The Survivors' Club: Only Beloved Part 16

"And this is all your land," she said, gesturing to left and right. "What a dizzying thought."

"I try not to take it for granted," he said, "even though it has been either my father's or mine all my life. I have always tried to count my blessings, even at the darkest moments of my life-and we all have those. I have always tried to see to it that those who live and work on my land share some of its bounty. I am rather ashamed that those cottages grew so dilapidated before I realized that repairs upon repairs were no longer either feasible or fair."

He drew her to a halt a few steps farther on.

"Stand just here, Dora," he said, "where these lanes cross, and look back. It has always been one of my favorite spots on the estate or anywhere else for that matter."

They had been walking slightly uphill, though the slope was not really apparent until one stopped and turned to look back. There were the fields, separated by stone walls and hedgerows bordering the narrow lanes. Below them was the house, square and solid, and the cultivated lawns and gardens surrounding it. Beyond them, and in total contrast to them, were the cliffs and the sea stretching to infinity, it seemed. The water was deep blue this evening, with the sky above it a slightly lighter shade blending into pink and red-orange and gold on the western horizon. It was the best of all times for this view-though actually almost any time of day and any weather was the best of all times to be standing just here.

"Sometimes beauty goes deeper than words, does it not?" she said after a lengthy silence.

Ah, she understood. She felt it too-the heart of home pulsing here.

He set one hand on her shoulder and squeezed slightly. Miriam had hated the sea. She had hated Penderris. G.o.d help him, she had hated him. He moved his hand to the nape of Dora's neck and moved his fingers in a circle over the soft flesh there.

"You come here often?" she asked him. "Alone?"

"Not always alone," he said. "I believe each of my friends came here with me at least once while they were convalescent at Penderris. There is something soothing about the lanes and fields and about the sheep and lambs. Even Ben managed to walk this far with his canes, though I remember his temper becoming frayed on the way back when it was obvious he was exhausted and in pain. But of course he would not allow Hugo and Ralph to make a chair of their hands for him." He chuckled softly at the memory. "Most of my walks here-and elsewhere-have been solitary ones, though. I suppose I am a solitary sort of man. Or perhaps it is that I just did not find the perfect walking companion until very recently."

"Me?" She leaned slightly back into his hand.

"I am entirely comfortable with you, Dora," he told her, "and I still marvel at the lovely surprise of it. You are all I need-all I have ever needed or will ever need. Just you."

He was very close, he realized, to using the word love. And he might have done so in full truth, for of course he loved her. But the word was so polluted by youthful connotations of heavy-breathing pa.s.sion and starry-eyed romance that it seemed an inappropriate word for him to use, for he was a forty-eight-year-old man and the love he felt for his wife was a quiet thing of contentment and adoration.

Yes, adoration. It was a better word than love to describe his feelings for her. But perhaps no specific word needed to be uttered aloud. That was the truly comfortable thing about Dora. Words were not always necessary.

He became suddenly aware, however, that the silence between them now had taken on a different quality and that there was a certain tension in the neck muscles beneath his hand.

"Are you not comfortable?" he asked her.

Her hesitation took him by surprise and alarmed him.

"Not at this precise moment," she said.

He stepped around her to stand between her and the view. The evening light slanted across her face and made it look pale and unhappy. Her gaze had come to rest somewhere in the region of his neckcloth.

The seagull above them sounded suddenly mournful. The slight breeze felt chilly.

"We have been married longer than a month," she said.

About six weeks, he believed. He dipped his head a little closer to hers.

"Nothing has happened," she said. When he said nothing, she cleared her throat and continued. "Something ought to have happened by now. More than two weeks ago, in fact. I have been hoping, but . . . Well, two weeks is a long time. I am so dreadfully sorry." She was looking at her hands now, spread palms-up between them.

Comprehension dawned like a club to the back of his head. "Are you speaking of your courses?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said. "I have never- I thought it might be because of the . . . the change in the circ.u.mstances of my life, but I do not believe it can be that. And it is possible that it is the . . . the change of life. I do not know. But I very much fear . . . I have been feeling-oh, not exactly bilious, but a little unsteady of digestion. I hope it is the change. I very much hope it. But . . . well, I do not think it is. I am so very, very sorry. I know it will ruin everything if I am right. I ought to have been more careful, though I really would not know how except not to- I ought-" She stopped altogether and spread her hands over her face.

By that time he had her shoulders gripped in his hands.

"Dora?" he said. "You are increasing?"

"I fear I must be," she said. "I think it is too much to hope it is the change of life."

He tried to look into her face, but her head was lowered and in the shade of his arm. His forehead almost touched hers.

"You are going to have a baby?" he said. "We are going to have a child? Dora?" Something strange had happened to his voice. He scarcely recognized it.

"I fear so," she said. "Indeed, in my heart I know so."

"I am going to be a father?" He was still speaking oddly. And then, still gripping her by the shoulders, he threw back his head, his eyes tightly closed. "I am going to be a father?"

