Midnight Pleasures

  “A fever,” he said meditatively. Then he turned to Patrick. “Has it started yet?”

  “What started yet?”

  “The miscarriage, of course!” the doctor snapped. Really, he had no time for this sort of nonsense.

  “Miscarriage … You’re quite sure that she will lose the baby?” Patrick’s heart felt as if someone had thrust a dagger into it.

  “Yes.” The doctor didn’t bother to say anything further, and when Patrick opened his mouth to ask a question he just raised a finger condescendingly. Patrick realized that he was holding Sophie’s limp wrist and counting her pulse. Finally the doctor raised Sophie’s head and poured a hefty dose of laudanum down her throat.

  Then he shot Patrick a glance. “I must request that you leave the room now, Your Grace.”

  Patrick just looked back at him. Privately, Lambeth thought that although most husbands acted like the very devil when this sort of thing happened—an unfortunate business, losing the heir—this husband really looked like the devil. And he didn’t like the story of the young duchess falling down the stairs. Not that it would have made any difference.

  When Patrick stood up, towering over him, his black eyes burning furiously into his, Lambeth thought again, Foakes looks like the devil and acts like him too.

  Patrick’s voice was measured but the fury about to erupt in it was clear.

  “I will stay here.” He backed up one step.

  The doctor shrugged. Briskly he pulled down Sophie’s sheets and hauled up her nightdress, ignoring the barely suppressed movement of the husband. What did he think doctors did when they examined their female patients? Looked at them from across the room? He did a brief examination. Good: It looked as if her waters had already broken. Shouldn’t be long now.

  He turned around, girding himself to deal with the husband, whose face had gone dead white, Lambeth noted dispassionately. Really, men didn’t belong in a birthing room. And he couldn’t think why this one was refusing to leave. The man looked as if he might faint, although there was only a small show of blood. Lambeth turned about and pulled up his patient’s sheet.

  “I must insist that you leave,” Dr. Lambeth said as firmly as he could, instilling his voice with every drop of authority he had in his body.

  Patrick shifted burning eyes to the doctor’s face.

  “Why?”

  “Your presence makes me uneasy,” Lambeth said bluntly. “I need all my wits about me to deliver a stillborn child when his mother is in a raging fever and half unconscious. I can’t have you standing about and almost giving me a facer every time I conduct a routine examination.”

  Patrick met the doctor’s unsympathetic eyes. “Couldn’t the babe live? It’s … he’s seven months old.”

  “No.” The doctor’s tone was final. “The child is not alive.”

  “I won’t do anything. I will remain here.” Patrick pointed to the wall.

  “No.”

  Patrick looked at him and knew that he couldn’t intimidate Lambeth. The doctor had far too much sense of his own consequence.

  “Is my wife in any danger?”

  “I doubt it,” Lambeth said calmly, not even looking back at his patient, who was sleeping restlessly. “It’s probably better that Her Grace does not fully experience the birth. Not that it will be very painful, given that the child is not yet full-grown.”

  Patrick swallowed, hard. He started to walk to the door. He stopped, wheeled about.

  “I want to see the baby. When it’s born.” His voice grated, hardly disguising the blunt agony raging in his heart.

  Oh for God’s sake, Lambeth thought to himself.

  “I can inform you whether you would have had an heir,” he said, his voice rigidly disapproving.

  Patrick’s eyes blazed from a bone-white face. “What the devil does the sex matter? I want to see the baby, Doctor. In case Sophie doesn’t wake up in time, she would want to know what her baby looked like.”

  Dr. Lambeth allowed his patient’s husband a small smile. Now that was the kind of response he was pleased to hear.

  “I shall call you at the appropriate moment, Your Grace,” he said primly, ushering Patrick to the door. “I would prefer that you went downstairs, perhaps to your library, and I shall ring the bell when I wish to have you summoned.”

  Patrick numbly allowed himself to be pushed out into the hallway. He walked down the stairs like a ghost, his hand trailing over the places where Sophie’s hand had been, a short two hours ago. He walked down the stairs and stood at the bottom as if he’d been turned to salt, moving to the side only when a nurse gowned in white was ushered in the front door and started up the stairs accompanied by Clemens.

