Lord Deverill's Heir, Catherine Coulter [the best motivational books .TXT] 📗

The bedroom door burst open. “Await me outside. I wish to speak to my wife.”

The doctor straightened slowly. A tall man himself, he drew up to his full height, but the Earl of Strafford seemed to dominate the room. His tone was abrupt, his breathing hard and sharp. The doctor did not release the countess’s wrist from between his long fingers. He said evenly, “I am sorry, my lord, but that will not be possible.”

“Dammit, Branyon, do as I tell you. I want to be alone with my wife. I have questions for her and it is time she answered them. Leave us alone, man. It is my right.”

As the earl strode toward the bed, the doctor saw that his regular features were distorted into a mask of fear and rage. The two together—it was strange and inexplicable, but it was so.

The doctor gently lowered the countess’s hand under the covers at her side. The simple movement gave him time to control his anger at the man he’d hated since the moment he had seen how he had treated his gentle wife. He said quietly, “I am sorry, my lord, but her ladyship is beyond words. She is gone, my lord, but a few minutes ago. She did not suffer at the end. Her passing was painless.”

“No! Dammit, no!” The earl rushed at the doctor to fling him away.

The doctor quickly stepped aside. He stood silently as the earl gazed mutely down at his wife’s calm pale face, as he took her hand and shook it. Dr. Branyon placed his hand firmly upon the earl’s arm. “The countess is dead, my lord. There is naught either of us can do for her now. As I said, her passing was without suffering.” The earl stood motionless by the bedside for a long while. Finally he turned and said more to himself than to the doctor, “It is unfortunate. I did not get to her in time. I have lost. Damnation. Those lying French bastards. It is not fair.” Without again looking at his dead wife, the earl turned abruptly and left the room, his boots ringing sharp and loud on the oak floor.

EVESHAM ABBEY, 1792

Four people stood around the writhing naked woman on the sweat-soaked sheets. The doctor had thrown his coat to a tabletop many hours before, his full white shirt was now loose about his neck and wrists. Fine lines of fatigue drew his mouth taut, and beads of perspiration stood out on his smooth forehead. He was a young man, but the young girl on the bed was younger, barely eighteen. And her life was in his hands.

The bleary-eyed midwife and housekeeper kept silent vigil at the foot of the bed, their hands dangling helplessly at their sides.

It was ghastly hot, so stifling that the woman in her ceaseless misery had thrown off the cover, uncaring that her swollen body was exposed to these people. She was beyond thinking, almost beyond the searing pain that receded quickly, only to explode with greater ferocity within her belly, tearing hoarse screams from her parched throat.

She lay now gasping for breath, her senses momentarily returned to her, as the agonizing pain waited for its next inevitable onslaught on her body. She gazed up at the doctor, her large blue eyes glazed with fear and suffering.

He leaned over her and wiped rivulets of sweat from her brow. He put a glass to her lips. “Drink the water, Lady Ann. That’s it. No, not so fast. I will hold it for you as long as you wish. Drink slowly.” When she had drunk her fill, he said quietly, “Lady Ann, you must try harder. You must bear down with all your strength when I tell you to. Do you understand me?”

She licked her tongue over her cracked lips and whimpered, a helpless sound, but she was helpless, held captive of her body and the forces that no one could stop. She wanted desperately to detach herself from her gross child-filled body. She sought his steady dark eyes and wished herself a part of him. So intense was her longing that he felt that part of her that was the laughing, gentle girl burn into the very depth of his being. His voice faltered as he knelt beside her and clasped her limp fingers in his hands. “Lady Ann, please, you cannot, you must not give up. Please, help yourself, help me. I know you can do it. You are strong.

You want to live. You will do it, you must do it. You will birth your babe.”

A horrible shriek tore from her throat and she was lost to him, consumed back within her body as the vicious contractions tore through her belly.

He quickly eased his hand inside her, felt the baby’s head, and shouted at her, “Push! Now, bear down!” He hesitated only the briefest moment, then splayed his fingers over her belly, and pushed downward with all his strength.

Her scream and the baby’s cry came together, burning into the very depths of him.

The doctor walked softly into the earl’s library and stood wearily in the dim-curtained room. “You’ve a girl, my lord. I congratulate you. She is in your image. Your wife is very weak but she will live.” He stood there, so tired, he wondered why he didn’t fall over, waiting for the earl to speak. The earl brushed careless fingers over his immaculate waistcoat, eyed the blood-flecked white shirt of the doctor with distaste, and said indifferently, “A girl, eh, Branyon? Ah, well, it is but her first. She still has many years of youth to bear me sons. I fancy I will have my son within the next year. Aye, ladies love babies.

She’ll want another very soon. This weakness, it’s nonsense. She’ll forget about this by the end of the week, if the babe survives, of course. Many do not. Elsbeth did, but perhaps this one won’t.