R Is for Rebel (32 page)

“Shall we go down?” she whispered.

Wolf was sound asleep in their big bed.

Eliot put his paperback down on the mahogany drum table next to the chair he was sitting in, then stood up and stretched his arms over his head. Abigail reached her slim arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against the vibrating tension of the extended muscles across his chest. He brought his arms down around her waist, so they nearly doubled back around to the sides of her hips.

“Are you nervous?” he asked.

She looked up, surprised. “No. Why would I be?”

“I don't know. We are really a couple now. I am having antiquated notions of asking the duke for your hand in marriage. That sort of thing.”

“Oh, Eliot. You wouldn't!” She was still whispering in deference to the sleeping child, but it was a rising whisper.

“Let's not argue in front of the child.” He loosened his arms from around her waist and pulled her hand into his. They left the room quietly and stepped into the wide carpeted hall. “Why wouldn't I?” he asked in a low voice, now that they were out of the boy's earshot.

“Because it is patently absurd. I don't need Max's approval to get married. I might need the queen's, but that's another matter altogether.” She tried to laugh it off.

Max was having none of it. “That's not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Enlighten me.”

“I meant, I want everything about us to be valid, official, open to scrutiny. Pure.”

“You are such a mystery to me sometimes, Eliot. On the one hand, you are this passionate, freethinking lover, and on the other, you use words like
scrutiny
and
valid
with no hint of irony.”

He smiled and shrugged to let her know it was all true.

“I'm yours,” she gave in simply. “Do with me what you will.” She kissed the palm of his hand, giving it a tiny lick that sent a hot surge of desire shooting through him.

“Don't do that, you devil.” He pulled his hand back as if it had been scorched.

Abigail's smile was all innocence as they held hands and made their way, together, down the wide front stairs and across the main hall into the drawing room to meet up with the others for a cocktail.

Devon and Sarah were sitting in a snug corner of one of the dark green velvet sofas in front of the large fireplace in the main living room. Bronte was beached at the opposite end.

James was standing in front of the fireplace, having just taken a drink from Max, who was just then making a place for himself next to Bronte.

Marisa was having an animated conversation with Willa that seemed to put James's forward tendencies into question. Before getting his glass to his lips, James laughed and added, “Marisa is totally exaggerating!”

Sarah looked up quickly and said, “Wait, is Mary a nickname?” Then turned to clarify with the lady in question.

Bronte felt the slight buzz of tension and put her hand on Max's arm to stave off his conversation. “What was that?”

James looked apologetically at Marisa, then shrugged his shoulders. “I'm sorry. Do you want to tell them or shall I?”

“Ooooh,” Bronte said as she rubbed her palms together, “a proper drawing room drama! Tell! Tell!” Then to the ensuing silence. “Someone!”

Sarah looked from James to Marisa and back to James. “Well, one of you needs to say something apparently.”

Marisa spoke first. “It all seems quite silly now, but we all have a mutual acquaintance and I didn't want to, well, for it to get back to him that I was here. You know. With James.”

Sarah seemed to sense the gravity of what was about to happen before anyone else did. Her back stiffened and she leaned forward to put her drink down on the coffee table. Devon continued to smile his happy, ignorant smile as he enjoyed rubbing her now-accessible lower back. She flicked his hand away in absentminded irritation, needing to give her full attention to what was about to explode in messy clumps all over the perfectly innocent walls of the Dunlear drawing room.

“What is—” Devon tried quietly.

“Shhhh!” she snapped at him without looking.

“Go on,” Bronte prodded kindly.

“Well,” Marisa looked to James for support and his kind eyes offered plenty. She took a deep breath. “So, basically, it's just… my real name is Marisa Plataneau—”

Abigail stood frozen in the doorway, Eliot coming behind her.

Bronte looked over to Sarah and asked idly, “Why does that name ring a bell?”

James put his glass down on the mantle and looked across the room at Eliot Cranbrook and asked Max, “What the hell is he doing here?”

Willa Osborne took a careful sip of her vodka and watched the entire scene as if she had a front row seat at the Wimbledon men's finals. David looked at Devon to see if there was anything to be done and Devon merely shrugged his shoulders in response, still sulking at his wife's dismissal of his roving hand.

Max stood up to see Abigail and Eliot standing like statues at the entrance to the room. “Well, are you going to come in or not?”

Bronte spoke again, in Sarah's general direction, but to anyone who might be able to answer. “Why is James mad at Eliot?”

Marisa was sitting on the club fender in front of the fireplace and choked on her sip of wine. James knelt in front of her to see if she was all right and asked all sorts of murmured versions of whether or not she wanted to leave or what else he could do. She was shaking her head quietly.

