Heart's Safe Passage (43 page)

“Nay, never.”

They laughed together. He kissed her again, and with her close to his heart, Rafe saw their new life blazing before them like the sun rising over the peak of a mountain.

Epilogue

Virginia, 1819

“You’re the worst patient I’ve ever had.” Phoebe delivered the complaint with a smile. “Just do as you’re told and let me do my job right.”

“When this is my fifth child—” The words died on a groan.

“Good. I see the head.” Phoebe’s hands shook only a little. More than ever, she wanted this birthing to be perfect.

Not that she expected anything to go wrong. The mother, at thirty-four, was healthy and strong, the labor progressing normally. Still, this patient was special. Phoebe had traveled over three hundred miles through spring rains and mud to arrive in time for the lying-in.

“Push,” she directed. “It’s time.”

“I’m pushing.”

“Not hard enough.”

“It’s another boy.” Weariness colored the mother’s voice. “I don’t have the strength for another boy.”

“You only have four of them.”

“I want a girl.” Another contraction robbed her of speech. “Always . . . wanted . . .”

The baby slid into Phoebe’s hands. For a heartbeat, she stared at the perfection of limbs and fingers and toes before clearing the mouth and nostrils and giving it a gentle slap to start it breathing. Her assistant tied off the umbilical cord and snipped it, then took the baby to bathe and wrap.

Wonder still warmed Phoebe all the way through her heart as she turned back to her patient to finish up the aftermath of birth. She knew she should speak to the mother, tell her the baby’s gender, but her throat felt tight and raw with a desire to weep with relief and joy.

“A midwife never weeps at the birth,” Tabitha had taught Phoebe.

She couldn’t cry now, not in front of the woman who had given her that admonition.

“You’re forgetting your lessons,” Tabitha told her with a hint of irritation. “If you aren’t going to tell me I have another boy, at least let me have my baby.”

“I can’t tell you that you have another boy.” Tears trickling down her cheeks, Phoebe took the baby from the apprentice and laid the bundle in Tabitha’s arms. “Meet your daughter, Lady Dominick.”

“Don’t be absurd. I hated being called that in England. I’m just plain—” She gazed up at Phoebe, all fatigue lifted from her clear, blue-gray eyes. “Is it really a girl? You’re not playing a cruel joke on me?”

“No.” Phoebe shook her head. “’Tis a wee lass, as Rafe would put it.” Phoebe wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I’ll go fetch Lord Dominick.”

“Stop that.” Tabitha was half laughing and half crying while gazing into her daughter’s wrinkled face. “She’s beautiful.”

“Just like her mother.” Phoebe smoothed hair back from Tabitha’s face. “Do you know what you’ll name her?”

“We decided on Esther for a girl long ago.” Tabitha emitted a gentle laugh. “After all those boys, she’s likely to be the queen of the household.”

“I expect Lord Dominick will spoil her.”

“Not if I can prevent it.” Tabitha yawned. “And don’t call him that to his face. He detests it.”

Phoebe had been calling her old friends by their English titles since they had journeyed to England following the end of the wars. Dominick’s father had died shortly after his youngest son’s visit in 1813, but his brothers welcomed Tabitha and her offspring as part of the family. They credited her with keeping their brother from destroying himself and blessed her for producing so many boys. Neither of them had produced anything other than daughters, and the family needed heirs, of course.

“I expect we’ll have to take her to England one day to meet her cousins.” Tabitha stroked Esther’s cheek. “Will you like that?”

The infant’s mouth moved as though she spoke.

Phoebe laughed, wiped her eyes again, and headed for the door, motioning the assistant to follow. “I’ll tell Dominick.”

She didn’t have to go far to find him. He paced the front hall of the parsonage while Rafe leaned against the parlor door frame, watching. Rafe straightened at Phoebe’s approach, his eyes lighting. She paused on the steps, fighting the urge to run to him. Duty first.

“Dominick?”

He spun mid-step. “Yes? Is she all right? The baby?”

“You would think you would not fash yourself so much after all those bairns of yours.” Rafe strode forward, his eyes asking the question.

“All is well.” Phoebe ran down the rest of the steps and hugged Dominick. “You have a daugh—”

Before she finished saying the word, Dominick raced up the steps three at a time and burst into the master bedroom. A faint wail and soft voices drifted out.