"I am so sorry."

And finally he heard the terrible misery in her voice. He opened his eyes and lowered his head.

"Why?" His eyes met hers as she raised her own head. "Are you afraid, Dora? Because of your age, perhaps? Is this something you really did not want? Then I am the one who ought to be apologizing. But . . . Do you not want to be a mother? At long last?"

Her hands grasped his elbows. "I do." The admission came out sounding almost like a wail. "Oh, I do. I have always wanted it, though for a long time I have thought it was something that would never happen. I put it out of my mind and my dreams a long time ago. Then, when I married after all, I a.s.sumed it was too late even though . . . Well, even though I ought to have known it was still possible. And now it has happened. But I know you do not want any more children. You made that very clear to me when you offered me marriage. You chose me because I was older, because it was impossible, because all you wanted was a companion and friend. And you just said that I am all you want. I am so sorry."

He felt like a brute. Had he really given that impression? Actually said it? And was she expecting that he would now blame her, even though he was the one who had impregnated her?

Lord G.o.d in heaven, was it possible? He had impregnated her. She was going to bear a child. He was going to be a father. They were going to be parents together.

He continued to gaze into her face for a few moments before gathering her into his arms.

"Dora," he said, "I chose you because you were you, regardless of age or ability to bear children. First and foremost I wanted you as my wife, as my friend, as my lover. But to be blessed with a child on top of all those things? To be a father?" He moved one hand beneath her chin and raised her face close to his own. "To have a child with you? Can there be so much happiness in the world? And you thought I would be upset, even angry? You thought I would blame you when you could not possibly have got yourself into your present condition without considerable help from me? Ah, Dora. How little you know me."

She raised one hand and ran the backs of her fingers over his jaw. She looked suddenly wistful.

"We are old enough to be grandparents," she said.

"But not too old, apparently, to be parents." He smiled at her. "Can you be happy now that you know that I am?"

"Yes," she said. "Deep inside I have been happy anyway, but I have been upset to think that perhaps you would not be "

She was shrieking suddenly then, for he had bent down like the young blade he was not and scooped her up into his arms and was twirling her about while her own arms tightened about his neck. He set her feet back down on the path and straightened up, pleased to note that he was scarcely winded.

"I am going to be a father," he said again, grinning like an idiot. "You were made for motherhood, Dora. I am so glad I have made it possible for you, that it is my child you will bear. I am honored."

She looked at him in the growing dusk, and he saw joy in her smile.

He felt it in his own.

He was going to be a father! He felt the childish urge to shout it out to the world as though no one else in the history of the universe had ever been so clever.

Life was the oddest experience ever invented, George decided later that night. He had woken up abruptly, remembered, and realized that euphoria had been replaced by panic.

Women died all the time in childbirth. And Dora was thirty-nine years old. She would be forty when the baby was born, and it was her first.

He slid his arm from beneath her head, eased his way off the bed so as not to wake her, and went to stand at the open window, where the air felt blessedly cool against his naked body.

He would summon the local physician tomorrow. Dr. Dodd had probably delivered several hundred babies during his long career.

How many of those babies had been stillborn? How many of the mothers- He braced himself on the windowsill with his fisted hands, hung his head, and slowly inhaled the slightly salty air. How could he so carelessly, so irresponsibly have endangered her? But how could he not once he had married her?

Abstained?

And yet, all mingled up with his terror, more than half swallowed by it, was a euphoria of joy that threatened to burst from him at any moment, as it had last evening when he had picked her up and twirled her about.

He was going to be a father. It was like a great miracle. If, that was, she survived the dangers of childbirth. And if the child did.

That was two too many ifs!

But . . . fatherhood. For the first time he wondered if the baby would be a boy or a girl. He did not mind which it was. He had his heir in Julian. He would be over the moon with happiness if it was a daughter. Oh, Lord G.o.d, a daughter, a little girl all his own. Or a son. He would love a s- And suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, displacing both panic and euphoria, grief slammed into him, a grief so painful and so all-encompa.s.sing that he wondered for a few moments if he could survive it, or if he wanted to.

Brendan.

He closed his eyes tightly and pressed his knuckles against the sill to the point of pain.

Brendan. Ah, Brendan.

It did not lessen with time, the agony of grief. The intensity of it s.p.a.ced itself out a bit more, it was true, but when it came-and it always did-it catapulted him as deep into h.e.l.l as it ever had.

"Goodbye, Pa- Goodbye, sir." The very last words Brendan had spoken to him when he left to join his regiment. George had not seen him again before they went off to the Peninsula and the boy's death.

"Goodbye, sir." Not Papa, but "sir."

George did not know what the boy had said to his mother.

"George?" The sound came from behind him and he turned. "You must be cold. Can you not sleep?"

He straightened up. "It is not every day," he said, "that a man learns he has been clever enough to beget a child on his wife."

