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“Hugh!” She chided in a weak murmur. “The staff may see us!”
“To hell with them!” Shamelessly, he took possession of her mouth.
That night they made it only so far as the library’s couch by the fireplace.
Sarah had transformed the former Lady Hawkmore’s chambers in an escritoire for herself. There were a number of documents she’d to take to and from the bank for further analysis and, working in the library, together with Hugh proved to be frequently…problematic, his presence too tempting. So she decided to have an escritoire to work on her own.
That morning, after breakfast, she worked in her escritoire, sitting on a big desk surrounded by papers, when Hugh knocked and came in. She lifted her head absently and stared at him.
“Too early to work, Lady Hawkmore.” He joked.
“Indeed, Lord Hawkmore!” She stood up to take a book of accounts on a shelf and brought it to her desk, leaning on it facing him.
Would she work that much when with child? He wondered. “You’ll not be able to work so much when you-“ It downed on him like lightning; the reason why she’d left. “You were pregnant!” He murmured dumbfounded, his body went cold with awareness; his blood froze.
Her eyes darted sideways, restless and she turned her back to him abruptly.
It seemed so obvious now, he thought. He had four sisters who talked when they thought he WASnot hearing. All the signs had been there: the changes in her body, the bread crumbs, her sleepiness, that last night. Oh, God!
“My child, Sarah!” He looked at her back accusingly. “Where’s my child, Sarah?” He came near her back. “Where is it?” He took her arm and turned her to him. “I’m going to adopt it!” He looked at her face, bathed in tears. A feeling sharp as scalpel cut through him at the sight of her crying.
“Stillborn!” Her voice unfamiliarly rugged, as if her throat constricted. “Stillborn!” She said louder, full of pain.
He looked at her in shock. He paced back and fell on a chair, lest his legs gave.
“Stillborn!” She repeated the word that she hated most in her life, the one that brought her such a bleeding pain, the very word she avoided like a bitter poison. “A beautiful boy of black hair.” She murmured in tears. “I would call him Hugh!”
Hearing her say that she would give his name to the child made a current of electricity run over his body. He stood up in a fraction of second. “When did you plan to tell me? Did you plan to tell me at all?”
She eyed him through her tears, wide eyed. “Of course I did!”
“When?” He insisted.
“Soon!” She brushed the tears from her face impatiently. “It’s too painful for me to talk about this.”
“Why did not you tell me, Sarah?” He grabbed her by her shoulders. “I had the right to know!”
“Yes, lords have all the rights and servants none!” She shrugged from him. “I had heard all sorts of stories about lords who get maids pregnant!” She lifted her head and looked at him directly in his piercing eyes. “Lords who send the maids away, lords who take the child away from them, lords who disappear with the child one way or the other.” The thought got her in a pulp of scare. “I could not be sure which would be your reaction!”
“I’d have taken care of you and the child…the boy!” He raked his hand through his jet-black hair. A boy! A son! Hers!
Her hands flew to her waist. “Never!” Her back straightened and her eyes took on a warring look. “Never! My child would never grow up as a bastard in the shadow of your legitimate ones!
There it lay, he thought! The lioness he knew lived inside her.
“I would not allow my baby to be stigmatized. Ever!” She drew in a long breath to calm her thundering heart. “So I decided to go to my aunt’s in the country. After I explained her the situation, she just took me in.” Sarah felt a warm wave of thankfulness towards her aunt for not judging her. “We said to the neighbours that I had been recently widowed.” That had been exactly how she felt at the time, bereft of him. “I gave her all the money I saved working here, so that we could get by before I could go back to work again.”
“You could have sent a letter to me.” He understood her dilemmas, but he could not understand why she did not trust him. “I would not have run from my responsibilities!” That would have given him a clue of where she had gone. He would have followed her to the last circle of hell, if need be!
“And create a lineage problem?” She shook her head. “Thank you, but no!”
Hugh paced the escritoire. He would have been so bubbling happy to know that he would father a child. Her child, of all! She had gone through all that trouble to protect the baby from every possible harm. Without his help! He, the Earl of Hawkmore. Powerless!
He sat again, forehead on his hands and sighed. “That last night,” he started. “That last night I had decided to set up a house for you. I’d send all to the devil.” He lifted his eyes to her. “I did not care anymore.”
If she had not been pregnant and he had offered that, she would have been glad. Glad for being able to be with him somehow. With child? What would have become of her? Of the baby? What if there had been more children? All bastards?
“You would not want for anything.” He continued. Moreover, he would have had a family. With her, only her!