  If only he hadn’t shouted at her. If only he had realized that she had a fever and wasn’t feeling well. Why, why did he shout at her and make her fall down the stairs? Not knowing what to do, Patrick walked into the library and poured himself a brandy, but set it down, untouched, twenty minutes later.

  For an hour, two hours, he walked up and down the same strip of rug, beginning just in front of the oak bookcases and walking precisely to his father’s book stand, then wheeling about and walking back. And the only things he could think of came from that burning hole in his heart, the same questions rising again and again. Why didn’t he control his temper? Why didn’t he realize his wife had a fever? He knew she never wore rouge!

  By the time there was a quiet knock on the door, Patrick felt twenty years older, drained of life, awash in a sea of self-hatred. The nurse stood on the threshold, looking at him with some trepidation. She’d had a tea break about an hour ago and heard all about the duke terrifying his wife into falling down the stairs. He didn’t sound like the sort of man one would want to cross.

  “Your Grace—” She stopped. She’d never had a father want to see a dead baby before. She’d brought fathers their sons and announced them as “heirs;” she’d brought fathers their daughters and announced them as “wee beautiful creatures.” But her experience failed her this time. “It’s a girl,” she finally said.

  Patrick moved over to her silently and took the tiny bundle from her arm. The nurse’s mouth dropped open.

  “Go,” he said brusquely.

  Nurse Mathers fled, clattering her way back up the stairs to tell the doctor that he’d better be the one to take that poor dead child from the father, because she didn’t want anything else to do with a man as devilish looking as that. Those eyebrows! She shivered deliciously, thinking of how she would describe him to her mother.

  Alone in the study, Patrick sat on his favorite armchair. They’d wrapped a sheet over her face. He pulled the cloth away from his daughter’s little face and tucked it around her neck. Then for a second he just leaned back, holding a scrap of humanity, so light that it felt as if she might float off his arm. She was so pale, her skin as white as first snowfall.

  Finally he got up and climbed the stairs, slowly, as if he had ninety years rather than thirty.

  When Sophie really woke up, woke up clearly, four days later, she knew instantly what had happened. A fountain of dread poured out from her heart, and her hand fluttered willy-nilly to her midriff … but it no longer held her baby. It was gone, gone as if the baby had never rested there, kicking and floating in its little house.

  She didn’t say anything, but the quality of the silence in the room had changed. Patrick was sitting in a chair next to her bed, and he saw her looking at the wall before her with an awful knowledge in her eyes. The moment he had dreaded for days had arrived. She seemed not to have seen him and was just staring ahead as tears slowly slipped over her cheeks.

  Patrick lurched forward, out of his chair, and half fell to his knees on the wide step leading to the bed. He reached out and pulled Sophie’s small, fragile hands into his large brown ones, burying his face in them.

  Sophie looked at him silently. Her tears felt oddly cool, sliding down her cheeks one after another.

  “I’m sorry, Sophie.” The words w
renched from the deepest wells of Patrick’s soul. “I know I can never make it up to you, but oh God, I’m so sorry!”

  Sophie frowned. “Did you want the babe, then?”

  He raised his head and she realized with shock that his cheeks were wet with tears. “I wanted the babe. I don’t know why I said such a cruel thing to Braddon. I lied. I used to think all the time about the baby.”

  Sophie swallowed. “I’m sorry, Patrick. I don’t know what I did wrong.”

  Patrick’s voice emerged half strangled, rough. “What are you talking about?”

  “The baby, the baby. I don’t know what I did wrong. I don’t know what I did to make my baby die.” Sophie’s hands had twisted out of Patrick’s grip and were restlessly clutching and reclutching her sheet. Miserably she met Patrick’s eyes.

  The pure shock she saw there startled her. “How could you do anything?” He whispered it. “I frightened you. I made you fall down the stairs.”

  Sophie shook her head. She had only a jangled, jumbled memory of the past few days, and nothing to do with stairs. “Stairs?”

