Promise Me Tonight (27 page)

As she softly sang the words, the midwife rummaged through her bag and pulled out a length of blue thread, which she proceeded to tie around one of Isabella’s fingers.

Saint Bride, come, enter this home,


Come, come, an’ you are welcome;


Offer aid t’ the woman here,


An’ keep her babe frae reif an’ wear.

Now, Isabella had never been one for magic or superstition. To her mind, a cat was a cat, regardless of its color, and if the toadstools in the forest happened to be growing in a circular formation, well, she would have been far more perturbed if the mushrooms had spelled out her name. While other girls giggled over omens, the only thing Isabella saw in the leaves left in a teacup was that the drinker had been thirsty.

She might be impulsive, even flighty at times, but she liked to think that at her core, she was a creature of logic and intelligence. That being said, she was ready to swear on a stack of Bibles that Mrs. Drummond was some sort of white witch, because whatever the woman was doing with her chanting and her blue threads, it was working. She could feel the babe start to shift downward, creating such an excruciating pressure in her lower back that she thought she was being split in two. White lightning flashed behind her eyelids, and she couldn’t seem to stop screaming, even though her throat felt raw.

Mrs. Drummond took her place at the foot of the bed and guided Isabella into the proper position, spreading her thighs and bracing her feet against the bed’s footboard. For modesty’s sake, the midwife covered her with a sheet from her shoulders to her knees, but Isabella couldn’t have cared less. At that point, an entire regiment could have marched through the bedroom doors and it wouldn’t have mattered one whit. The age-old instinct to have the baby was settling over her like a heavy mantle, cloaking her from the distractions of the world around her.

Although she still felt the presence of the other women in the room, she was in some separate, higher realm, consisting only of the intimate communion between her and her baby. Her despair deserted her, replaced by an intense focus and a quiet serenity. She knew what she had to do. When the next contraction gripped her, Isabella listened to her body’s demands, bore down with all her might, and yelled loud enough that she was certain people several villages over could hear her.

“Verra good,” Mrs. Drummond exclaimed. “Let’s ha’ another jest like it.”

Gulping in a deep breath of air, Isabella pushed again until her face felt quivery and tight and the blood was pounding fiercely in her temples.

“Breathe, darling,” her mother reminded her as she wiped a cool cloth over Izzie’s flushed face.

“Again,” the midwife commanded.

Panting heavily, Isabella complied. Tears leaked from her eyes, mixing with the beads of sweat coursing down her face. How on earth had her mother gone through this so many times? She must have voiced the question aloud, for her mother began to laugh and patted her hand.

“The first child is always the hardest,” she said, “though the twins were by no means easy. In hindsight, that was clearly an omen, but”—she shrugged—“trust me, as soon as you hold your baby in your arms, you forget everything else.”

“Aye.” Mrs. Drummond nodded vigorously. “ ’ Tis always the same. Ye’ll soon see when you hold your own bairn. ’Twill be verra, verra soon. Another push now, dearie. Jest a few more.”

“I’m not sure I can.” She was so tired, exhausted to her very bones; it would surely be impossible to find the strength for even one more. She wondered whether it would be possible for the midwife to shove the baby back up into her belly and leave it there for a few days while she got some rest. It seemed like an excellent solution, and she was just about to suggest it when she heard a voice in her head—James’s voice.

You can do this, sweetheart. Our baby needs you. You can do this. I’ll help you. We’ll push together.

“I can do this,” Izzie whispered to herself. Her baby needed her. The thought was a call to action, and she valiantly ignored the awful pain and fatigue, bearing down once again, praying that she would not fail the tiny life inside her.

“I can see the head,” Mrs. Drummond crowed excitedly.

Isabella closed her eyes and thought of James. Despite everything that had happened between them, the very thought of him still soothed her.

One more, love.

She pushed with all she was worth and felt the baby slowly emerge from her body. First the head, then the shoulders, and then the rest slid out in a quick, slippery rush. A harsh wail pierced the silence that had fallen over the room. She instinctively reached down for her baby, and the midwife placed the tiny infant on Isabella’s chest.

“A beautiful wee lassie,” the midwife announced.

“A girl,” Izzie whispered, looking down in awe at the precious baby she had brought into the world. They were still connected, she saw, by the dark cord running from the child back into herself. She patted her daughter’s head, so small and fragile, marveling at the downy softness of the almost white blond wisps of hair.

She nearly cried when the midwife took her away to cut the cord, but her baby was soon returned to her, having been cleaned up and cozily swaddled in a blanket. Isabella’s mother and aunt were each permitted to hold her, cooing nonsense and exclaiming over every miniature feature, but then Isabella grew unaccountably jealous and held out her arms to get her daughter back.

Since they hadn’t yet hired a wet nurse, the midwife showed Isabella how to place the baby at her breast, where she happily began nursing, her tiny eyelids fluttering closed in blissful exhaustion. Izzie felt much the same. She was more tired than she had ever been in her life, but she was remarkably content and pleased with herself as well.

“Have you thought of a name?” her mother inquired. “I have always thought Ophelia quite lovely, or how about Rosalind, or—”

“Bride,” said Isabella.

“Aye, Bride’s a grand name and sae fittin’ as it were Saint Bride who helped drive oot the fairies so ye could deliver the wee lassie.” Mrs. Drummond voiced her approval.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer Bianca, or Beatrice, or how about—”

“Bride,” Isabella repeated stubbornly. “Bride Kathleen Sheffield.”

Her mother looked pained that not even the middle name was going to be Shakespearean.

“As Mrs. Drummond said, Saint Bride
did
assist in breaking the fairies’ spell,” her aunt solemnly pointed out, though her eyes glinted with laughter.

