The Secret Mistress

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?”