  “You fell down the stairs,” Patrick said slowly. “You fell down the stairs, and then you miscarried, Sophie.” He repeated, “I’m so sorry.”

  “No.” Sophie was shaking her head. “I don’t know about the stairs, but the baby stopped living, that was what Dr. Lambeth said. I felt so ill that I couldn’t think clearly.” She paused and drew a long, shuddering voice. “But I knew before the doctor told me, because he stopped moving—”

  “She,” Patrick automatically amended.

  “She?”

  “We had a little girl, Sophie, a lovely little girl. Do you mean that the fall didn’t cause the baby to be born early, Sophie?” His voice was so hoarse that it was almost a gasp.

  She nodded, then murmured something.

  Patrick dropped his head on the cover as harsh, wrenching sobs forced their way up his chest. He felt two slim arms curve around his shoulders.

  “Ah, love, don’t, don’t! It wasn’t either of our faults,” Sophie whispered with new wisdom in her heart. “She just wasn’t ready for this world yet, that’s all.”

  Patrick stayed still, savoring the sweetness of having Sophie’s arms around him again. The sense of sharp joy in his heart mingled with grief—but it was a healthy grief, a looking-forward grief.

  “Lie back.” Gently he pushed her back against the pillows.

  “Did you see her?” Sophie’s voice was so small it floated on the air.

  “She was a beautiful baby, Sophie. She looked just like you.” Tenderly he wiped away her tears. “I told her how much you loved her.”

  Tears poured down Sophie’s cheeks. Patrick sat on the edge of the bed and ran his hand along Sophie’s hair.

  “She looked cold in the sheet they put her in. So I brought her up here and I wrapped her in one of my winter cravats, a cashmere one.” He looked down at his wife, who was still crying.

  Sophie lifted a trembling hand and tugged at Patrick’s shoulder until he carefully bent forward, swinging up his legs so that he was lying by her side. With a sigh she buried her face against his shoulder.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s buried in the family plot,” Patrick said quietly. “I didn’t want to leave you, so Alex and Charlotte took her to Downes. She’s next to my mother … my mother loved babies.” He rubbed his cheek against his wife’s soft hair.

  Sophie buried her face deeper in his shoulder. When she finally spoke, it was so softly that he could barely hear her voice.

  “Did you give her a name?”

  Patrick shook his head, then realized that she couldn’t see him. “I thought we could do that together.”

  He didn’t want to explain that priests couldn’t baptize children who had died before being born. Or that their family priest wasn’t the family priest anymore because he had refused to bury their child in consecrated ground. Alex had dismissed him on the spot and ridden all the way back up to London to fetch David Marlowe.

  “Alex sent a letter, and there’s also a letter from Charlotte to you. They’re coming to London tomorrow. David said a service for the baby—you remember David, don’t you?”

  Sophie nodded. Of course she remembered David, the sweet, brown-eyed curate who been friends with Braddon and Patrick since their school days.

  Then Sophie started crying so hard that her whole body shook, and Patrick couldn’t do anything other than hold her and murmur tender, loving words.

  Chapter 27

  For the next few days Sophie lay in bed, listlessly eating a bite or two of Floret’s lovingly prepared invalid food. Patrick sat with her for long hours, reading aloud her favorite novels, the gossip sheets from The Morning Post, and the international news from The Times. Sophie didn’t really listen. She would follow a story for a few minutes, then her mind would drift back to the present. Sometimes tears would start silently running down her face, and Patrick would put down his book and wipe her cheeks and pull her against his shoulder, and sometimes she just stared at the wall, feeling a roaring emptiness descend on her mind.

  Her mother visited every day, making bracing pronouncements about future pregnancies. Once, her father tiptoed in and stood silently by her bed.

  “I wish we’d had another child,” he finally said. “Then you might have a sister to help you through this.”

  Sophie just looked at him, her eyes bone dry. “It wouldn’t matter, Papa.”

  “We made a lot of mistakes, your mama and I. I was a fool.” Sophie just looked at him. Perhaps her father was finally giving up all those other women? But after wishing for it her whole life, she found she didn’t care at all.

