Mary Balogh (30 page)

He had slept for five hours and bathed and shaved and felt much refreshed, though he was still feeling somewhat light-headed at the knowledge that he had a son. Just three days before, he had not even known that Livy was with child. And now he had a son. And he was at Rushton again, looking out at the familiar park, his wife and child in the next room, presumably asleep since he had left instructions that he was to be called when she awoke.

Had she named the child yet? he wondered. What would she name him? Jonathan? That was the name they had picked for a boy before Sophia had been born. But that was a long time ago. It was still nearly impossible
to believe that he was almost forty-one, Livy thirty-seven, that they had been estranged for close to fifteen years, had been together briefly the summer before, and now had a newborn son. A son born that very morning.

He had been absently watching the approach of a vehicle along the driveway. It gradually revealed itself to be a traveling carriage belonging to Lord Francis Sutton. They had had his note, he thought with some relief, turning away from the window and hurrying to the door. And they had traveled at a pace almost as furious as his.

He met them outside the house. Francis, vaulting out of the carriage even before the steps were lowered, flashed him a grin over his shoulder.

“Here she comes,” he said as Sophia hurried into his arms, was lowered to the ground, and raced toward her father. “If I had allowed her to run instead of riding in the carriage, she would have run. Wouldn’t you, Soph?”

“Papa,” she cried, her face flushed and anxious. “Is it true? I could not believe it, though Francis said that there could be no doubt about it since you have such neat handwriting and the words were as clear as day. Is Mama with child?
Is
she? And
where
is she?”

“It’s true, Sophia,” he said. And he folded her tightly in his arms and felt his tears flowing again quite unexpectedly. “You have a brother, born this morning. I was with her.”

She went very still in his arms. “I have a brother,” she said. “I have a brother?” She tore herself from his arms, whirled about and launched herself at her husband. “Francis, I have a
brother
.”

“I heard you the first time, Soph,” he said, swinging her once around. “But it bears repeating twice more, I must confess. A little less volume, though, sweetheart.”

“I have a brother,” she said once more, releasing her death grip on his neck and beaming first at him and then
at her father. “And Mama? Is she well? Where is she? I want to see her. And I want to see the baby.”

“Congratulations, sir,” Francis said, extending his right hand. “If I did not have enough brothers to plague me, now I have a brother-in-law, too. But at least this one is younger than I.”

“What is his name?” Sophia asked, linking one arm through her husband’s and one through her father’s and drawing them up the steps to the house. “I can’t wait to see him. And Mama.”

“He is still nameless, I believe,” the earl said. “And as for seeing them, Sophia, they are possibly still asleep and I would not want them woken. Your mother had a hard time. Go upstairs to freshen up and I shall have refreshments sent to the morning room. In the meantime, I will go up and see and come for you in ten minutes’ time if they are awake—or if your mother is, at least. Good enough?”

“Not nearly,” she said. “But I know that tone of voice too well to try to defy it, and I know Francis will take your part if I try to insist on seeing Mama without further delay. He has developed into a tyrant, Papa. I am a mere shadow of my former self.”

“Which is about as great a bouncer as you have ever told, Soph,” her husband said, taking her firmly by the hand and leading her up the stairs. “If you are a shadow of your former self, I would hate to have met the original. I have never found Amazonian wenches very appealing. Ten minutes it will be, sir.”

O
LIVIA WAS AWAKE
, the baby asleep beside her, a fist curled beneath one fat cheek. He had his father’s dark hair. She felt deliciously lethargic after a sleep of several hours. She stretched her toes and felt her almost flat stomach with satisfaction.

She wondered when he would come. She could send for him, but she wanted him to come without being summoned. She wanted him to come because he wanted to come. To see his son, she thought. To see his heir. He would come to see the baby.

But no, she would not indulge in thoughts even tinged with bitterness. He had said wonderful things to her the night before, things she had longed to hear the previous summer, things that she wanted to hear again. Perhaps he had said them to comfort her during her labor. But she had believed them then, and she wished to believe them now.

