Highwayman Lover

  * * * *

  Charlotte rode by carriage to Caroline’s home, Heathcote House with Lady Epping, Lady Chelmsford, Una, and Meghan. Their driver whipped the horses to a frantic pace; the coach bounced and swayed as they raced north. An anxious silence held sway over the women; not even Lady Chelmsford moaned, chattered, or offered pretense of swooning to disturb it. Childbearing was a precarious circumstance. Much could go awry, no matter a woman’s health or the quality of her pregnancy. They all knew well the horror stories of hemorrhaging, breech births, and other complications—events that could not only leave the infant dead, but the mother as well.

  Charlotte spent much of the day, well into the afternoon, in Caroline’s room at Heathcote. No men were allowed into this inner sanctum, and the heavy draperies had all been drawn and fastened to keep the room filled with shadows per the midwife’s instruction. Charlotte had never before observed a birthing. Upon her arrival to the room, she had spent a few uncertain moments loitering by the threshold as her mother and aunt had hurried forward and into the fray—a swarming mass of housemaids, the midwife, and her assistants, and Caroline, who sat propped in a large birthing chair, huffing and crying out breathlessly. Charlotte had been immobilized with bewildered fascination; the room had been very warm, the air heavy and thick with the odor of sweat and laborious effort. Finally, Lady Epping had taken notice of Charlotte’s hesitation, and had flapped her hand in imperative beckon.

  “Charlotte, do not just stand there, darling. Come and hold your sister’s hand,” she had called.

  Charlotte spent hours perched at the left of the birthing chair. She clasped hands with Caroline, wincing every time a birthing spasm would wrack her sister’s form, and Caroline’s fingers would crush against hers with surprising and brutal force. Caroline’s face was glossed with a sheen of sweat; her long, dark blond hair had worked loose of its plait and clung to her face in wispy, dampened strands. Her brows would furrow deeply when she leaned forward, gritting her teeth and bearing each surge of pain within her. She was nearly unrecognizable. For each new swell of labor, Charlotte and the other women would slide their arms behind her back and help prop her upright in the chair; Caroline would hold her breath, uttering a hoarse, gritty squeal with each contraction and when it would wane, she would whoof the air from her lungs, her eyes flying wide and dazed.

  Charlotte helped to lean her comfortably back against the chair in between the swells. She and Lady Epping took turns rinsing linens in basins of cool water and dabbing against Caroline’s face, smoothing her disheveled hair back and wiping at her perspiration.

  “Here, darling,” Lady Epping would murmur, offering a cup of tea to Caroline. “Drink, love. Just a sip. Drink, drink…”

  At some point, hours into the ordeal, Caroline looked up at Charlotte, her eyes glassy, her mouth unfurling in a feeble smile. “Oh,” she whispered. “Hullo. I did not hear you arrive, darling.”

  Charlotte leaned over and kissed Caroline’s cheek. “Are you hurting?” she whispered, an ignorant question considering Caroline was flushed from enduring the pain, and her breath was still fluttering from the severity of her last contraction.

  Caroline laughed softly. “I shall survive,” she breathed. “I… I told you one could not simply drop a baby. There… there is some effort to it…”

  Charlotte smiled, helping to support her as Lady Epping offered another sip of tea.

  “I am glad you are here, Charlotte,” Caroline said. “I must speak with you at… at once. Some place private. Perhaps… perhaps the parlor? Randall… he told me…”

  “You never mind the parlor,” Lady Epping whispered, stroking her hand against Caroline’s hair. “You can speak with your sister later, darling. For now, you set your mind on seeing this little lamb of yours out among us for proper introductions.”

  Caroline tried to smile again, and her brows furrowed in a grimace. “Here comes another!” she gasped. “Hoist me up… hold fast to me!”

  There was no time for Charlotte to consider any more of her impending wedding, much less some means to avoid or prevent it. There was no time for anything but Caroline; her birthing was excruciating, exhausting, and relentless. When the child finally came by late afternoon, it was a son, a squirming, sopping little thing. Charlotte blinked at this tiny, flushed creature with wonder as the midwife leaned back, cradling it as it at last emerged from between Caroline’s thighs.

  She watched the midwife poke two pudgy forefingers into the infant’s mouth and offer a swift swipe, drawing a globule of thick, pink-stained mucous from within. The child hiccupped at this and Charlotte stared, mesmerized to watch him draw the first, whooping breath of life into his tiny lungs. This was followed promptly by a wide-mouthed, scrunched-face yowl of righteous indignation, his little hands swatting the open air, his tiny feet drumming furiously. The midwife and her assistants swaddled him in blankets, nearly hiding him from view beneath the soft folds. His umbilicus was cut, and the damp, caterwauling boy was presented to his mother.

