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“There’s a lot more to me you’ve yet to find out, but the truth is, I’m weary of lumbering about London like this. I want some country air. The physician who attended Mama when she gave birth is highly recommended, and he can be with me in a trice, if necessary. However, Mama preferred the offices of the midwife who lives not far. I shall be in good hands.” She was prepared for a fight over the location of where the baby should be born, but fortunately, Debenham merely shrugged and toyed with his coffee cup. His eyes looked more shadowed than usual, giving him a particularly piratical appearance. A pirate who’d been partaking of a ruinous amount of rum, and was all but dead on his feet. Araminta wondered hopefully when he might drink himself into an early grave.
“You’d better be. You might no longer be the beauty I married, but it’s my heir you’re carrying.” He drained his coffee and reached for a fig. “How many more weeks before your ripe and luscious body will again be mine for the taking?” He answered his own question. “Four weeks before the baby is due, and then another two to wait after that. I am all impatience, my dear.”
“You are not the only one of us anxious for an end to this torture, Debenham,” Araminta said over her shoulder as she turned into the passage, and she wasn’t only referring to the baby. “Hurry along, Jane! At last, we can leave London.”
To Araminta’s relief, she didn’t encounter further resistance. Debenham clearly found her repugnant when she was breeding, while her absence would give him greater rein to indulge in his other proclivities. Araminta had no doubt that he played fast and loose when he could. Well, two could play at that game. It
was extraordinary that only a week after expelling the little creature who had blighted her life, she felt so well. Women were supposed to lie on their backs for a whole month, but she’d had no choice but to maintain the fiction she was still carrying...well, supposedly, Debenham’s heir. Of course, she’d been a little weak and wobbly on her feet immediately afterward, but at least padding her stomach with an enormous cushion meant she could claim fatigue from her apparent advanced pregnancy, and lie down to rest frequently—and not have Debenham paw her constantly, like in the early days of their marriage.
Now she just had to bamboozle her mother.
***
What a joy it was to be home. Araminta was so excited at her newfound freedom, it took all her willpower not to run up the front steps, and into her waiting mother’s arms. Instead, she made a show of laboring up each step, assisted by the postilion and Jane.
“Araminta, my dear! Why, you took us by surprise!” Her mother beamed. “We weren’t expecting you for another hour at least. Come, let us get you into your bedchamber and comfortable. You must be exhausted after that long journey.
“Don’t touch me...careful, I’ll be quite all right. Jane can help me!” Araminta held her mother at arm’s length, covering her large belly protectively as she offered her cheek for a kiss.
Then, slowly, they headed for Araminta’s room, one of the parlormaids having rushed ahead to pull back the covers for her afternoon rest.
“Araminta!”
Araminta, who was being helped into bed by her mother, swung around at her sister’s voice. “Hetty? What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t you get my note? I left the day after my dinner with Lord Ludbridge.” Hetty, who stood in the doorway looking as large as Araminta, smiled serenely. Pregnancy obviously agreed with her, Araminta thought sourly as Hetty hurried forward, prattling away as usual. “It was on a bit of a whim, really, as the gentlemen got it into their heads to do some hunting on Lord Mowbray’s estate north of here. It was decided to put me off at The Grange, en route, and they’ll pick me up when they return in a week or two.”
“Sir Aubrey and...and Lord Ludbridge? They’ll be coming back here in a week?”
“Or two. Yes, won’t that be nice? And...I take it Debenham isn’t coming?” There was relief in Hetty’s voice when she got the confirmation she was obviously hoping for.
Their mother settled herself in a chair by the bed and looked between the girls with a serene smile. “So, it’ll be me and my beautiful daughters: Araminta and Hetty. Just like in the old days. Oh, and Celia, of course,” she added with a smile at a loud, lusty cry issuing from upstairs. “How lovely that all the babies will be so similar in age. Oh dear, I think I should attend to her.” She rose, excusing herself at the door before reminding the girls of the time their father would be home and expect to dine.
Araminta thought it quite shocking her mother should have a child in her dotage. And that she wasn’t leaving all the work to the nurserymaid. Lord, she didn’t intend breeding when she was forty. In fact, she didn’t intend breeding ever again, and with the innocuous looking little seeds, the Queen Anne’s Lace, Mrs. Mobbs had given her, she certainly hoped that would be the case.
But, one step at a time. Hetty reached out to pat her belly, but Araminta drew back. “Please don’t!” she said sharply. “I do hate it!”
“Of course, dearest.” Hetty sounded indulgent rather than put in her place, which was irritating, and Araminta drew the bed covers up to her neck. She hoped Hetty didn’t intend staying too long.
To her dismay, Hetty lowered herself onto a seat by the window and gently patted her stomach. “I’m surprised you’ve left London with so much going on, but it’ll be so much pleasanter, just the two of us, like in the old days. Sir Aubrey wants to have my portrait painted as soon as I’m back in town.”
“Who will do that? The fine portraitist everyone is talking about? Mr. Lamont?” Araminta asked without thinking, and her sister gave an exclamation of horror. “He’s a vagabond who did some sketches he most certainly should not have. I don’t know the details, but he has a most unsavory reputation, and I don’t know how he’s still gallivanting about with an unsullied reputation.”
“He’s a friend of Debenham’s,” Araminta said crisply, for though she despised her husband’s way of life and most of his friends, she was not prepared to hear Hetty criticize either.
Hetty rose and went to the window and looked out. “That doesn’t surprise me. I heard Debenham was thick as thieves with a painter whose reputation had been blackened by some recent scandal. Goodness, but this baby makes it hard to settle sometimes.”
“Good Lord, Hetty, where do you hear such things?” Araminta asked, ignoring her sister’s reference to her discomfort. Hetty should try and live, for just five minutes, with the trials that afflicted Araminta every day and she’d never grumble again. “How do you think I like to hear criticisms against my husband?”
Hetty turned and regarded Araminta with no trace of her usual girlish levity. “Cousin Stephen told me,” she said quietly. “And regardless of how a woman feels about her husband, she must know what the world is saying about him if she is to keep him—and just as importantly, herself—safe.”
Araminta was about to dismiss this with a scoffing laugh, but the tightness about Hetty’s mouth and the intensity of her look made her decide otherwise. There was an unfamiliar worldliness in her speech that made her take notice.
“Is there something behind your meaning you are trying to convey in words and tone far too subtle for my understanding, Hetty?” Araminta shifted her bulk, shifting beneath the coverlet and checking that the straps which held the padding in place against her body, were tight enough. She was going to have to be very careful to get through the next three weeks without detection. And just when she’d thought that was going to cause her the greatest challenge, Hetty had to add to her trials with talk of something even more unpleasant in which Debenham was involved.
Hetty rubbed her lip as she clearly pondered her words. “Debenham is being watched closely by...various important people. I know Mr. Lamont is one of his associates who is under deep suspicion.”
“Yes, well, he’s been commissioned to paint that flash-in-the-pan actress, Kitty La Bijou. I can’t believe that green boy Lissa works for has come so far. He’s nothing more than a strutting popinjay. Anyway, the gossip sheets are full of it. I will concede that Mr. Lamont is all hot air but fancies himself the cream of the crop and, yes, he is one of Debenham’s friends, but Debenham laughs about him behind his back, don’t you know?”
