to carry the woman up to it. She would not have expected compassion of him.
The quiet gentleman picked up the urn, which Mrs. Palmer had abandoned on his table, and poured himself a second cup of coffee.
Lisa Curtis’s baby did not come quickly. It was her first and it was large and it appeared determined both to take its time in coming into the world and to give its mother as much grief as possible while doing so. Tom Suffield, the father, was beside himself with anxiety and was no help to anyone. Big, strapping young man as he was, he made no objection to the marquess’s carrying his woman into the inn and up the stairs, Lord Birkin hovering close to share the load if necessary. Tom was rather incoherent, accounting perhaps for his lack of wisdom in admitting to his unwed state.
“We was going to get married,” he said, hurrying along behind the two gentlemen while Lisa moaned, having had the misfortune to suffer a contraction after the marquess had picked her up. “But we couldn’t afford to.”
And yet, Lord Lytton thought, wincing at the girl’s obvious agony, they could afford a child. An unfair judgment, perhaps. Even the poor were entitled to their pleasures, and children had a habit of not waiting for a convenient moment to get themselves conceived.
A strange scene greeted them at the entrance to his former inn room-had he really given it up in a chivalrous gesture to counter Miss Wilder’s brave offer to sleep in the stable? Miss Amelia Horn was hovering at one side of the doorway, a woolen shawl of hideous and multicolored stripes clutched in one hand and a vinaigrette in the other. Mrs. Forbes was hovering and nodding at the other side. The room itself was crowded. He had not realized that it was large enough to accommodate so many persons.
Colonel Forbes was kneeling before the grate, blowing on some freshly laid coals and coaxing a fire into life. Both his hands and his face were liberally daubed with coal dust. He was looking as angry and out of sorts as he always did. Miss Eugenia Horn was at the window, closing the curtains to keep out some draft and a great deal of gloom. Lady Birkin was in the act of setting down a large bowl of steaming water on the washstand. Pamela Wilder was bent over the tidied bed, plumping up lumpy pillows and turning back the sheets to receive its new occupant. Lord Lytton, despite the weight of his burden, which he had just carried from the stable into the inn and up the stairs, pursed his lips at the sight of a slim but well-rounded derriere nicely outlined against the wool of her dress.
What a fool and an idiot he had been the night before! He might by now be well familiar with the feel of that derriere. She turned and smiled warmly at the woman in his arms. He found himself wishing that her eyes were focused a little higher.
“The bed is ready for you,” she said. “In a moment we will have you comfortable and warm. The fire will be giving off some heat soon. How are you feeling?”
“Oh, thank you,” Lisa said, her voice weak and weary as the marquess set her gently down. “Where’s Tom?”
“Here I am, Leez,” the young man said from the doorway. His face was chalky white. “How are you?”
“It’s so wonderfully warm in here,” the girl said plaintively, but then she gasped and clasped a hand over her swollen abdomen. She opened her mouth and panted loudly, moaning with each outward breath so that all the occupants of the room froze.
“Who is in charge?” the marquess asked when it appeared that the pain was subsiding again. He had felt his own color draining away. “Who is going to deliver the child?”
The one Miss Horn, he noticed, had disappeared from the doorway, while the other had turned firmly to face the curtained window. Obviously not them, and obviously not Miss Wilder. He must take her downstairs, away from there. But it was she who answered him.
“There is no one with any experience,” she said. She flushed. “And no one who has given birth. We will have to do the best we can.”
Hell, he thought. Hell and damnation! No one with any experience. A thousand devils!
“Sally,” Lord Birkin said, “let me take you back to our room. Mrs.
Palmer is doubtless the best qualified to cope.”
“Mrs. Palmer,” she said, her eyes flashing briefly at him, “has the breakfast to clear away and the dishes to wash and the rooms to see to.
I’ll stay here, Henry.” She turned to the girl, who was sitting awkwardly on the side of the bed, and her expression softened. “The stable must have been dreadfully dirty,” she said. “I have brought up some warm water. I will help you wash yourself and change into something clean. I have a loose-fitting nightgown that I believe will fit you.”
She looked up. “Will you fetch it, Henry? It is the one with the lace at the throat and cuffs.”
He looked at her, speechless. She, the Baroness Birkin, was going to wash a young girl of low birth who at present smelled of rankly uncleaned stable? She was going to give the girl one of her costly nightgowns? But yes, of course she was going to. It was just like Sally to do such things, and with such kindness in her face. He turned to leave the room.
“I’ll help you, my lady,” Pamela said. She stooped over the girl on the bed. “Here, I’ll help you off with your dress once the gentlemen have withdrawn. What is your name?”
“Lisa,” the girl said. “Lisa Curtis, miss.”
“We will make you comfortable as soon as we possibly can, Lisa,” Pamela said.
Miss Eugenia Horn coughed. “You must come with me away from this room, my dear Miss Wilder,” she said. “It is not fitting that we be here. We will leave Lisa to the care of Lady Birkin and Mrs. Forbes, who are married ladies.”
The Marquess of Lytton watched Pamela’s face with keen interest from beneath drooped eyelids. She smiled. “I grew up at a rectory, ma’am,” she said. “I learned at an early age to help my fellow human beings under even the most difficult of circumstances if my assistance could be of some value.”
It was a do-gooder sentiment that might have made him want to vomit, the marquess thought, if it had not been uttered so matter-of-factly and if her tone had not been so totally devoid of piety and sentiment.
“I think it will survive without your further help, Forbes,” the marquess said, looking critically at the crackling fire. “Let us see if our landlord can supply us with some of that superior ale we had last night, shall we? Join us, Suffield.”
He was rewarded with a grateful smile from Pamela Wilder. Lady Birkin was squeezing out a cloth over the bowl of water and rubbing soap on it.
Miss Eugenia Horn was preparing to leave the room and sights so unbecoming to maiden eyes.
It was strange, perhaps, that for the rest of the day all the guests at the White Hart Inn could not keep their minds away from the room upstairs in which a girl of a social class far beneath their own, and a girl moreover who was about to bear a bastard child, labored painfully though relatively quietly. Her moans could be heard only when one of them went upstairs to his own room.
“They should have stayed at home,” Colonel Forbes said gruffly. “Damn fool thing to be wandering about the countryside at this time of year and with the girl in this condition.”
“Perhaps they could not afford to stay at home,” Lord Birkin said.
Tom could not answer for himself. He had returned to the stable despite the offer of ale and a share of the fire in the taproom. He was pacing.
“The poor child,” Miss Eugenia Horn said, having decided that it was unexceptionable to talk about the child, provided she ignored all reference to its birth. She was sitting in the taproom, knitting a pair of baby boots. “One cannot help but wonder what will become of it.”
“Tom will doubtless find employment and make an honest woman of Lisa, and they and the child will live happily ever after,” the marquess said.
Mrs. Forbes nodded her agreement.
“It would be comforting to think so,” Lord Birkin said.
Mrs. Palmer, looking harried, was emerging from the kitchen, where she had given the guests’ servants their breakfast and washed the dishes, and was making her way upstairs to tidy rooms.
They were all increasingly aware as the day dragged on that it was Christmas Eve and that they were beginning to live through the strangest Christmas they had ever experienced.
“We might decorate the inn with some greenery,” Miss Amelia Horn said at one point, “but who would be foolhardy enough to go outside to gather any? Besides, even if some were brought inside, it would be dripping
