Midnight Pleasures (39 page)

Chapter 26

S
ophie showed the doctor out, quite as if she weren’t shaking inside. As she walked up the stairs, Patrick stepped out of the library.

“Weren’t you planning to tell me what the doctor said?”

“Yes, later.”

“No.” Patrick’s denial came through clenched teeth. “Join me, please. I should like to know why you summoned the doctor to the house.”

Sophie took a quick look about. No footmen happened to be assigned to the hallway at that moment.

“I don’t think I shall, at the moment. I am going to my room.”

“Sophie!”

They probably heard that bellow all the way to the servants’ quarters, Sophie thought. She walked back down the stairs to within three steps of the bottom and paused.

“He said … he said …” She could not say what he had said. “He said that he will return tomorrow morning.” That was half the truth, less than half. Sophie’s heart twisted in unbearable anguish. Oh God, she had to get upstairs, away from Patrick’s hard, questioning face. Her head was throbbing in heavy, unending waves of pain.

“You didn’t want the baby,” she heard herself say, hearing her own words dully, as if from under water.

The savage look on Patrick’s face made her grasp the railing in alarm. What
was
happening to her head? Patrick was speaking, but she didn’t hear. Her heart was thudding, heavier than her head, two claustrophobic rhythms going on at once. Sophie clutched the railing tightly, the sensation of clenched fingers pulling her out of the maelstrom of pain for a moment.

Patrick was shouting at her. And behind him, down the hallway, Clemens paused, his face startled and horrified. Sophie forced her mind to clear, to concentrate on what Patrick was saying to her. She looked down at him. His black eyes were flashing at her … with disgust, probably, she thought dully.

“What in bloody hell are you saying?” Patrick’s voice was thick with rage. “How can you say such a thing to me? I
do
want the child!”

Sophie gave him a little smile. Quite suddenly she felt as if her head were about to float off her shoulders. At least the terrible throbbing was lessening. “I know you don’t want children,” she said to him, almost chidingly, as if
he
were a child.

“Oh God, Sophie, what are you talking about?”

“You were glad you married me, don’t you remember? Because I’m probably just like my mother, and so you won’t have to deal with brats underfoot. But I’m not like my mother—” The thought made her head even more unsteady.

Patrick finally realized that Clemens was in the hallway and dealt the butler a glare that sent him whisking back through the door to the servants’ quarters. He tried to calm the surges of rage pressuring his chest. Sophie didn’t know what she was saying. She was pregnant. Pregnant women were always irrational.

“What are you talking about?” He spaced his words very carefully, as if he were speaking to a child.

Sophie looked at him in surprise. How she wished that this silly conversation were over so that she could lie down and be still. “You told Braddon,” she reminded him. “You told Braddon, and I heard you, that you were just as glad to be marrying me if you had to be leg-shackled, because likely I would be as incapable as my mother, and then you wouldn’t have a lot of brats underfoot.”

There was a moment of pounding silence.

“May I go to bed now?” Sophie began to back up the stairs. Now she felt certain that her head was floating above her, and her heart was beating so fast that she felt dizzy. She cautiously felt backward for the next stair, holding tightly to the railing. She was afraid to turn about and walk away while Patrick’s face was so black with rage. She shivered.

When Patrick spoke, his voice was grating, splintered. “I didn’t mean it, Sophie.”

Sophie just looked at him. His voice had started to have that otherworldly quality again, as if she were hearing through piles of cotton batting.

She nodded helpfully. “I’m sure you’re right,” she murmured.

Patrick looked at his wife hopelessly. She was backing away from him, a smile fixed on her lips. A pit of black, bottomless despair opened at his feet. Sophie believed the horrible words she had heard him say. No wonder she’d never fallen in love with him. No wonder she was looking at him as if he were the devil incarnate.

“Sophie!” He bellowed it, with all the force of pent-up frustration and raw pain swelling his heart. “Oh God, Sophie, I want the baby!”