  Caroline held him in her arms and burst into tears, her mouth unfurled with a joy Charlotte knew she could not fully understand or appreciate. Charlotte wept with this joy nonetheless, drawing her hands to her mouth and trembling. She felt her mother’s arm drape about her shoulders, and she leaned against Lady Epping, both of them weeping and laughing together.

  The baby was whisked off to be bathed and introduced to the teat of his wet nurse, while Caroline struggled to expel the remains of afterbirth from her womb. This process, no less painful in the seeming from the birthing itself, lasted another hour nearly in full, and when it was finally over, Caroline was semi-lucid, reeling with exhaustion. She was brought to her bed, and collapsed here. As the chamber slowly cleared, Charlotte and Lady Epping sat together at Caroline’s bedside, keeping vigil as she slept.

  “We should wake her,” Charlotte said quietly, after a long time had passed. They were alone in the chamber now, just the three of them. She glanced at her mother. “The midwife said we should see her take sips of this now and again.”

  She nodded to indicate a small mug of caudle on the bedside table. Lady Epping shook her head, not averting her gaze from Caroline, whom she watched with a soft smile seeming fixed to the corners of her mouth. “No, lamb,” she murmured. “Let her rest awhile. She is spent.”

  Lady Epping draped her hand against Charlotte’s.

  Charlotte spread her fingers, letting her mother’s twine through, and they sat together, side by side and hand in hand.

  “Was it like this for you?” she asked softly. “When you had us, I mean?”

  Lady Epping smiled. “I think every birth is different,” she said, glancing at Charlotte. “Just as every woman is. God makes no two the same. Reilly was my first, and my longest. He took nearly two days in full to come into this world.”

  Charlotte blinked at her in horrified awe, trying to imagine enduring that sort of pain for so long.

  Lady Epping chuckled softly. “I suppose by about midway through the ordeal, I started grunting at him. ‘You come out of there,’ I remember saying. ‘I cannot keep you in me until you are grown and besides, the world is not nearly so horrid as you would make it seem by your refusal to enter it’.”

  Charlotte laughed, drawing her mother’s gaze. “Your sister came more quickly, but I bled for her,” Lady Epping said. “It gave everyone a fright, myself included. Such a fuss, and I could scarcely catch my breath. The midwife whispered to my mother that I would never have another for it. She did not think I could hear, but I could, and I cried. I just burst into tears right there upon the birthing chair, wracked over with pangs and gasping for air.”

  She smiled again. “You came and proved her wrong, and you, lamb, were the sweetest, easiest effort I had known. My water doused me at breakfast. I remember soaking my skirt and the chair and blinking at your father like he had sopped me with it. Four hours later, and scarcely a pant, and there you were in my arms, wriggling, yowling, and clearly offended
to breathe open air.”

  Charlotte smiled. There was unfamiliar softness in her mother’s face, a sort of distant and wistful cast to her eyes. “Every time, the process was different,” Lady Epping said. “In the end, when I held you each in turn, the feeling was always the same. From Reilly to you, it never changed. I looked down upon your little faces each for the first; you each wiggled and squealed against me, and I was overwhelmed. I understood.”

  “Understood?” Charlotte asked.

  Lady Epping nodded. “I had never found much purpose in the world as a girl,” she said. “It always seemed rather foolish and tawdry to me, I suppose, this custom of primping and powdering, of parties and protocol. It never made much reasonable sense to me. I went along with it, of course, but it seemed so moot. I understood my place in things when I held you each upon your births.”

  Charlotte looked at her mother. She had never imagined that Lady Epping might have found society’s functioning as moot or foolish, given the degree of fervency she had always demonstrated in forcing Charlotte into it.

  Lady Epping offered Charlotte’s hand a gentle squeeze. “I am sorry for last night,” she said softly. “For speaking so harshly to you… striking you. I know you do not want to marry Lord Roding, and that he has his flaws. I am not blind to his character. I know the impetuousness and impropriety of pampered youth when presented plainly with it. However, with his hand, you will be the wife of an earl someday, Charlotte, and you will never know want or need. Your children will never know want or need. That may not mean much to you at this moment, because you are confused and hurting, I know, but it will one day.”

  Lady Epping gazed down at Caroline again and smiled. “One day, you will understand, and that will be all that matters to you, too.”

  Charlotte felt a gloss of tears swimming in her eyes. “I love you so very much, lamb,” Lady Epping whispered, cradling Charlotte’s cheek against her palm.

  Charlotte turned her face against her mother’s hand. “I love you, too, Mother,” she said.

  “Do not be frightened tomorrow night alone with James,” Lady Epping said. “He will lay with you. Do you know what that means?”

  “Yes, I… I have… heard of such things,” Charlotte said, feeling the color drain in momentary mortification from her face.