She wished he would come. She turned her head to the door and it opened as if in answer to her thoughts. She watched him come inside and close the door quietly behind him. He was wearing clean clothes and he had shaved. His hair had that soft look it always had when freshly washed.

“You may leave us, Matilda, if you please,” she told her maid.

“Livy,” he said, leaning across their son to kiss her cheek. She noticed that his eyes looked only at her, not at the baby. “Have you slept? Are you feeling better?”

“I feel wonderful,” she said. “I have never felt better in my life.”

“Liar.” He smiled at her.

And then he looked down at their child and the look of tenderness on his face made her want to cry.

“Is he not beautiful?” she said.

“No,” he said, smiling. “We will have to add a new word to the dictionary, Livy. There is no adequate word that I can think of. What have you named him?”

“We have named him Jonathan,” she said. “Unless you have changed your mind since last we thought we might have a son.”

“Jonathan,” he said, touching one knuckle to his son’s soft cheek.

“I was listening to you last night,” she said, “although I could not respond a great deal. I heard everything, Marc.”

“Good,” he said. “Then I need not repeat it all.”

“Would you?” she said. “If I had not heard? It was not just that I was in pain and needed comforting?”

“Shall I start now?” he asked. “With I love you? I can talk on that theme for an hour or so, if you wish.” He sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the baby, and turned to look down at her.

“Marc.” She lifted a hand and laid it on his arm. He covered it with his own hand. “I was dreadfully wrong, was I not? Only things can be spoiled beyond repair. Not relationships. We could have repaired ours, couldn’t we? It could have been as strong as ever. We could have been happy again, couldn’t we?”

“Only if we had both been committed to being so,” he said.

“And I was not,” she said. “I would not allow for your humanity, Marc. I wanted you perfect or not at all. And so I emptied my life of all that might have given it meaning—except for Sophia. I did a dreadful thing. I destroyed the rare chance of a life of happiness. And I did terrible things to you, too. You have not been entirely happy through the years, have you?”

“Don’t kill yourself with remorse, Livy,” he said. “Guilt can eat away at you and destroy the future as well as the past. I know. I lived with guilt for years until someone persuaded me that divine forgiveness has to be accompanied by forgiveness of self. You told me last summer that you had forgiven me. Have you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then forgive yourself, too,” he said. “Mine was the greater sin, Livy.”

“All the lost years,” she said sadly, tears in her eyes.

“We have lived through them,” he said. “And they are gone. All we really have is the present and as much of the future as has been allotted us. And at present, I am with my wife and my son and I am feeling almost entirely happy. I will be totally happy if my wife can assure me that the three of us will be together for the future, too.”

“Marc,” she said, “I never for a moment stopped loving you. I never did. And last summer—I loved you so very much. When you said he had taught me passion, it was of yourself you spoke. I had never got over missing you or wanting you.”

“Don’t upset yourself,” he said, drying a spilled-over tear with his thumb. “We were both living under a misunderstanding last summer, and both nobly freeing the other for what we thought a deeper attachment. But last summer, we loved, Livy. Whichever of those lovings started Jonathan was a loving indeed.”

“It was the one in the hidden garden,” she said. “The first one. I already suspected the truth before I left Clifton.”

He smiled. “I am glad it was that one,” he said.

“You cannot know,” she said, “how I hoped and hoped and tried not to hope at all.”

“Livy,” he said, “tell me in words what I think I am hearing but am too afraid to be quite sure of. Are we together again? Are you taking me back? Are we going to bring up Jonathan together? Are we going to piece together an old spoiled relationship and make something perfect of it again?”

She took his hand, which had been stroking the hair from her face, and brought his palm against her mouth. She felt hot tears squeeze their way past her closed eyelids.

“I have wasted so many weary years,” she said. “I
don’t want to waste another moment, Marc. Stay with me forever.”

“And ever,” he said, leaning carefully over her and kissing her mouth. “Is our son and heir trying to break up a tender moment?”

The baby was fussing and squirming. He suddenly contorted his face, opened his mouth wide, and yelled out his need for food and attention.