Bronte snapped her fingers. “That's Eliot's fiancée's name!”

Max looked from Abigail to Eliot to Bronte to Marisa to James and back to Bronte. “I think you may be right, Bron.”

Bronte started laughing, quietly at first, then with such hysterical convulsions that her husband was momentarily concerned for her sanity. “Oh, Max,” she squeezed out, “you always have to get everyone's name at least when you put together a party!” She continued laughing uncontrollably. “I mean, it's like Oscar Wilde, for fuck's sake. Ow!”

For a few moments, he thought she was grabbing her stomach in peals of laughter, then he realized her face had gone from mirth to misery. She looked up at him with a quick, intimate plea. “Oh, Max, of all the times. I was finally starting to have some fun.” She squeezed her eyes shut and bit down on her lower lip. The first contraction passed and she looked up to see nine concerned faces in a perfect semicircle around her, Max on one knee in front of her.

He started barking out orders almost immediately. “Devon, start timing her contractions, please. Sarah, call Dr. Armitage and ask him if it's best to move her to the local hospital in Bognor Regis or if we should take the chance of getting her to St. Mary's in London. Abigail, go tell Jeremy that he should bring the Range Rover around front and be sure it has the bags in the back. He knows which ones. And maybe a couple of pillows and blankets just in case Armitage says we can make the trip into London.”

Bronte tried to ignore the next contraction—she refused to believe they could be coming on this strong this quickly—but her strained, pale face and the telltale lip-biting gave her away.

“Was that another one?” Devon asked.

She didn't say anything.

Max looked at Devon and then at Bronte. “Well, was it?!” he cried.

She nodded and a single tear came down her right cheek.

Sarah came back from the phone in the front hall, where she had finished speaking to the doctor that she and Bronte shared. “Dr. Armitage says not to worry. The contractions probably won't come again for a few hours. She's just beginning, so—”

“When did he say the contractions would be too close together to move her?” Max asked.

“Not for hours or even days. They'd need to be within three minutes—”

“Was that another one?” Devon asked again, smiling because he felt like he was getting the hang of seeing the signs cross over Bronte's face, and that gave him some sense of accomplishment. Scientific method and all that.

She nodded.

“Very accurate little things already, aren't they!” Devon crowed, tapping his watch in admiration. “Three minutes exactly. Both times. Let's see what happens next, shall we?”

Bronte bared her teeth at Devon and a low rumble escaped her lips.

“Did you just growl at me?” he asked, affronted.

She tried to lean forward to hit him, but her stomach was so huge and the residual pain from the contraction so fresh that she just looked like a tick stuck on its back.

Sarah intervened. “Devon! Keep your eye on the timing and no more jokes. It's not a spectator sport, for goodness' sake.”

Devon looked a bit crestfallen for having failed at his duties, but he reset his digital watch to zero again as the pain faded from Bronte's eyes.

Jeremy came to the door to let Max know the car was ready and he'd be happy to drive them if Max would prefer to ride in the back with Her Grace. Abigail came in behind him and made her way quietly to Eliot's side, where he seemed to still be in a state of shock at the presence of Marisa Plataneau right here in the Dunlear drawing room.

Bronte screamed out this time, no longer willing or able to repress the guttural response to the bone-crushing pain. “Max!”

He waved Jeremy off and returned to kneel in front of Bronte. “I'm here, darling. I think the girls are eager and we're going to do it here, okay?” Max looked at Devon for confirmation.

Devon, chastised, simply said, “Two minutes, forty seconds.” He clicked the side buttons on the watch to reset the timer to zero when Bronte sagged back into the sofa.

“Bron, let's get you upstairs to the bed. You'll feel much more comfortable. Dev and I can carry you.”

She had her eyes closed and her complexion looked gray. “It's a complicated birth, Max. Get a doctor to attend, please.”

Sarah caught Max's look and nodded, then left the room to call Dr. Armitage again to let him know the turn of events and ask him how best to proceed. By the time Sarah returned to the living room, Devon and Max had carted Bronte upstairs, with Willa trailing behind for moral support. That left Marisa and James, Eliot and Abigail, and David Osborne all staring at one another in silent confusion.

Sarah looked around the room and caught Abigail's eye.

“Everything okay in here?”

Abigail snapped back to reality and stood up. “We're all set. I'll make sure everyone has a fresh drink. No worries. You do whatever needs doing and we'll all”—she looked around the motley guests—“be just fine. Please tell the cook to hold supper until whenever you think best.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. “I'll run upstairs to let Max know the doctor from Bognor Regis is on his way, and Dr. Armitage is coming out from London as quickly as possible. I'll also make a pass through the kitchens to let the cook know that dinner will need to be somewhat delayed.”