  “It will be clumsy,” her mother said. “Painful at the first, and you will bleed for it. It is sticky and sweaty and disheveling, but it is over soon enough. Close your eyes, purse your lips, and moan as if it pleases you. You will offend his sensibilities otherwise.”

  “You do not enjoy it, Mother?” There had been pain for Charlotte last night, but it had waned to pleasure repeatedly, increasingly.

  “It… it is not so bad… and it seldom takes long,” Caroline murmured from the bed. “I think… anything else is only gossip.”

  Charlotte and her mother looked down in surprise, and found Caroline blinking dazedly up at them, her eyes heavily lidded. “Caroline, you are awake!” Charlotte exclaimed.

  “Darling, you should be resting,” Lady Epping said, leaning over and touching Caroline’s face.

  Caroline batted her eyes sleepily. “Where… where is my baby?”

  “With his nurse,” Lady Epping soothed. “You are exhausted. Close your eyes and try to sleep.”

  Caroline shook her head. “Will they let me hold him again?” she whispered. “Even for a moment, I… I should dearly enjoy to. Would you ask them, Mother?”

  “Of course, darling,” Lady Epping said, rising from her chair. She pressed her lips against Caroline’s brow. “I will be right back.”

  Charlotte watched her mother leave the chamber, and turned to her sister. Caroline gazed up at her blearily, and seemed to struggle to keep her eyes open. “How are you feeling?” Charlotte asked softly, slipping her hand against Caroline’s.

  Caroline snickered feebly. “As though… as though I have been hurled from horseback gut-first onto a fencepost,” she said. She closed her fingers against Charlotte’s. “Mother is right.”

  “About what?” Charlotte asked, trying to offer Caroline a sip of caudle.

  “About you never wanting for anything if you marry James Houghton,” Caroline said, shaking her head at the proffered mug. “He… he might be a… a boorish hound, but his father is a good man, and he will never see you know debt or disgrace. I have been speaking to Randall of it, and he told me about his business in London… with Lord Essex and others…”

  “The lending group,” Charlotte said. “Yes, he told me of it at Roding Castle. I had no idea Lord Essex was of such unconventional mind.”

  Caroline nodded, her eyelids drooping. “Randall is very confident in their endeavors,” she murmured.

  “Is James involved in it?” Charlotte asked. “He spent a lot of time in London these past months, but I always thought it was to pester me. He never mentioned anything about helping his father…”

  “He is not helping his father,” Caroline said, opening her eyes and closing her hand more firmly against Charlotte’s. “James Houghton has been in London as he has been here, to enjoy the card tables and dice games.”

  Charlotte blinked at her sister. “What?”

  Caroline nodded. “That… that is what I wanted to tell you,” she said. “Randall told me James’s gambling has grown well out of hand. He is the earl’s son and Lord Essex loves him dearly, but he… he has cut his purse strings.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlotte whispered. “He was remitting James’s debts,” Caroline said.

  “And he grew tired of it, as James only accrued more. He has refused to provide James any more funds than his customary allowance. He had hoped it might teach James some responsibility, but it… Randall told me it has not.”

  “How badly is he in arrears?” Charlotte asked.

  Caroline looked at her solemnly. “He will be lucky if he does not see the inside of debtors prison in short measure,” she said. Her face softened and she smiled at Charlotte. “You do not need to worry about that, though. It would only mean you endure his company briefly as his bride. Lord Essex promised Randall he would take care of you, as the future mother of his son’s heir. He would not consent to see you suffer for James’s failings. Lord Essex is a good man. You will see. Randall told me he is coming from London tonight. He will be here for the weddings.”

  Caroline reached up, brushing the cuff of her hand clumsily against Charlotte’s cheek. “Marry him,” she whispered. “No harm will come of it. When he is gone to prison, take Kenley for your lover. I know you love him yet, and I suspect he loves you, too, no matter his reasons for not marrying you. A lover is perfectly prudent as long as it remains discreet.” She closed her eyes and smiled mysteriously. “Not that I would know,” she said. “But I have heard tell.”

  The chamber door opened, and Lady Epping returned, cradling the swaddling-bound baby in her arms. She smiled brightly, looking toward Caroline. “Look, little lamb,” she purred sweetly to the child. “Look, here is your Mama. Here is your pretty Mama.”

  “Has Randall seen him yet?” Caroline asked, smiling as Charlotte helped her sit up, arranging pillows behind her back and shoulders to support her. Caroline’s smile only widened as Lady Epping sat against the bedside, letting her draw the bundled baby into her arms.

  “Yes, he said he thought it was a rather puny thing,” Lady Epping said, frowning slightly.

  Caroline kissed the baby’s brow. “He might try forcing one from his gut and out his bloody ass some time, then,” she remarked, smiling at her son as she cooed. “How do you do, my little sweetling? Yes, indeed. How do you do?”