Rafe took Phoebe’s hands. “Is all well?”

“Yes, easiest delivery I’ve ever tended, except for her treating me like an apprentice every step of the way.”

“You are no different when ’tis your bairn, you ken.”

“I know.” Suddenly weary, Phoebe rested her head against his shoulder. “Speaking of babies, where are our three?”

“In the yard tending a new litter of puppies.”

“Poor puppies. They’ll want to take at least one apiece home with us.”

“Aye, to add to the three dogs we already have.”

“And the—how many cats is it now?”

They exchanged grins, loving the animals as much as the children did. Dogs, cats, horses, children . . . They’d add as many to their lives as they could manage.

“Maybe Tabitha and Dominick’s daughter will marry one of our sons,” Phoebe mused aloud.

Rafe chuckled. “Give her a few hours to at least be christened with a name before she makes up her mind on which of the scamps she will be wanting.”

“And speaking of the scamps . . .” Phoebe yawned. “Do I get a rest before I have to collect them?”

“Aye, rest all you like. Mel’s looking after them.”

“Dear Mel. She’s so good with children I expect she’ll be wanting to get married—”

“Do not remind me of how old she is.”

“And pretty.”

“Worse.”

Mel had healed from her injury and surgery aboard the
Davina
and, though a bit quieter and sometimes still struggling to read with her former facility, showed no other lasting effects of nearly dying. Especially not in her beauty and kindness. Soon Phoebe would have to draw Rafe’s attention to the young men already beginning a path to the Dochertys’ door so they could see Mel. For now, however, too weary and too comfortable in her husband’s arms to concern herself with the future, Phoebe kept more comments on marriages to herself. She and Rafe had learned so much about the joy of being wed that she couldn’t stop herself from matchmaking now and again.

The joy of marriage and of children. She heard the shrieks of children at play, Dominick and Tabitha’s four boys plus Phoebe and Rafe’s three. Three boys in six years of marriage, thanks to a set of twins, still amazed her. Her life amazed her, as different as it was from that of a pampered plantation princess. In the New River Valley beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, she still delivered most of the babies born. Rafe took care of every other medical need and the difficult births. Together, they formed a formidable couple, healing bodies as the Lord had healed their hearts.

Acknowledgments

Without the help of many people, this book would not have come into being. Here are the ones who stand out the most for having read those early chapters with which I have so much trouble, who lent me moral and prayer support along the way, and who gave me research assistance.

Those amazing experts on the Royal Navy Sail and Steam Listserv. Who else would be able to give me the dimensions of an early-nineteenth-century brig?

That person whose name I no longer recall, who long ago suggested I’d be interested in a book called
Seafaring Women
by Linda De Pauw. I think the concept for this book started while I read the story of the seafaring midwife.

Patty Hall, Gina Welborn, Louise Gouge, and Marylu Tyndall, who were early readers and cheerleaders.

Carrie Fancett Pagels, for having the instinct to call me just when I needed it.

My husband, who rescued my computer from the brink of death. He gets the 2010 Husband of the Year Award for doing so, not to mention putting up with slapdash meals and my brain sailing off to parts unknown when he was trying to have a conversation.

Last, but far from least, the wonderful team at Baker Publishing Group, for making the Midwives series happen.

Award-winning author
Laurie Alice Eakes
wanted to be a writer since knowing what one was. Her first book won the National Readers Choice Award in 2007, and her third book was a Carol Award finalist in 2010. Between December 2008 and January 2010, she sold thirteen books to Barbour Publishing, Avalon Books, and Revell, making her total sales fifteen. Recently, she added two novella sales to that collection. Her first book with Revell,
Lady in the Mist
, was picked up by Crossings Book Club, and three of her books were chosen for large-print editions by Thorndike Press. She has been a public speaker for as long as she can remember; thus, she suffers just enough stage fright to keep her sharp.

In 2002, while in graduate school for writing fiction, Laurie Alice began to teach fiction in person and online. She lives in Texas with her husband, two dogs, and probably too many cats.

Books by Laurie Alice Eakes

THE MIDWIVES

Lady in the Mist

Heart’s Safe Passage

THE DAUGHTERS OF BAINBRIDGE HOUSE

A Necessary Deception

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