Something About Emmaline (14 page)

Before she could protest, Lord Rawlins was drawing her up the steps. Inside Tottley House, the staff was lined on either side of the foyer. Never had Emmaline seen such a collection of long faces.

And from upstairs came a dire scream. One of pain and agony that tore at the heart. She’d heard such cries once before—from her mother—and knew that they portended only one conclusion.

Emmaline felt the claws of panic rising in her gut. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t watch the only friend she’d ever had die. But even as she spun around, she ran smack-dab into Sedgwick, and his arms folded around her like castle walls.

She gulped and stammered into his waistcoat, then turned her gaze up to him. “I can’t do this. What if she—”

Another cry erupted from the upper floors, a piercing keen that could divide the stoniest of hearts. One of the maids broke down, weeping openly.

“You must be brave.” Sedgwick caught her by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Emmaline, you are the bravest woman I know.” He drew her into an alcove and whispered in her ear, “You’ve been shot, for God’s sakes.”

“Yes, but I wasn’t awake for most of that.”

“That may be, but consider this: You crossed swords tonight with Lady Oxley and survived. What is childbirth in the face of such bravery?”

“Thus says the man who will never face such a trial.”

“What—Lady Oxley or childbirth?”

“Either,” Emmaline huffed.

“That may be, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admire the one woman I know who is brave enough to dare both the dragon and the fire.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Emmaline, there is only one of you. I know it, and apparently so does Lady Rawlins. Now go and help your friend, for she needs you—more so than any of the other people you have helped so freely and willingly.”

Demmit, why did he have to be so steady? Remind her of what honor and duty meant? She owed much to Malvina, and if she was ever to be proud of anything in her misspent life, she needed to do this. Needed to help her friend.

And trying to summon the bravery that Sedgwick seemed to think she possessed in spades, she went upstairs.

“Drink?” Sedgwick asked. He and Rawlins had retired to the man’s library to await the evening’s outcome.

Rawlins nodded.

They’d never traveled in the same circles. Rawlins, as the heir to the Tottley earldom, was toplofty indeed and his cool disdain and awareness of his position had always kept him far above just a mere baron. However, the unkempt man before him hardly resembled the smooth and well-turned-out viscount Alex knew.

He handed the drink to him right as another scream from upstairs pierced the night.

The man threw back the brandy in a single toss and shuddered. “What did I do to her? I should never have…I didn’t know it would come to
this
.”

Alex tossed his own drink back. He didn’t know if he was brave enough for this sort of heart-to-heart conversation with a man he barely knew.

And, much to Alex’s discomfort, Rawlins took his silence as permission to continue. “Malvina is my very life. She’s the finest woman in England. Demmit, I don’t want her to die. I love her, you know.”

Alex tried his best to hide his shock at this emotional outburst. Certainly Viscount Rawlins and his wife were a prominent and well-made match, but he’d never suspected, never known that it had been a love match.

He, like everyone else in the town, had thought Rawlins had married the outspoken, madcap Malvina Henley for her ten thousand a year.

But for love? No, never.

“Yes, I can see it on your face, you don’t believe me,” Rawlins said. “No one does. But Malvina is the best woman I’ve ever met. Oh, don’t get me wrong, she isn’t the easiest woman to live with, but there is something about her that is undeniable. Something about her that makes me wild, something about her that makes me want to be a better man.” He paused and looked away, and it was then that Alex realized the man’s shoulders were shaking, his head bowed to hide his tears.

“I love her so very much,” Rawlins managed a few moments later. “But you must understand how it is—given that you married for the same reasons.”

“Th-the same?” Alex stammered.

“For love,” Rawlins said matter-of-factly, as if he were admitting Alex to some wonderful and secret society. “You needn’t be ashamed of it. It is a rare gift in our lot to find a wife you can love with all your heart. The real shame is that so many think it a crime to care for one’s wife. How sad for them, don’t you think?”

Alex just nodded. He didn’t know what to say in the face of all this. Tell Rawlins the truth—that Emmaline wasn’t his wife. That he wasn’t besotted?