“Bride was the name of James’s sister,” Isabella explained softly, her eyes growing a bit teary. “And Kathleen was his mother. I just want her to have some part of her father with her in case—” Her voice broke.

“Bride Kathleen Sheffield,” her mother said lovingly, sniffling a bit as she smiled down at her granddaughter. “Welcome to the family, little one.”

Chapter 17

Allow me to thank you once more for all your assistance. I know I told you that I had no message for you to pass along to my errant husband but, as is a woman’s prerogative, I have changed my mind. Should my husband contact you, you may tell him this: While penitent groveling, fine jewelry, and any other tokens of apology will be accepted, nothing can change his having broken his promise to me. I shall never forgive him, and I don’t wish to see him ever again.

From the correspondence of Isabella, Lady Dunston,

age twenty

Letter to Timothy Marbly, Esq., which, fortunately for the

sender, was found by a very wise, very loving sister before it

could be sent—July 1798

J
ames stood at the ship’s railing, a position he had held for the past two weeks, more impatient than ever now that the London docks were visible in the distance. He breathed in the tang of the salty sea air, relishing the grim, overcast, utterly English sky.

“Hard to believe we’re almost there. Feels as if I’ve been away for a lifetime at least,” said the man beside him. James turned and nodded at Davies. Both men had been injured at Aboukir Bay and had become friends during their long recoveries in Naples. Despite the difference in their stations—Davies was the youngest son of a country vicar—they were of an age, and they got on so well together that James had offered the man a position in his household as an alternative to going back to sea. Davies had accepted and, without a clear job description, had decided his position entailed taking care of James in whatever ways he could.

“I left in March, and now it’s November,” James remarked absently. His recovery in Naples had been painfully slow, but the doctors had kept telling him it was a miracle he was alive at all. Had the bullet in his shoulder been a trifle lower or had the one in his midsection been a couple inches higher, he would have been past saving.

As it was, his shoulder was stiff and often ached like the very devil, but it was a small price to pay. By the grace of God, he had been given a second chance at life. This time he was going to do it right. Assuming, that was, that Isabella would forgive him. Doubtful, that. Remembering the bloodthirsty games she had delighted in as a child, he supposed it was more likely that his little hellion of a wife would murder him on sight.

“Do you think the countess will be very angry?” Davies asked, echoing his thoughts.

“I think ‘very angry’ is an understatement. When I think about the reception I’m likely to receive, I almost envy Ethan and his bachelor life on the
Theseus
.”

“You don’t mean that,” reproached Davies.

He was right. James didn’t envy Ethan in the slightest. His wandering days were over. All he wanted was to be with Isabella, to apologize for leaving her, to tell her how much he loved her and admired her.
Soon
, he promised himself.
Soon.

But two days later, when the carriage finally pulled up in front of Dunston House, James was disappointed to find the knocker off the door and the place closed up but for a skeleton staff.

“Has Lady Dunston lately been in residence?” he asked one of the remaining footmen, trying to keep his tone casual.

“Lady Dunston?” the man responded, obviously taken aback by the question. “She’s never set foot here, far as I know.”

James frowned. Where was his wife? Surely she wasn’t residing at Sheffield Park. That place was a marble mausoleum. And now that she was married, she couldn’t still be at Weston Manor, could she? Why would she, when she had Dunston House to do with as she wished?

“Makes no bloody sense,” he muttered to Davies, angry that Isabella wasn’t awaiting him in London, even though there was no earthly reason for him to expect her to be there.

Aside from his having been gravely wounded.

Although he’d been told that news of the battle hadn’t reached England until the first week in October, it was November now. Surely the Admiralty would have sent a messenger. . . . She
had
to know. He was certain she had been angry when she found out that he had joined the navy, but he had been hurt, damn it. Shouldn’t the woman who had professed she would love him forever be in London to fret and fuss over him? Not that he wanted fretting and fussing, blast it. He scowled.

“Er, congratulations on your marriage, my lord,” the footman mumbled, and scurried away.

As there was no cook in residence, James left Davies to scavenge and went to his club to eat. His shoulder was bothering him, which put him in even more of a foul mood, so he requested a private room to avoid running into any of his acquaintances. It wasn’t lost on him that the last time he had come there, he had ended up in the navy.

After a restless night, James concluded he had no choice but to head for Sheffield Park. First, though, he decided to pay a call to his solicitor. He figured he might as well check to make sure nothing had happened in the months he had been gone, even though he fully expected that all was in order.

“My lord, I see you are alive and well,” the solicitor said archly as he escorted James into his office. From his disapproving tone of voice, though, James suspected the man would have been happier to see him battered and bloody, at the very least. And what was that about, he’d like to know? It seemed the man had conveniently forgotten who paid his quite-generous wages.

“Thank you, Mr. Marbly,” James responded curtly. “I trust there have been no problems in my absence?”

The solicitor leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, regarding James speculatively. “That depends,” he finally said.

“On what?” James demanded, uncomfortable being the subject of such intense scrutiny.

“Well, I suppose it depends on whether or not you would classify the situation with Lady Dunston as a
problem
.”

At the mention of his wife, James shot out of his chair like a cannon. Scenarios flashed through his mind, each more terrible than the next, setting his heart hammering violently. “Oh God, what’s happened? Is she all right? Where is she?” he asked frantically.

“Calm yourself, my lord. Her ladyship is fine, or rather, she is as well as can be expected, given the circumstances.”

“The circumstances?”

“Your leaving, my lord.” The solicitor’s face was full of reproach. “Lady Dunston contacted me shortly after you left, wishing to know where you could be located. She was most mightily displeased when I refused to impart that knowledge.”