“My other man needs me,” she said, turning and slipping her hands beneath the baby and lifting him. His crying did not abate. “He needs a dry nappy and my breast in that order. Marc?”

He laughed down at her.

“It is either you or Matilda,” she said. “I don’t think I have the strength yet.” She laughed back at him.

“I don’t think male hands were made for this task,” he said, crossing the room to fetch a clean nappy. “You never made me do this for Sophia, Livy.”

“Then it is high time you learned,” she said. “I must say I am rather out of practice myself. Let us see what we can accomplish together.”

They had done a great deal of laughing and cooing, and the baby a great deal of crying before the clean nappy was successfully, if somewhat inexpertly, in place and Olivia, propped against a bank of pillows, stopped the crying with her breast.

“Oh,” she said, looking down in wonder at her baby and smoothing one hand over the soft down of his dark hair, “I remember this feeling. Oh, Marc, I am a mother again when I thought only to have the comfort of being a grandmother. How wonderful!”

“Oh, Lord,” he said, “I am not much of a father, am I? Sophia is here, Livy, and Francis. She was all ready to come roaring in here, bringing all the dust of travel with her, but I ordered her to freshen up and have some tea and Francis hauled her away. I promised to be back for
her within ten minutes. That must be well over half an hour ago.”

“Sophia is here?” she said. “Oh, what a glorious day this is turning into. I shall see her, as soon as this hungry little babe has finished sucking. Will you go and tell her that, Marc?”

“Yes,” he said, taking his seat on the bed again close to his newfound family and gazing down at them as if he would never have his fill. “In just a moment, Livy. How I envy my son.”

She looked up at him and laughed softly. “Your turn will come,” she said, “if you will but give me a couple of months.”

“I’ll wait,” he said. “But my love does not depend on just that for nourishment, Liv. I have what I want most in the world right now at this moment—my wife with our son at the breast right before my eyes, and our daughter under the same roof. What greater happiness could there possibly be?”

She smiled at him the dreamy smile of a woman suckling a baby.

S
OPHIA CLOSED THE
door to her mother’s bedchamber a little more hastily than she had opened it. She turned a blushing face to her husband.

“We cannot go in,” she said, “and I am very glad that it was I who peeped and not you, Francis.”

“Good Lord,” he said, “what is going on in there? She has just given birth, has she not?”

“She is nursing the baby,” she said. “And Papa is sitting on the bed watching. And neither of them looked embarrassed.” Her color flamed even higher.

He placed one hand beneath her chin and raised it. “What a strange combination of boldness and prudery you are, Soph,” he said. “What is she supposed to do—
hide away in the darkest corner of the nursery and blindfold the baby?”

“No,” she said, “but I would have thought she would at least be embarrassed.”

He tutted. “All those things we do in the dark,” he said, “and that draw such satisfying sounds of pleasure from you, Soph, would cover you with confusion if I could just persuade you to leave a candle burning one of these times, would they not? And yet nothing different would be happening. I could describe your body to you in the minutest detail, you know. Do you think your father does not know what your mother’s breasts look like—and feel like and taste like for that matter?”

“Don’t,” she said. “You are trying to make me uncomfortable, as usual. He has dark hair, Francis.”

“The baby?” he said. “Nice change of subject, Soph.”

“And Papa was sitting close,” she said. “And they were smiling at each other. Not at the baby, but at each other. What do you think that means, Francis?”

“It means that they were smiling at each other, I suppose,” he said. “But you are fit to bursting with some other interpretation, I can see. You tell me, then.”

“They are together again, that is what,” she said. “And how could they not be? You see, it must have happened last year, Francis. It must have, if she has had a child. But they were too stubborn then to admit that they could not live without each other. But now the baby has brought them together and they will stay together and live happily ever after. That is the way it is, I will wager.”

“Wagering is not ladylike, Soph,” he said, “and I would not wager against such a theory anyway. It sounds altogether likely. We had better find something to amuse ourselves with while we wait for the heir to Clifton to finish his port and cigars. Could I interest you
in a little sport in our rooms? That inn bed last night must be where the spare coals for the fire are stored.”