The Secret Mistress

Epilogue

THE SNOWDROPS HAD been blooming for a couple of weeks or longer. The crocuses were starting to bloom. Even the daffodils were pushing through the soil ready to bud before February turned to March.

It was not a springlike day today, however. In fact, Edward thought as he stood at the French windows in the drawing room at Wimsbury Abbey, it was downright wintry. The sky was slate gray, wind was whipping through the bare branches of the trees, bearing a few sad remnants of last year’s leaves before it, and a light sleet was trying to fall. It was a cold, cheerless day.

He hoped it was not an omen.

A blaze crackled in the fireplace behind him. His mother sat close to it, alternately holding her hands out to the heat and drawing her shawl more warmly about her shoulders. Edward was not feeling the cold—or the heat for that matter.

He was restless and worried and, yes, frightened. He even caught himself at one irrational moment believing that he must surely be suffering more than Angeline was. She at least was doing something. She was laboring hard. He had nothing to do. Absolutely nothing but fret. And feel helpless. And guilty at having been the cause of her pain. And aggrieved that Alma was allowed in their bedchamber, and the physician and the nurse they had hired and even Betty—his mother too, when she chose to go up there, as she did every hour or so. Half the world was allowed into his bedchamber, but not he. Not the mere husband and lord of the manor. He was not allowed in there. He was not even allowed to pace outside the door. Angeline could feel him there when he did, if you please, and his distress distressed her.

A man could surely be forgiven if he became peevish at such moments in his life. Except that they were considerably longer than just moments. Angeline had woken him at one o’clock this morning with the news that she was experiencing pains that were so peculiar and so regular that she really believed they must be labor pains. He had shot straight up in the air in his panic and come down on his feet beside the bed—or so it had seemed—and he had not been allowed near that bed since.

It was now half past four in the afternoon.

“I have poured you a cup of tea, Edward,” his mother said. “Do come and drink it while it is hot. And Cook has made some of her buttered scones. I have put two on a plate for you. Do eat them. You had very little breakfast and no luncheon.”

How could one eat when one’s wife was laboring abovestairs and had been for hours and hours? And when had the tea tray arrived? He had not heard it.

“Is this normal, Mama?” He turned to face the room though he did not move closer to his tea. “This length of time?”

So many women died in childbed.

“There is no normal when it comes to a confinement, Edward,” she said with a sigh. “When Lorraine had Simon two months ago, she delivered after no longer than four hours. Yet Susan took three times as long to arrive, I remember, and Martin even longer than that. I was not with her when Henrietta was born three years ago.”

They all continued to treat Lorraine, Lady Fenner, as though she were a member of their family. She had no family of her own apart from a reclusive father. Of course, Susan, now age ten, really was one of their own.

But three times as long. Twelve hours. Angeline had been in labor for sixteen—and that was only since she had told him about it.

“Perhaps I should go up there,” he said.

He had gone up a couple of times despite the prohibition, though not inside the bedchamber, of course. The last time was an hour and a half ago. He had listened through two bouts of heavy moaning and had then fled.

“What useless creatures we husbands are,” he complained.

His mother smiled and got to her feet to come to him. She set her arms about him and hugged him close.

“You have waited so long for a child, you and Angeline,” she said. “Wait an hour or two longer. She is strong, and she has been so very excited about this confinement, Edward. She has been happy enough since your marriage, of course. She has always been cheerful and always smiling and always full of energy. But there has been a core of sadness that I have sensed more and more over the years. She has longed for a child.”

“I know.” He hugged her back. “She has always said—we both have—that having each other is enough. And for me it has been. I do not care the snap of two fingers about the succession—pardon me, Mama. But I do care about Angeline. I do not know how I would live without her.”

Yet he had shared that core of sadness—if sadness was the right word. He had never wanted them to be a childless couple.

“It is to be hoped,” his mother said, “that you will not have to live without her, or at least not for a long, long time. Come and drink your tea and then I will pour you another while you eat your scones.”

But before they could move toward the fire and the tea tray, the door opened and Alma hurried inside, looking flushed and slightly untidy and very happy.