The viscount poured another glass for himself and held the decanter out to Alex.

He was of a mind to tell the man that he didn’t think more drink was a good idea, for it seemed to be tearing down the walls of good manners which said one didn’t discuss such things. But at the same time, Alex found himself curious. Rawlins loved Malvina?

This night was going from revealing to unbelievable.

Upstairs there was another wretched cry, a long, pained wail. The kind of sound that seemed to cut the night. Alex
didn’t envy Emmaline her place beside Malvina. That she’d gone at all said much of her character.

He doubted he would have been able to muster so much courage. But perhaps that was one of the qualities about women that a man had to admire, to envy. That when all was said and done, it was the women who tended to the two most important events in life—to bringing children into the world, and comforting those about to leave it.

The viscount having drunk his measure down, came over and filled Alex’s glass again. Then his own.

Alex stared down at the brandy, the amber liquid swirling around the glass like a timeless mist, full of secrets, full of promise. The screams were coming closer and closer together, and each one was like a knife.

He decided another drink wasn’t such a bad idea.
To dull the memory
.

“How can she survive this?” Rawlins was muttering.

“I was just thinking the same,” Alex said, realizing that his words probably weren’t all that helpful when the viscount’s gaze swung up, alarm all over his wide-eyed features. “I meant to say,” Alex told him, “your wife has a tremendous capacity for living—I doubt this is her end.”

Rawlins nodded, catching hold of Alex’s encouragement like a lifeline. “You’ll understand it better when your time comes. When you’re pacing about downstairs waiting for your child to arrive.”

“My—” Alex shook his head. “I don’t think that will—”

“I’m sorry,” Rawlins said quickly. “I forgot that Lady Sedgwick’s health isn’t…demmit, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t concern yourself.”

“But you’ve faced this, haven’t you?” Rawlins asked.

“Faced what?” he asked, looking up at the ceiling. At the confinement above them.

“Possibly losing your wife. Malvina said Lady Sedgwick was desperately ill last winter. That she nearly—” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I suppose I’m being too familiar. I know we aren’t friends, but I feel like we have something in common.”

“In common?” Alex repeated.

“Our wives. Coming close to death. Loving them.”

Alex shifted uncomfortably. They had nothing in common. Really, they didn’t. Other than the fact that Malvina and Emmaline shared a propensity to meddle.

“It was difficult,” he said diplomatically. More so than Rawlins could ever imagine.

The man threw himself down on a nearby chair. He waved at the matching one for Sedgwick. “I knew you’d understand. Malvina changed my life utterly and completely when I met her. Turned it upside down.”

Alex raised his glass to that point. Perhaps they did have something in common.

Now what was he thinking?

He glanced down at his glass and realized that the Tottley brandy was probably the finest and most illegal of French vintages. It was going straight to his head and making him as mad as Rawlins.

“I knew she was the woman for me when I saw her at Almack’s. Coming across the room like a Venus.”

Alex’s gaze snapped up.
A Venus?
Wasn’t that what he’d thought the first time he’d laid his eyes on Emmaline?

“And she led me on a merry chase. Had me at sixes and sevens with her flirtatious ways. Gads, she drove me mad,
what with the way she charmed all who met her.”

Alex might dispute the point that Malvina Henley had ever charmed anyone with her brassy ways, but Emmaline…now, that was another matter. She seemed to possess charm enough for a dozen wives.

“When you met Lady Sedgwick, didn’t you just know? Know in your heart that there was something about her that would make your rather ordinary life complete, give you a reason to get up in the morning and see what mischief she was up to?” Rawlins sighed. “I knew all that within the first twenty-four hours of meeting Malvina. That there would never be another woman like her in my life, and that I would do anything, give up anything, to keep her at my side.”

Fall in love with someone in a single night? Impossible,
Alex wanted to tell his host. However, just then the clock struck one, and Alex realized his own twenty-four hours had come to pass.

One day with Emmaline. How could he deny that his life would ever be the same? Suddenly he knew exactly what the viscount was saying.

And Lord, how he wished he didn’t.

Emmaline sat by Malvina’s side, her own hand being crushed by the viscountess’s tortured grasp.