  “That’s nice, Papa,” she whispered.

  George hesitated, his eyes strained. Then he left the room.

  Finally, after several weeks of lying in bed, she stopped bleeding and Dr. Lambeth pronounced her well enough to get up. Sophie wearily got up and sat in the steaming bath Simone had prepared. She couldn’t look at her body now without hating it for its failures, for its inability to provide a good home for her daughter.

  So she sat in the rapidly cooling water, rigidly staring at the wall until finally Simone took the soap from her mistress’s limp hand and rubbed a washcloth over her body.

  Patrick walked in just as Simone was drawing Sophie to her feet and bundling her in a warm towel. Sophie moved like a sleepwalker, not even registering that her husband had entered the room.

  With a nod he dismissed Simone and drew his wife over to the velvet stool before the fireplace. He helped her sit, then started toweling her long, wet hair. It was beginning to worry him, this listlessness. Dr. Lambeth said it was natural. But what did the doctor know? It wasn’t natural for his vital, laughing Sophie. A shadow of fear touched Patrick’s heart every time he saw her still face and shadowed eyes.

  But he spoke of this and that until Sophie’s quiet voice cut through his talk.

  “I want to go to Charlotte’s house … to see the grave.”

  Patrick paused, then rubbed her hair even harder.

  “We’ll leave for Downes tomorrow morning,” he promised.

  “I want to go now,” Sophie replied. “And I want to go by myself.” There was something implacable in her voice.

  Patrick’s heart lurched and he dropped the towel, coming around in front of Sophie and dropping to his knees before her as she sat on the low stool.

  “Don’t shut me out, Sophie,” he whispered. “Don’t.” The grinding tightness in the back of his throat made it impossible to say anything more.

  Sophie looked at him calmly. The bouts of tears had receded in the last two days. She felt as if she were looking at the world through a thick, cottony pile of clouds.

  “Of course I’m not shutting you out, Patrick,” she replied. “I simply would like to visit the grave for the first time by myself.”

  Patrick stared at her, his eyes black holes in his exhausted face. “Why?”

  ??
?I’m her mother.” Then she amended her statement: “I was her mother.”

  “I’m her father,” Patrick replied.

  “I carried her in my body for months,” Sophie cried, “and I have to say I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I …” She began to tremble. “It was my body, don’t you understand?”

  “No,” Patrick said definitively. “What are you talking about?”

  Now the tears returned to Sophie’s eyes. He was cracking her hard-won control by making her talk about it. “I failed her … I failed her.”

  “You didn’t fail her.” Patrick’s voice was tender, consoling, as he drew his hand lovingly over the curve of Sophie’s cheek.

  Sophie looked away. “I want to go by myself,” she said stubbornly. “I need to—”

  “You didn’t fail her!” Patrick reached out, giving Sophie’s shoulders a little shake. “She wasn’t ready to live yet, remember, Sophie? You said that to me. It wasn’t your body. She was too fragile.”

  Patrick drew Sophie into his arms, carrying her to the armchair. He sat down, snuggling her as if she were a child who had fallen and scraped her knee.

  “It was because she knew I didn’t want her,” Sophie said, her voice breaking.

  “How can you even say that? You wanted her so much that you wouldn’t let me touch you for months!”

  There was a moment of silence in the room. “I was afraid,” Sophie said finally. “I was afraid that I would lose the baby.”

  “Then how can you say that you didn’t want her?”

  “You were with your mistress and you weren’t coming to my room. I knew we would never have another baby. I wanted this baby so much, but still, sometimes, I thought that if I hadn’t gotten pregnant you would have still come to my bedroom—” A burning wave of sobs clawed its way up her throat. “I shouldn’t have thought that,” she said brokenly. “I should have just accepted it and been thankful for the baby.”

  Patrick sat, stunned, clutching his wife in his arms. “I was not with another woman, Sophie.”

  “I could tell,” Sophie said, not even listening to his response, “that you were bored by making love to me.”