“Edward,” she said, “you have a daughter. A plump and tiny little thing considering how large Angeline was, but with an excellent set of lungs. She is protesting her entry into this world with what appears to be typical Dudley bad temper—and those were Angeline’s words, I hasten to add. Many congratulations, Brother. You may come up in ten minutes’ time. By then we will have her cleaned and wrapped and ready to set in your arms.”

And she was gone, closing the door behind her.

Angeline’s words. She was still alive then. She had made a safe delivery and survived it.

And he had a daughter.

He set the fingers of one hand to his lips. But it was no good. The tears were coming from his eyes, not his mouth.

He had a daughter and Angeline was alive.

“Mama.” He hugged her again. “I am a father.”

As though he were the only man in the world ever to have achieved such an astonishing feat.

“And she has the Dudley temper,” he said. “Lord help me, she is going to lead me a merry dance.”

He found the idea so alarming that he threw back his head and laughed.

“And now,” his mother said, “you may relax at last. All is well, Edward. Drink your tea and eat one scone at least before you go up.”

He did so just to please her, though the very last thing he needed right then was to eat and drink. He was taking the stairs two at a time long before the ten minutes were at an end.

Alma brought the baby out to him. He could not come in yet, she told him, as the afterbirth was a bit slow and Angeline needed to be made comfortable before he was admitted.

And she placed a bundle in his arms that was so light it surely weighed nothing at all. But it was warm, and it was the most precious commodity he had ever held. For a moment he held his breath lest he drop it.

His daughter was tightly swaddled in a white blanket. All that was visible of her was her head, downy with damp dark hair, and her face, red, scrunched up, beautiful beyond belief. She was crying with cross little mews.

He held her in the crook of his arm for a few moments until Alma had disappeared back into the bedchamber. Then he moved the bundle so that his right hand was spread behind her head and his other hand beneath her body. He tipped her slightly, bringing her face close to his own.

His daughter!

“Well, little one,” he said, “this is the way it is, you see. You may have temper tantrums to your heart’s content and they will have no effect whatsoever upon your papa. You are loved, my sweetheart, and that is quite unnegotiable from this moment until I breathe my last. You will find that your father has an implacable will when it comes to those he loves. You might as well settle down now to being a part of this family.”

She had stopped crying. Her eyelids parted to narrow slits and she gazed at him with unfocused light blue eyes. Her mouth puckered into an O.

“Precisely,” he said and smiled at her.

They were in silent accord—and a baby cried, at first with an indignant squawk and then with healthier protest.

Edward gazed in astonishment at his daughter, who gazed silently back.

And then the door of the bedchamber opened abruptly again and Alma looked out.

“Oh, Edward,” she said, “you have a son. It was not the afterbirth but another child. Now we know why Angeline was so huge. Give us five minutes and then you can come in.”

And the door shut again as abruptly as it had opened.

Edward stared, stunned, at his daughter, who looked curiously unsurprised.

“Well, little one,” he said after several moments, his voice noticeably shaky, “it seems you have a brother and I have a son.”

And an heir.

ANGELINE HAD BEEN at the very point of exhaustion for hours, it seemed. She was moving past that point, would have already done so, in fact, if the pain had not been more powerful than the weariness, and the interminable urge to push had not been stronger than both.

It seemed so unfair. Her child had been born … how long ago? Forever ago. And that had been the end of that, she had thought. No one had told her about the afterbirth or that it would go on forever and be just as painful as the actual birth.

“One more push, my lady,” the physician said for surely the five thousandth time.

They were unnecessary words. She had no choice, even though every time she was convinced it would be the last, that she could not possibly do it even once more. She wanted to sleep. She had never craved anything more. During her lowest moments she had even wanted to die, but that was no longer the case. Her baby had been born. They had a daughter, she and Edward, and dying was out of the question, pain and exhaustion notwithstanding.

Indeed, she would not die. Or be defeated by pain. Or give in to exhaustion. She gathered all her remaining strength, which she would have thought nonexistent even just moments ago, and pushed with all her might. And she was rewarded with a great gushing of freedom a moment after her ears half registered the astonished words of the physician.

