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He whirled back to her. Her eyes were so vulnerable, sweat and tears glistened her cheeks, and she gripped the sheets on each side of her. “I am so very scared,” she said hoarsely. “I know it to be very improper…but will you stay with me, please?”
Always, he silently reassured her but could not bring himself to sign it, for his very understanding of himself and his wants and needs were rattled. Hugh walked over to the bed and climbed on, resting his back against the carved oak headboard. He gently tugged her to his side, and with a pain-filled moan, she rested her head on his chest. A few maidservants sent them shocked glances, but he ignored them and held on to his lady wife, offering her the support she needed and the connection he had not realized he craved.
“My baby is coming,” she murmured, her voice rough and fear filled. “I’ve looked forward to this day so very much, but now I feel shattered that I am so terribly frightened.”
He dipped and kissed her forehead, which was already sweat dampened. She shivered at times, then she sobbed as a pain he could not imagine held her in its grip. And he did not let her go, even hours later when the doctor and midwives came. They tried to push him out of the room, but Phoebe held on to his hands and screamed.
So he stayed, never taking his eyes from her face and lending her all the courage and strength she needed. He was there when she bit her lips until they beaded with blood, and he was there when a thin wail sliced through the air.
She squeezed his hands with such strength, he wondered where she found it because mere seconds ago, she’d been exhausted.
“She’s here?” she gasped, slumping back against the pillows.
He tried to withdraw his hands, but she held on valiantly. Hugh wanted to warn her they might have a son, but he wisely kept quiet. He was tempted to lo
ok away from her face to see what the midwives were doing, but he resisted. Phoebe’s eyes darted left and right as she watched them keenly, at times squeezing his fingers and other times rubbing his abused hands in a soothing gesture, but not once did she remove her regard from the doctor and midwife. And then a shadow fell over them, and a smiling midwife placed a cleaned, crying wrapped bundle on her chest and said, “Here is ye daughter, milady. I’ll summon the wet-nurse you’ve selected.”
An unknown feeling, a sensation of fear and awe, pulsed through him as he peered down at the small bundle in her arm. Phoebe remained frozen, her eyes wide as she too stared at the child. Tears rolled down her cheeks silently, and then she lifted her eyes to him.
The emotions he spied slammed into his gut like a fist and left him reeling for breath.
“Thank you for saving us,” she whispered with a tremulous smile. “My lord…please meet our daughter.”
Our daughter.
He glanced down and stared at the child, marveling at how tiny she appeared. The wailing died down as the child regarded the two faces peering at her.
“I’ll protect you both.”
Phoebe smiled, and it wobbled, tears filling her eyes once again. “We’ll protect you, too.”
He almost waved a dismissive hand at this, but something strange and unexpected writhed through him. Hugh was beset with a powerful emotion he couldn’t quite describe. And for the first time in years, he wondered at the sensations burrowing deep inside his heart. He closed a mental fist around them before they floated away like ashes in the wind, like everything that made him feel eventually did.
Do not leave. Stay with me, he silently whispered to the sensations as he reached out to brush a damp tendril of hair from his wife’s cheek with shaking fingers.
Phoebe turned her cheek into the palm of his hand before peering down at the child. Hugh shifted closer. He touched the bridge of Phoebe’s nose, and she looked up at him.
“Thank you for our daughter.”
Chapter Thirteen
Phoebe raced across the lanes of her home, enjoying the power of the horse beneath her. It felt wonderful to be outdoors, basking in the wild scent of flowers and the rays of the sun. It had been only last week Dr. Edwards and the midwife had visited and had said that both her and her daughter were doing fine. The doctor’s permission to restart a more energetic normal life was something she had been hoping for. Her darling, Francesca Elizabeth Winthrop, was doing well at two months old and putting on weight. When the doctor had declared Phoebe to be fully recovered from the ordeal of the childbirth, she had been exultant.
She took the horse to the bluff overlooking the oceans and lifted her face to the sky. The season had changed, and autumn crept closer. Her parents, the duke and duchess, would be preparing to return to the country soon. Phoebe had replied to Richard’s letter a few weeks ago and had informed him of his niece’s arrival into the world. Hugh had also revealed that he’d not heard from the duke and duchess.
I shall not fret about it.
Her days were too busy with the joy of learning to be a mother to be consumed with the absence of responses to their letters. In a few months, they would be travelling to England and then to town for the season, and her marriage would then fall under the scrutiny of her powerful parents and society. There was no need to wish for it to happen any earlier.
Tugging on the reins of the horse, she turned him around and nudged him into a gentle trot toward the main house. She had only been riding for about an hour, but already Phoebe missed the wonder of her baby.
And Hugh.
The very thought of him was enough to bring a flush to her entire body and set her heart to racing. They had yet to consummate their marriage, and Phoebe felt as if each day she walked on a tightrope, waiting to fall off into something wonderful and frightening. His kisses were more ravishing than before—longer, deeper, as if he fought a battle only he understood.
Phoebe was on the verge of trying to figure out how to trick her husband into allowing her to tie his arms on their bed board, so she could take advantage and assuage her ever-present hunger for him. The very thought of being so salacious and improper brought a blush to her face.
Only yesterday morning, they had taken a stroll to their special meadow, where they had kissed passionately several times. She groaned, recalling how frustrated she had been by the whole encounter that she had pushed him into the brook. He had been astonished, then his eyes had narrowed in retribution. She had raced off laughing, but he had caught her, tumbling them to the grass and taking the brunt of the fall.