But Sophie didn’t grasp his statement. She heard his rough voice as another bellow of rage, and it was one too many; she gasped almost thankfully as a sweet darkness flowed through her head, numbing the painful beat of blood in her ears, relaxing her clenched, throbbing fingers.

As Patrick leaped toward her in horror, Sophie swayed slightly and plummeted forward. It all seemed to happen so slowly. Her body fell forward like a rag doll, knees striking the next-to-bottom step, pregnant stomach slamming against the marble floor. The only thing Patrick caught as he desperately threw himself toward her was her head. With both his hands outstretched, he managed to stop Sophie’s head from striking the marble.

Carefully, carefully he turned her over and drew her into his arms. His wife’s face was dead white except for high-arching circles of red. Oh my God, that was no rouge. Her face was burning with fever, her body totally inert. The only thing Patrick could hear was blood pounding in his ears, a horrible rhythm that sorted itself into “please, please, please, please, please.”

Help. He needed help. Sophie’s eyes were closed, the eyelids pure blue.

“Clemens!”

Clemens appeared in fifteen seconds, a sure sign that he had retreated no farther than the opposite side of the servants’ door.

“Summon the doctor,” Patrick snapped.

Clemens looked stupefied, staring at the duchess lying on the floor. Then he looked up at his master and the expression of horror in his eyes turned to one of reproach.

“Dr. Lambeth, man! Now.” The blame in his butler’s eyes only confirmed the blame in Patrick’s heart. He turned back to Sophie, gently kissing her eyelids. She didn’t move.

Swiftly he felt his wife’s limbs to see if anything was broken, but they seemed intact. He whispered, “Sophie, I’m going to carry you upstairs now.” No response.

He gathered her up in his arms. Sophie’s head fell back against his left arm. Between the rise of her shoulders and the rise of her knees, where he held her, her stomach rose even higher.

Patrick swallowed hard. Oh God, if anything had happened to the babe. The drumbeat in his ears increased:
please, please, please, please
.

When Sophie’s maid arrived, running, Patrick had already stripped off Sophie’s morning gown and was pulling a nightdress over her head. Simone helped him silently, for which he was grateful. When Sophie was arranged in bed, the sheets drawn up to her neck, Patrick looked at Simone helplessly.

“What do we do now?”

“She hasn’t moved or spoken?”

Patrick just stared at her.

“She hasn’t woken up since falling down the stairs?”

“No.” His voice was husky with dread.

“We need to cool her down,” Simone said practically. “She’s burning up with fever, poor lamb.”

Patrick stepped outside the room and snapped at the footman hovering at the end of the hallway. Then he watched as Simone tenderly bathed Sophie’s face. Sophie twisted and moaned, trying to get away from the icy cloth. Finally he couldn’t bear to stand there helplessly, and took the cloth from Simone’s hands, pushing her away. He sat on the side of the bed.

“Wake up, Sophie,” he commanded softly, rubbing the cloth over his wife’s forehead. After a few minutes she opened her eyes.

“It hurts.” She fixed her eyes on his.

“Sophie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout….” He was almost babbling with relief.

Sophie frowned at him. “It hurts,” she repeated.

Patrick cupped her little face in his hands, giving her a quick kiss on her forehead. She was alarmingly hot under his lips.

“You have a fever, love. Fevers always hurt. Don’t worry. Dr. Lambeth will be here soon.”

“No! No, don’t let him come! He’ll make it happen.”

“Nothing is going to happen, darling.” Patrick began to rub the cloth over her face again. “I won’t let anything happen.”

“I don’t think you can stop it,” Sophie whispered. Her eyes were a dark midnight blue, still fastened on his. “You’ll hate me now.” Tears welled up in her beautiful eyes and spilled over.

Patrick’s heart jolted. She must be delirious, he thought as he bent over, kissing away the tears.

“Nothing could make me hate you, Sophie. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know how much I love you?”

