Saving Grace (29 page)

“We had agreed — prior to our child’s arrival — that I would attend her during the birth — as her physician.”

This surprised Grace, but she remembered Samuel mentioning that he’d studied medicine.

“I’d had as much training — though not experience —” he said ruefully, “as any of the physicians in the area, and Elizabeth had told me all along that she wanted it to be me who brought our child from her womb into the world.”

Grace looked away, feeling as if she were intruding upon a private moment not meant for her to see — or hear of even these years later. “Lord Sutherland held you responsible for Elizabeth’s death,” she guessed, hoping Samuel would be done with the telling. She’d only wanted to understand why Samuel kept his daughter hidden from her uncle.

“He blamed me for Elizabeth’s death. He still does.”

Grace met his anguished gaze. Samuel, too, held himself responsible. “But many women die in childbirth.” Her words sounded feeble.

“Most who do are not as strong and healthy as Elizabeth. She shouldn’t have died, and she probably wouldn’t have ...” He drew a shaking breath. “Had the child not been breech, or had I turned her with more care, or called a midwife as the others suggested.”

“You don’t know that.” Grace hurried to his defense. “The same might have happened with a midwife or a physician.”

“But I wouldn’t have been the one who killed her.” Samuel ran a hand over his face as if to wipe the memory away. “Elizabeth wanted me to do whatever it took to deliver the baby safely, and I did. I acquiesced when I knew she wasn’t coherent enough to realize what she was saying.”

“You did what she asked because she was
your wife
,”
Grace said.

“And
I
was her physician. It was my duty to remember that above all else.” Samuel hung his head, and this time Grace found herself unable to resist reaching out to him. She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he reached up and took her hand in his own.

“You don’t need to explain anything,” Grace said.

“But I want to.” He lifted his head to look at her. “You’re involved in this now too. You need to know the truth if you’re ever to understand Nicholas.”

Or you,
Grace thought.

She ached to heal the pain reflected in Samuel’s eyes, understanding, at least a little, what it was to want someone to understand something about you. Something they might misconstrue if you weren’t given the chance to explain. She’d finally had that chance and wanted Samuel to have the same. “Very well.” She took a deep breath and braced herself for the telling.

Samuel gave her an appreciative smile, different from his usual lighthearted grins. His eyes were dark and shadowed, as if he’d struggled with many sleepless nights.

Has the thought of telling me worried him so much?

“The baby was in breech position and would not come,” Samuel said. “I tried to turn her — Elizabeth hemorrhaged. Labor had taken hours, and then everything happened so quickly. Had I taken more care, had the midwife turned the child instead ...”

The scene he described was too awful to contemplate, and Grace found she could not do so. Before he’d shared this burden, she never would have known he had a well of grief and guilt running so deep.

“But your daughter lived.” Grace harbored only a vague hope that this was the right thing to say.

“She almost didn’t.” Samuel’s faraway look returned. “When Beth was finally delivered, the cord was around her neck, and she was unmoving. But I hadn’t a thought for her; I was doing all I could to stop Elizabeth’s bleeding, and so I handed the baby off to the midwife Nicholas had fetched. A while later, she came to tell us that the baby had died too. Lord Sutherland — the elder — his wife, and Nicholas were leaving, so grief stricken that none could bear remaining to see the infant. I went into her alone.”

An ache began in Grace’s throat. She struggled to swallow as she imagined grief-stricken Samuel going in to hold his child, no longer living herself.

“Her skin was blue and cold. I hadn’t even held her once, I’d been so focused on saving Elizabeth. I’d failed them both and wanted nothing more than to die myself.” Samuel rested his head in his hands. Grace imagined him doing the same on that awful night.

“I had to hold our child at least once. The elder Lord Sutherland had come in to see Elizabeth after the birth. He’d held her hand while I tried to stop the bleeding —”

“Shhh.” Grace said. Through the telling of the tale, he’d held her hand. Now she gave his a gentle squeeze. “It is enough, Samuel. I understand. You needn’t say more.”

As if he hadn’t heard her or could not stop, he spoke again. “I was alone in a house that felt like a tomb. I picked up the baby and pressed my lips to her forehead, a farewell kiss.”

