for saving us,” she whispered with a tremulous smile. “My lord…please meet our daughter.”
Our daughter.
He glanced down and stared at the child, marveling at how tiny she appeared. The wailing died down as the child regarded the two faces peering at her.
“I’ll protect you both.”
Phoebe smiled, and it wobbled, tears filling her eyes once again. “We’ll protect you, too.”
He almost waved a dismissive hand at this, but something strange and unexpected writhed through him. Hugh was beset with a powerful emotion he couldn’t quite describe. And for the first time in years, he wondered at the sensations burrowing deep inside his heart. He closed a mental fist around them before they floated away like ashes in the wind, like everything that made him feel eventually did.
Do not leave. Stay with me, he silently whispered to the sensations as he reached out to brush a damp tendril of hair from his wife’s cheek with shaking fingers.
Phoebe turned her cheek into the palm of his hand before peering down at the child. Hugh shifted closer. He touched the bridge of Phoebe’s nose, and she looked up at him.
“Thank you for our daughter.”
Chapter Thirteen
Phoebe raced across the lanes of her home, enjoying the power of the horse beneath her. It felt wonderful to be outdoors, basking in the wild scent of flowers and the rays of the sun. It had been only last week Dr. Edwards and the midwife had visited and had said that both her and her daughter were doing fine. The doctor’s permission to restart a more energetic normal life was something she had been hoping for. Her darling, Francesca Elizabeth Winthrop, was doing well at two months old and putting on weight. When the doctor had declared Phoebe to be fully recovered from the ordeal of the childbirth, she had been exultant.