But Sophie’s eyes had shifted away from his face. “It hurts!” she cried suddenly.

It was only when Simone handed him another cloth that Patrick realized that the one he was rubbing over her neck and face was now hot.

And so it continued. Occasionally Sophie opened her eyes and said incomprehensible things about how much he hated her, and meanwhile Patrick kept washing her face until the little rivulets of water trickling off her face had soaked through the sheets beneath her. He didn’t know what else to do, and he had to do something besides sending out more and more footmen with infuriated messages for Dr. Lambeth.

When the door finally opened, Patrick leveled a glare on the good doctor that would have shaken a less toughened practitioner. But Dr. Lambeth had dealt with many an angry relative, most recently a viscount who had just welcomed his fifth daughter into the world, and he judged husbands to be on the lesser side of rationality at the best of times. He bustled in importantly, standing at the head of the bed with two fingers delicately poised on Sophie’s forehead.

“A fever,” he said meditatively. Then he turned to Patrick. “Has it started yet?”

“What started yet?”

“The miscarriage, of course!” the doctor snapped. Really, he had no time for this sort of nonsense.

“Miscarriage … You’re quite sure that she will lose the baby?” Patrick’s heart felt as if someone had thrust a dagger into it.

“Yes.” The doctor didn’t bother to say anything further, and when Patrick opened his mouth to ask a question he just raised a finger condescendingly. Patrick realized that he was holding Sophie’s limp wrist and counting her pulse. Finally the doctor raised Sophie’s head and poured a hefty dose of laudanum down her throat.

Then he shot Patrick a glance. “I must request that you leave the room now, Your Grace.”

Patrick just looked back at him. Privately, Lambeth thought that although most husbands acted like the very devil when this sort of thing happened—an unfortunate business, losing the heir—this husband really looked like the devil. And he didn’t like the story of the young duchess falling down the stairs. Not that it would have made any difference.

When Patrick stood up, towering over him, his black eyes burning furiously into his, Lambeth thought again, Foakes looks like the devil
and
acts like him too.

Patrick’s voice was measured but the fury about to erupt in it was clear.

“I will stay here.” He backed up one step.

The doctor shrugged. Briskly he pulled down Sophie’s sheets and hauled up her nightdress, ignoring the barely suppressed movement of the husband. What did he think doctors did when they examined their female patients? Looked at them from across the room? He did a brief examination. Good: It looked as if her waters had already broken. Shouldn’t be long now.

He turned around, girding himself to deal with the husband, whose face had gone dead white, Lambeth noted dispassionately. Really, men didn’t belong in a birthing room. And he couldn’t think why this one was refusing to leave. The man looked as if he might faint, although there was only a small show of blood. Lambeth turned about and pulled up his patient’s sheet.

“I must insist that you leave,” Dr. Lambeth said as firmly as he could, instilling his voice with every drop of authority he had in his body.

Patrick shifted burning eyes to the doctor’s face.

“Why?”

“Your presence makes me uneasy,” Lambeth said bluntly. “I need all my wits about me to deliver a stillborn child when his mother is in a raging fever and half unconscious. I can’t have you standing about and almost giving me a facer every time I conduct a routine examination.”

Patrick met the doctor’s unsympathetic eyes. “Couldn’t the babe live? It’s … he’s seven months old.”

“No.” The doctor’s tone was final. “The child is not alive.”

“I won’t do anything. I will remain here.” Patrick pointed to the wall.

“No.”

Patrick looked at him and knew that he couldn’t intimidate Lambeth. The doctor had far too much sense of his own consequence.

“Is my wife in any danger?”

“I doubt it,” Lambeth said calmly, not even looking back at his patient, who was sleeping restlessly. “It’s probably better that Her Grace does not fully experience the birth. Not that it will be very painful, given that the child is not yet full-grown.”

Patrick swallowed, hard. He started to walk to the door. He stopped, wheeled about.