Grace felt a tear fall and hurriedly wiped it away.
This was supposed to be a happy story. His daughter lives.

“I held her tiny hand in mine and then detected a heartbeat so faint that I know it could only have been a miracle that I’d felt it,” Samuel said. “My hands felt clumsy and trembling as I swaddled Beth. I pulled a chair as near the fire as I dared get, and I sat with her there, the long night through, my face close to hers, breathing life into her and begging her to stay.”

“You saved her,” Grace said, smiling encouragingly. “You saved your daughter’s life.”

“After depriving her of her mother,” Samuel said.

“No.” Grace shook her head. “It was a case of saving your child, of doing what Elizabeth wished.”

Samuel’s look of distress cut off her arguments. “You were not there,” he said, his tone still kind, though firm. “I know what I did, and I must live with it every day for the rest of my life. Some day —” He drew in a shaky breath, then exhaled quickly. “I will have to tell Beth.”

“When that time comes, I am certain she will be grateful for her life and realize that both of her parents acted out of pure love.” With a last, gentle squeeze, Grace pulled her hand from his.

“Don’t leave,” Samuel said, a plea in his voice that made her heart ache.

“I’m not.” It was fortunate Lord Sutherland was still away. He’d left for London the morning after their visit to the tenants. She’d often worried about being discovered conversing in the garden with his nemesis, but today there was little chance of that.

“Why did you never tell Elizabeth’s family that the baby lived?” Grace asked.

“Because Nicholas threatened an inquiry. That was all he could do to me, having given his word to Elizabeth that he would never meet me in a duel.”

“The two of you were not friends?”

“Quite the opposite,” Samuel said, a bit of wry humor returned to his expression. “From the beginning — from the first day I conversed with Elizabeth in this very spot — Nicholas has seen me as an interloper. He holds me responsible not only for her death but for the death of his father — and for the destruction of their family.”

“But — why?” Grace asked, a little unsettled, and a little stung, thinking of Samuel meeting in this same place with Elizabeth.

He shrugged. “For one, I do not meet his social requirements.”

“Surely he’s not that much of a snob,” Grace said. She thought of the Lord Sutherland she’d come to know and could not see that he cared much for society and its many rules. His mother, however, was a different matter entirely.

“No,” Samuel agreed. “It is less snobbery and more Nicholas’s protective nature. He and his sister were very close — best friends, really. He had a difficult time believing anyone could be good enough for her. He found me far less than deserving.”

“Apparently Elizabeth did not see it that way.” Grace smiled, though inside she felt peculiar, as she imagined Samuel with his wife.
I have no right to feel anything
, she reminded herself.
I have no claim upon him beyond friendship.

“‘But love is blind,’” Samuel quipped. “‘And lovers cannot see the pretty follies themselves commit; for if they could, Cupid himself would blush to see me thus transformed to a boy.’”

Grace sighed with pleasure. “
The Merchant of Venice
. I have not read that for a while. I shall have to search for it tonight.”

Samuel nodded. “Wisdom from Shakespeare himself. Never truer than with Elizabeth. We fell madly in love, and she was blind to my faults — my lack of title and my less-than-pure bloodline.

“It sounds like she was sensible. What are bloodlines to —” Grace studied Samuel, truly looked at him as she had not since the night of his ball. His hair was mussed today — a sight she found endearing, though it was a sure sign of his worry. His eyes, usually merry, had proven equally striking when serious. Stubble grew along his jaw line, further attesting to his state of unrest. His cheeks were slightly pink from the cold, and his lips —

What am I thinking?
Grace reined her thoughts to an abrupt halt. “What are bloodlines to a man as kind and good as you?”

Samuel’s mouth turned down in a mock pout. “I had expected something a little more with the way you were appraising me.”

There is more. Much, much, more.
Grace turned away, though that did not lessen the attraction she felt toward him. “That is all that is proper for me to say.”

“Oh, oh,” he teased. “I’ll not let you off so easily, Miss Thatcher.” He reached for her, but Grace had already moved out of range to a safer distance at the far end of the bench.

