Tender the Storm (65 page)

Zoë cocked her head and slanted him a frankly curious look. She still found it hard to take it all in. A team of craftsmen had descended on the old dower house where the dowager was to take up residence as soon as the work was completed. Charlotte, blooming, was engaged to be married to a gentleman whom she had met while he had been visiting friends in the neighborhood. Sir Reginald and she were to be wed within the month, so she shyly informed Zoë, when they would remove to his estate in Hampshire.

"I shall be lonely without you, Charlotte," Zoë had observed.

"Nonsense," cut in Rolfe. "I shall be here. And you will have your hands full refurbishing these old halls. I thought something in the style of your house in St. Germain. You know, elegant without sacrificing comfort. I shall miss that house."

The dowager could not restrain her protests. "But Rolfe, the Abbey has remained very much as it is for generations. I never saw fit to change —"

"Precisely," said Rolfe in that aloof way of his which disallowed argument. "It's time for a change. And I am giving Zoë
carte blanche
to arrange things to suit
herself
." And he launched into a description of Zoë's
house in St. Germain which had Zoë
pinkening
with pleasure.

Rolfe, she was thinking, had made it perfectly clear that a wife took precedence over a mother. And if the dowager ever doubted it, she must have known it when they went in to dinner and Rolfe seated her, Zoë, at one end of the dining-room table, directly opposite his own place. It was, Zoë reflected, too much too soon for the dowager to accept with grace. She resolved, then, to find a way to soften what must seem to her mother-in-law a betrayal on her son's part.

"What are you thinking?" asked Rolfe, bringing Zoë back to the present.

"I was thinking that some things don't change."

Rolfe's eyebrows shot up, and Zoë explained, "Ladies Emily and Sara, and their poor, harassed governess, Miss Miekle."

"Oh, I don't know," said Rolfe, patting the empty space beside him on the bed. Zoë obediently padded over and climbed in beside him. "Evidently," drawled Rolfe, "you missed the girls' introduction to Salome."

"Salome?"

"They've met their match, and they know it. I warn you now—those fickle infants mean to desert you." Zoë's lips turned up as he went on, "As I overheard Emily knowledgeably tell Sara, and I quote, 'Everyone knows that black witches have stronger magic than white witches.' So you see, my dear, your reign is coming to an end."

"Rolfe," protested Zoë, laughing, "that's no way to raise children."

"True. But until Reggie carries the lot of them off to his estate in Hampshire, it will serve."

He found a tender spot on Zoë's nape and began to nuzzle. "Rolfe," said Zoë, and after a few false starts, she shyly managed to convey that she was in a delicate condition.

Rolfe cupped her face with both hands. He looked deep into her eyes. "You've made me the happiest man in the world," he said. A dazed look crept into his eyes.
"A father!
I shall be a father!"

"And I shall be a mother," said Zoë flippantly

Her jest brought Rolfe down from the clouds. He scanned her face intensely. "You are so young. Oh God, kitten, what have I done to you?"

Zoë started to laugh. "Don't be absurd," she said. "I'm young, yes. But I'm healthy. Don't take on so. Everything will be fine."

It was a very difficult pregnancy. The debilitating nausea, the aching muscles, the false labor pains, the restless sleepless nights—Zoë hated to see Rolfe suffer so. There was no necessity for it. It was she who was having the baby. But it seemed that any small discomfort she must endure was taken up by her husband and magnified tenfold. It was a strange phenomenon, but not unheard of, so the physician told them.

When her time came, as ill luck would have it, a sudden snowstorm descended, completely cutting off the Abbey from the outside world. The roads were impassable. There would be no physician or midwife in attendance. Rolfe must deliver his own child.

Zoë had every confidence in Rolfe, and so she told him. For the first little while, he behaved heroically.
Without warning, however, at a most inopportune moment, Rolfe fainted dead away.
Two stalwart footmen were summoned and conveyed their master's inert form from Zoë's chamber. The dowager and Salome demonstrated that they were made of sterner stuff. It was they who delivered Rolfe's son.

Much later, when it was all over, and Rolfe, fully recovered, was allowed to return to his wife's room, like any new parents they gazed in rapt astonishment at the miracle they had created.

"He's perfect," breathed Rolfe.

"And as bald as an eagle," pointed out Zoë. She had expected a thatch of dark hair like her own. "And did you ever see eyes so blue?"

Rolfe grinned. "I'm afraid he's going to take after me. Shall you mind very much, my love?"

"I don't mind so long as the next one takes after
me."
She yawned hugely.

Rolfe's grin faded. "Zoë," he said, "you can't ask me to go through that again."

"Was it so very bad, my darling?" she asked solicitously, and brushed an errant lock of blond hair from his brow.

"I fainted!" He looked shamefaced. "I've never fainted in my life before."

"It can happen to the best of us," allowed Zoë generously.

"You must think I'm a veritable coward."

Zoë brought her head up from the pillows and kissed Rolfe lingeringly. "You're no hero," she agreed, her eyes soft with love, "but you are no coward either. You are simply a man, my darling, and in some things women are superior. You'll just have to accept it. Next time, you'll do better."

She drifted off to sleep with a secretive little smile
turning up her lips. She was pleased with him, and Rolfe could not understand the reason for it.

"There won't be a next time," Rolfe promised his sleeping wife with feeling. He meant it.

Time proved him a liar. Rolfe was to discover that he was not immune to his wife's persuasions.

Having babies, he told Zoë a year later, was the most harrowing experience of his whole life.

Exhausted from her labors, Zoë smiled languidly up at him and promised, "You'll do better the next time, dear."

Rolfe groaned. Salome laughed. The dowager gently rocked Rolfe's second son in her arms.