"I ought not to have said I was sorry so many times last evening," she said. "Or at all, in fact. It must have sounded as though I were sorry about the baby and I could never be that-never, George. And it probably sounded abject, as though I was cringing before your expected anger. That was not what I meant. I meant that I was sorry that your dream of a happy second marriage was to be shattered by something so unexpected, something you had said specifically you did not want. I meant I was sorry there would be a wedge driven between us. I feared you would not want the child or love it. The fear of that was breaking my heart. But I am not sorry about the baby and would not be even if you had been unhappy about it. I would just have been saddened-for you, for us."

He wrapped his arms about her and drew her against him.

"I have been standing here fighting my terror over the ordeal ahead of you," he said, "and feeling my joy." He added something he had had no intention of saying aloud. "And feeling grief over Brendan."

He lowered his forehead to the top of her head and fought the soreness in his throat that threatened tears.

"Would you like me to play the pianoforte in the sitting room for a while?" she asked softly after a few silent moments had pa.s.sed. "And maybe go down to the kitchen first to make a pot of tea? It is how I used to coax Agnes to sleep when she had something on her mind."

It was tempting. A stealthy visit to the kitchen to make tea and maybe find some leftover biscuits, just like a couple of naughty children? And music?

"I think I'll settle for holding you instead," he said, "in bed, where it is warm. Did I wake you?"

"It was your absence that woke me," she said as they got back into bed and she snuggled up to him while he drew the covers over them. "Your presence lulls me."

"I am to be flattered, am I," he asked her, "to be told that my presence puts you to sleep?"

She chuckled softly, her breath warm against his chest.

His next conscious thought was that he really ought to have closed the curtains so that all this sunlight would not be s.h.i.+ning directly onto his face.

And then he realized his wife was already gone from the bed.

17.

It was not the change of life.

Her Grace, Dr. Dodd confirmed the following morning, was approximately one month and a half into her confinement, and if there was anything wrong with her health, he could certainly not detect what it might be, and why should her age have anything to say to the matter? Twenty-nine-year-old ladies were giving birth all the time with no trouble at all. What was that? Her Grace had said thirty-nine? A man did start to have some trouble with his hearing after the age of sixty, he was discovering. Well, only thirty-nine? There was still time, then, to have brothers and sisters as companions for this first one. Only last year he had delivered Mrs. Hanc.o.c.k of her fifteenth child at the age of forty-seven, and it would not surprise him if he were to be summoned for the sixteenth before she was done.

Dora wondered in some amus.e.m.e.nt if he talked nonstop even through the delivery of a baby and guessed that he probably did. It was, she realized, his way of relaxing a woman while he performed intimate procedures on her body.

One result of his visit was that well before the day was out-probably even before the morning was out-it was perfectly obvious that every servant in the house, and doubtless out of it too, knew that she was in an interesting condition, though no official or even unofficial announcement had been made and Maisie, Dora's maid, had a.s.sured her from the start that she was no tattler. Before another day was out, every servant for miles around would know too, and once the servants knew then so would everyone else.

Her suspicions were confirmed even sooner than she expected. Ann and James c.o.x-Hampton came to call the following afternoon, and Dora strolled in the rose garden outside the music room with her friend while George remained inside with his.

"Dora," Ann said, linking an arm through hers and coming to the point without preamble, "what is this we have been hearing about you?"

"What have you been hearing?" Dora asked her while noting that at last she had caught the gardeners out in being neglectful. There were at least two roses that were past their best.

"That you are in what they call a delicate state of health," Ann said. "Though how one would cope with nine months of discomfort and tribulation if one were delicate, I do not know. Are you in a delicate state?"

"Not at all," Dora told her. "But I am with child. I suppose everyone knows?"

"Everyone and his dog," Ann said. "Are you pleased?"

"Pleased?" Dora laughed. "I am ecstatic. You cannot know, Ann. You had all your children when you were young. You cannot know what it is like to watch all your contemporaries marry and have families and-"

"And live happily ever after?" Ann laughed too. "Just wait. James declares that our boys are sometimes more trouble than they are worth even though they are away at school for much of the year, and he grumbles that he will have to sharpen his sword soon to hold at bay all the men who will be eyeing our girls with lascivious intent. He attributes every one of his gray hairs to our offspring. And of course, he loves them all to distraction. I am delighted for you, Dora. We both are. George has always been such a melancholy figure-until recently. The transformation in him has been quite remarkable. Is he pleased?"

"He declares that he would shout the news from the ramparts," Dora told her, "if it were not an undignified thing to do-and if Penderris Hall had ramparts. Shall we stroll out to the headland?"

Ann c.o.x-Hampton was her own age, perhaps a year or two older. She had five children, two boys and three girls, all past the age of ten. And, as with Barbara Newman, Dora had felt an immediate affinity with her, perhaps because she was an accomplished lady and they had a great deal in common. Ann was a reader. She also tried her hand at writing poetry and at miniature portrait painting. She played the pianoforte and sang, though her real interest lay in the ten-stringed mandolin her grandfather had brought back from Italy after his grand tour almost a century ago. Ann had inherited it and learned to play it.