The midwife was busy at the other end. “It’s coming wrong,” the plainspoken crone said. “Got to turn it. No way around it.”

Malvina cried out again as another contraction wrenched her body.

“She can’t push,” the midwife said to Emmaline. “Nature is telling her to push, but you can’t let her.”

“No pushing,” Emmaline repeated. How the devil was she supposed to accomplish that? She pried her hand free, and reached for the cloth beside the basin, soaking it in the cool water and wiping it across her friend’s soaked brow. “Malvina, you can’t push.”

The viscountess ignored her, moaning and crying.

“Distract her, milady,” the exasperated midwife instructed. “Give her something else to think about. Something that will really stick in her craw.”

Malvina began to wail again, mindless of the people around her, of the midwife’s words.

Emmaline took a deep breath and climbed into the massive bed, crawling up beside her friend and taking her face in her hands. “Malvina, Malvina!” she snapped. “Listen to me.”

“I’m dying, Emmaline. I can’t bear it. Tell Rawlins I loved him. I would have been proud to be his countess.”

His countess. The Countess of Tottley
.

Emmaline grinned. She knew how to distract Malvina.

“Malvina, don’t you dare die. You would have this child raised by your mother-in-law? By Lady Tottley?”

The mention of Rawlins’s mother caught Malvina’s attention quicker than a new display of hats on Bond Street.

And as the midwife had asked, it stuck in her craw like nothing else could.

“Lady Tottley?” she managed to gasp.

“Yes, Lady Tottley. Who else would be left to hire the baby’s nanny and tutors but Lady Tottley?”

Malvina’s gaze narrowed. “No,” she ground out. “Never.”

“That’s it,” Emmaline told her. “Never mind an heir. What if your child is a daughter? Would you have that old harridan raising your daughter? Choosing her finishing school? Presenting her to the Queen?”

“Never!” Malvina said, rising up in the bed, digging her elbows into the mattress.

Emmaline wasn’t going to stop there. “And you know the countess wouldn’t rest until Rawlins remarried.
Properly this time
.”

Malvina’s craw overflowed. Her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed and she looked down at the midwife and said, “What do I need to do?”

The silence unnerved Alex more than the screams and it continued that way for hours. The viscount and the baron had fallen into a silent, solitary vigil, with only an occasional muffled cry or the sounds of movement from above to draw their attention.

And just as the fingers of dawn started to dance across the rooftops of Hanover Square, the door to the library finally opened and the Tottley butler came in.

“My lord, you are wanted upstairs.”

Rawlins bolted for the door, then came to an equally hasty halt. “Sedgwick—I don’t think I can—would it be too much of an imposition for you come with me?”

Alex wanted to shake his head and forgo the horrible scene that must surely await them.

But Emmaline was there. And he wanted to know that she—well, he wanted to see her. She might even need him.

That was, oddly enough, more a hope, he realized. That Emmaline, strong and resolute Emmaline, might need him.

He squared his shoulders and nodded to Rawlins.

As he followed the viscount through half-light of morning, the once-dark house seemed like it was holding its breath, just as the earth did as the first traces of light stole
across the horizon, chasing the realm of night away and heralding the glory of the sun.

In that quiet, waiting time, they walked upstairs to see what the Fates had dealt during the night.

A few steps away from the door, a new noise reached their ears.

A cry. Not the cry of a woman in pain. But that of a babe. Lusty and strong, the cry told one and all that the night’s endless travail hadn’t been for naught.

“The child,” Rawlins said, breathless wonder in his words.

“Your child,” Alex told him, feeling a sense of pride and…envy for the viscount.

The housekeeper stood by the door, tears streaming down her face. “A bonny child it is, milord.” She opened the door and revealed a scene that left both men with tears streaming down their cheeks.

For inside the room sat Lady Rawlins, ensconced in a queenly manner atop the large bed, holding a squalling bundle in her arms. “Come in, Rawlins, and see your daughter.”

“My daughter?” he whispered, coming slowly and hesitantly into his own chamber as if he’d never been in the room.