“Oh, my,” he said, “there is another one.”

And then a baby was crying lustily and Angeline opened her eyes to see what had happened to her daughter—she had thought Alma had taken her out to Edward. But there was another baby, dangling upside down in the physician’s hands, its little arms flailing helplessly, its body slimy from birth.

“You have a son, my lady,” the physician said. “I have never delivered twins before. I did not understand what I was facing.”

Which evidence of his inexperience might have made her nervous had she known it in advance.

Angeline reached up both arms, and he set the child down on her stomach in all his slime, and Angeline set her hands on him, one behind his head, the other behind his bottom, and felt his warmth and his humanness before the nurse took him away to wash him and swaddle him.

The indignity of his birth over with, this baby fell silent. His hair was going to be fair.

“He is an Ailsbury,” she said.

And her heart swelled with love almost to the point of bursting. And with yearning to hold her daughter again. And to see Edward.

She was a mother—twice over. And he was a father. After all this time. Seven long years.

She let her hands fall reluctantly to her sides when the nurse took the baby, and she fell half asleep while the physician finished with her and Betty cleaned her and the bed and Alma got her into a clean nightgown and brushed her hair.

Then she woke sleepily as the quiet little bundle that was her son was laid in the crook of her arm and Alma opened the door and Edward came in, an identical bundle in the crook of his arm.

He approached the bed and sat down carefully on the side of it, never taking his eyes off her.

“Angeline,” he said, “how are you?”

“I was never better in my life.” She smiled at him and then looked down into their daughter’s face as he looked down into their son’s.

He set his bundle down in the crook of her free arm and took the other into his own arms. He rearranged it so that the baby’s face was close to his own and he gazed for several silent moments.

“Welcome, my son,” he said softly at last, and he smiled with such tenderness that Angeline’s heart turned over.

He looked back at Angeline.

“If someone had told me an hour ago,” he said, “that it was possible to love two children equally and to overflowing, I would have said it was impossible. But it is not, is it?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Love is infinite. You have your heir, Edward.”

“Yes.” He looked from one to the other of the babies again. “More important, we have our son. And our daughter. Not necessarily in that order. I have a strong suspicion that little Madeline is not ever going to let Matthew forget that she is the elder.”

“We are able to use both names,” she said.

Lady Madeline Mary Elizabeth and Matthew James Alexander, Viscount Leeson. Large names for two little bundles of new humanity.

“Angeline,” he said, leaning slightly toward her, “thank you.”

She smiled though even the effort to do that was exhausting.

“I love you so very much,” she said.

He cupped the side of her face with his free hand and leaned over her to kiss her softly on the lips. He did not need to say anything. That was what seven years of marriage did for one.

There were those who said that the luster went from a marriage before one year was over and that all but the legal and ecclesiastical bonds was dead within seven years.

She did not suppose it was possible that she was more in love with Edward now than she had been seven years ago, or he with her. That would be to insult what they had felt for each other when they married. But it was certainly true that she was as much in love. It was also true that the quality of her love had deepened. She knew him now in almost every way one human being could know another. Almost every way. No one could ever know absolutely everything there was to know about another, of course, and if it were possible it would not be desirable, because there should always be more to discover, always something new to surprise and delight.

Even she could not have guessed that Edward would have tears in his eyes as he looked from their son to their daughter and back again—and back yet again.

And of course no one else knew him as she knew him. To the world he was a dutiful, quiet, rather dull man. To his family he was a warm and loving and dutiful man. Only she knew the depths of passion that he poured out in his private and sexual relationship with his wife.

With his secret mistress.

She had never stopped being that. A wife could be a dull creature, as could a husband.

A lover and his mistress were endlessly exciting.

Except that excitement was just too wearying to be contemplated now. Perhaps later …

The little bundle that was Madeline was being lifted from her arm. Edward was holding her, she saw when she opened her eyes. The nurse beside him was holding Matthew.

“Sleep,” Edward said. “And that is an order.”

She exerted herself sufficiently to smile once more.

“Yes, my lord,” she said and was asleep almost before the words were out.