The Secret Mistress

a large, echoing building without shouting.

The large building was unimportant. So was the congregation, even though it included all the people in the world most dear to him and to her. Angeline was here, her hand in his, and they were speaking to each other the words that would bind them in law for the rest of their lives, the words that would bind their hearts for a lifetime and an eternity.

It felt strange and strangely freeing to have discovered that after all he was a romantic. Half the people here would be deeply shocked if they knew that he actually loved the woman who was becoming his wife, and that she loved him. Such an extravagance of sensibility would seem almost vulgar to many people. And it amused him that Angeline had suggested they guard the secret of their deep love for each other while presenting the front of a conventional marriage to the world.

And then she was his wife. The clergyman had just said so.

She turned her head to smile at him, her lips parted in wonder, her eyes bright with unshed tears. He gazed back.

His secret mistress.

He almost laughed aloud with sheer joy at the remembered words. But that could wait for tonight when the door of their room at the Rose and Crown was firmly closed behind them.

There was the rest of a church service to be lived through first, and a grand wedding breakfast at Dudley House.

This was their wedding day.

She was his wife.

Epilogue

Seven Years Later

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