After Sarah explained what was happening to the cook, the young kitchen maid muttered something to her superior. Upon receiving a gentle shove from the head cook, the woman stepped forward. “Miss Sarah?”

“Yes, Pam?”

“Well, I wanted to let you know I am a midwife and a doula. If you think Lady Bronte might welcome it”—she looked back at the cook, who gave her an encouraging lift of her chin—“I'd be happy to assist or—”

“Ah! You blessed woman. Come with me, this instant!”

“If I may? There are a few oils and things I might be able to bring along to help her relax.”

“Of course. And something for Max wouldn't go amiss either.”

The capable young woman grabbed a breadbasket and put in some dried lavender, some hempseed oil, some other herbs and small bottles that Sarah didn't recognize, and a stack of freshly pressed white cotton kitchen towels. Then she ducked into the pantry and came out with an unopened bottle of very old scotch. “For the duke,” Pam said with a smile.

“Off we go then,” said Sarah, gesturing with an open arm to move the girl along.

***

The physician from Bognor Regis happened to be attending a sick child in nearby Binsted. When he received the call from the hospital that he was needed at Dunlear, he was in attendance within fifteen minutes. Between his somber, traditional, no-nonsense organization, and sweet Pam's gentle ministrations to ease the tension in Bronte's back and legs, the whole scene in the ducal suite took on the aspect of a perfectly orchestrated play.

Bronte labored for another three hours, ample time for Dr. Armitage to make the trip from London, in possession of the neonatal oxygen tanks and other specialized equipment that might be required. In any event, nothing was needed to assist in the births.

Little Lady Sylvia arrived first, just before midnight, with an almost instantaneous demanding shriek that made an exhausted Bronte smile at how apt her chosen name already proved to be.

Bronte had assumed the two babes would slide out one after the other, like peas shelled from a fresh summer pod, but the doctor said it was not uncommon for hours, or in some extreme cases, even days to pass between the delivery of one twin and the next. Pam cleaned tiny Sylvia quickly and efficiently, wrapped her in tight, clean linen, and then handed her back to Bronte to nurse. Max crawled up on the bed alongside the two of them and watched as Sylvia's glassy but strangely probing eyes gazed first at Bronte, blinked slowly closed, then opened again to look at Max. She looked at him with a fierce curiosity, then her tiny lips began to purse and a wave of hungry fury flashed across her features.

“You'd better feed her, I think,” Max whispered.

“You think?” Bronte laughed softly. She adjusted her breast to get the newborn situated for what she supposed would be days of fidgeting, fine-tuning, and micromanaging until they found the proper latch, as it had been with Wolf.

“Ow!” Bronte yelped, startling the baby and setting off a new wave of shrieking.

Pam walked quickly to the side of the bed. “May I?”

Bronte nodded.

“You need to let her know who's in charge, Lady Bronte, or she'll pick up bad habits right from the start.”

Bronte looked at the lovely Pam as if she were an angel sent from heaven.

Pam smiled and treated Bronte's breast as if it were a loaf she were preparing in the kitchen. “Here, let me…” She brought baby Sylvia's squalling, open mouth to the nipple at an odd angle, then shoved the babe onto Bronte's breast with firm authority. Bronte looked down in surprised relief. Baby Sylvia was suckling with hearty satisfaction and there was no pain other than the residual sting of the original bite.

“Thank you, Pam,” Bronte said, then looked back at the beautiful little baby and felt the familiar tears. “She's already a demanding little thing, isn't she?” Bronte whispered to Max.

He kissed Bronte's neck, then moved lower to kiss Sylvia's downy forehead. The baby's eyes flickered behind closed lids, acknowledging the soft attention. “She certainly is. I can't imagine where she gets it.”

After the babe had taken her fill, and the first burst of new life was being overtaken by the subsequent exhaustion of her ordeal, Sylvia dozed happily off to sleep in her mother's arms, her tiny mouth agape like a little drunken sailor.

Bronte carefully handed the swaddled infant to her husband and sighed in exhausted pleasure. “I love you, Max.”

As if on cue, Bronte's body went into labor again, this time producing a docile lamb after forty minutes of near-painless pushing and controlled breathing. Little Catherine was a tender, quiet morsel from the moment she emerged. Her eyes were serious and probing like her sister's had been, but they held a sweet curiosity as opposed to that regal insistence that Sylvia would possess for the rest of her days.

***

Downstairs, the strained interactions between Abigail, Eliot, James, and Marisa were slowly progressing beyond the initial wave of stunned confusion.

After Abigail had refilled all their glasses, Devon and Sarah returned with Willa and they all continued to stare at each other.

Eliot recovered his powers of speech first.

“Marisa, I think you and I should go speak privately—”