“I am glad to see I have lifted you from your melancholy, at least,” she said.

“It never lasts long.” The smile that reached his eyes was back in place. “I have Beth to think of. She is already at a disadvantage, growing up without her mother, so I must do the best I can for her. I must bring as much joy and light into her life as possible.”

Grace thought back to her first impressions upon entering Samuel’s home. As she had walked through the doors, there had been an almost tangible feeling of joy. Every room had been filled with light, the air sweet with the scent of roses.

Elizabeth’s roses.

“You are a good father,” Grace said, wondering briefly what her life might have been like had her father taken half so much care with his children.

“It is the most esteemed title a man can have,” Samuel said. “Beth is my reason for living. Loving her and the joy it brings has sustained me.”

Grace thought she understood.
What would I have done without Helen and Christopher?
“Nothing ever came of the inquiry?” she asked.

“No, gratefully,” Samuel said. “I went to London soon after Beth’s birth, in part to hide her, and in part to obtain legal counsel. But the inquiry never went far. As you said, many women die in childbirth, and a large percentage of those involve infants with breech presentation. It was determined that nothing more could have been done to save Elizabeth.”

Yet you have never stopped blaming yourself.
“Lord Sutherland and his family never came to see it that way,” Grace said.

“No.” Samuel’s face clouded. “Nicholas has made it his life’s mission to ruin me. He is determined to destroy me financially. I suppose he feels that would be the end of me.”

“A common misconception of the upper class,” Grace said. “That without money, one is ...”

“Nothing,” they both spoke at once.

Grace allowed her gaze to stray to Samuel’s face and caught him looking at her with such longing, it made her breath catch.

We are perfect for each other in so many ways. We understand each other.
She thought of his cheerful home and how she’d felt there during those brief seconds when he took her in his arms to dance.

“Lord Sutherland is certainly wrong in his assumption.” She clasped her hands to keep them from reaching toward Samuel.

“He has no idea how wrong he is,” Samuel agreed. “I have lost that which was most precious to me, yet survived. Losing wealth pales in comparison.”

“And your daughter?” Grace asked. She was beginning to understand, to see the logic in keeping the girl hidden from Lord Sutherland and his mother.

“I always think of her first,” Samuel said. “I must protect her from the world, and if that includes keeping her from her uncle and grandmother, then so be it.”

I will not lose Beth too,
he might have added. Grace read as much in the set of his jaw and in the determination in his eyes.

“Your secret is safe with me,” she promised once more. “Though I cannot imagine how you keep it. The gossip that flows from your household to mine is quite impressive.”

“Is it
your
household now?” Samuel sounded hurt.

“No,” Grace said. “I meant Lord Sutherland’s, of course. It is only that I live there.”

For now. I am temporarily bound there.
Now that she knew it was not to be forever — that she might truly get her wish to take Helen and Christopher away to live peacefully, leaving all this behind — Grace should have felt happy. Instead, to her great surprise, when Lord Sutherland had agreed to her release, she had felt the tiniest disappointment and loss.

Only because I have grown accustomed to my life here.

“Don’t worry yourself over anything you’ve heard,” Samuel said. “There are some things I want known to Nicholas, and those I arrange quite easily. As for Beth, the servants know her true identity — and they are sworn to secrecy. They are well compensated for their loyalty. Beth is rarely brought from the nursery when there are guests in the house, and if someone does happen to see her, she is explained as my niece. Though that is becoming more of a difficulty as she grows older and looks more and more like her mother.”

Something he’d said troubled Grace. “Your servants are loyal at keeping your secret, but they are also adept at spreading gossip — that which you wish to have spread?”

“Ye-es,” Samuel said, somewhat warily. “In a manner similar to that which you did with
your
servants.”

It was the only way I could see to protect Helen.
But what reason did Samuel have for spreading gossip? What would he possibly want Lord Sutherland to know? Grace pressed a hand to her stomach, suddenly ill with suspicion. “Did you — are you responsible for Lord Sutherland’s knowledge of my servants’ role in this? Is it because of you that he learned that I had planned for my reputation to be ruined?”