The Secret Mistress (44 page)

They were unnecessary words. She had no choice, even though every time she was convinced it would be the last, that she could not possibly do it even once more. She wanted to sleep. She had never craved anything more. During her lowest moments she had even wanted to die, but that was no longer the case.
Her baby had been born
. They had a daughter, she and Edward, and dying was out of the question, pain and exhaustion notwithstanding.

Indeed, she would
not
die. Or be defeated by pain. Or give in to exhaustion. She gathered all her remaining strength, which she would have thought nonexistent even just moments ago, and pushed with all her might. And she was rewarded with a great gushing of freedom a moment after her ears half registered the astonished words of the physician.

“Oh, my,” he said, “there is another one.”

And then a baby was crying lustily and Angeline opened her eyes to see what had happened to her daughter—she had
thought
Alma had taken her out to Edward. But there was
another
baby, dangling upside down in the physician’s hands, its little arms flailing helplessly, its body slimy from birth.

“You have a son, my lady,” the physician said. “I have never delivered twins before. I did not understand what I was facing.”

Which evidence of his inexperience might have made her nervous had she known it in advance.

Angeline reached up both arms, and he set the child down on her stomach in all his slime, and Angeline set her hands on him, one behind his head, the other behind his bottom, and felt his warmth and his humanness before the nurse took him away to wash him and swaddle him.

The indignity of his birth over with, this baby fell silent. His hair was going to be fair.

“He is an Ailsbury,” she said.

And her heart swelled with love almost to the point of bursting. And with yearning to hold her daughter again. And to see Edward.

She was a mother—twice over. And he was a father. After all this time. Seven long years.

She let her hands fall reluctantly to her sides when the nurse took the baby, and she fell half asleep while the physician finished with her and Betty cleaned her and the bed and Alma got her into a clean nightgown and brushed her hair.

Then she woke sleepily as the quiet little bundle that was her son was laid in the crook of her arm and Alma opened the door and Edward came in, an identical bundle in the crook of
his
arm.

He approached the bed and sat down carefully on the side of it, never taking his eyes off her.

“Angeline,” he said, “how
are
you?”

“I was never better in my life.” She smiled at him and then looked down into their daughter’s face as he looked down into their son’s.

He set his bundle down in the crook of her free arm and took the other into his own arms. He rearranged it so that the baby’s face was close to his own and he gazed for several silent moments.

“Welcome, my son,” he said softly at last, and he smiled with such tenderness that Angeline’s heart turned over.

He looked back at Angeline.

“If someone had told me an hour ago,” he said, “that it was possible to love two children equally and to overflowing, I would have said it was impossible. But it is not, is it?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Love is infinite. You have your heir, Edward.”

“Yes.” He looked from one to the other of the babies again. “More important, we have our
son
. And our
daughter
. Not necessarily in that order. I have a strong suspicion that little Madeline is not ever going to let Matthew forget that she is the elder.”

“We are able to use
both
names,” she said.

Lady Madeline Mary Elizabeth and Matthew James Alexander,
Viscount Leeson. Large names for two little bundles of new humanity.

“Angeline,” he said, leaning slightly toward her, “thank you.”

She smiled though even the effort to do that was exhausting.

“I love you so very much,” she said.

He cupped the side of her face with his free hand and leaned over her to kiss her softly on the lips. He did not need to say anything. That was what seven years of marriage did for one.

There were those who said that the luster went from a marriage before one year was over and that all but the legal and ecclesiastical bonds was dead within seven years.

She did not suppose it was possible that she was
more
in love with Edward now than she had been seven years ago, or he with her. That would be to insult what they had felt for each other when they married. But it was certainly true that she was
as much
in love. It was also true that the quality of her love had deepened. She knew him now in almost every way one human being could know another.
Almost
every way. No one could ever know absolutely everything there was to know about another, of course, and if it were possible it would not be desirable, because there should always be more to discover, always something new to surprise and delight.

Even she could not have guessed that Edward would have
tears
in his eyes as he looked from their son to their daughter and back again—and back yet again.

And of course
no one
else knew him as she knew him. To the world he was a dutiful, quiet, rather dull man. To his family he was a warm and loving and dutiful man. Only she knew the depths of passion that he poured out in his private and sexual relationship with his wife.

With his
secret mistress
.

She had never stopped being that. A wife could be a dull creature, as could a husband.

A lover and his mistress were endlessly exciting.

Except that excitement was just too wearying to be contemplated now. Perhaps later …

The little bundle that was Madeline was being lifted from her arm. Edward was holding her, she saw when she opened her eyes. The nurse beside him was holding Matthew.

“Sleep,” Edward said. “And that
is
an order.”

She exerted herself sufficiently to smile once more.

“Yes, my lord,” she said and was asleep almost before the words were out.