It was almost as crazy as thinking you could find true love on a TV show.
The closer Chloe got to Mrs. Crescent’s room, the more intense the breathing sound became. Chloe had to change her gown. What did a lady wear to a birthing room, anyway? She tiptoed past Mrs. Crescent’s half-opened door.
“Miss Parker!” Nothing escaped Mrs. Crescent, even when she was giving birth. “Come here immediately!
Henry’s low voice, like water over river rocks, calmed and comforted Mrs. Crescent . . . and Chloe. She inched the door open. Mrs. Crescent groaned in pain. Chloe couldn’t bear to look at the birthing bed—just yet. Instead she focused on their shadows, larger than life on the blue wal .
Henry’s shadow, Mrs. Crescent’s shadow, and—the camerawoman’s shadow al flickered in the candlelight like a pantomime play. Would this surreal night never end? And did this, too, need to be filmed?
Mrs. Crescent’s shadow rocked back and forth, her knees up, her hair down and scraggly. Chloe squeezed her eyes shut and buried her nose in the silky sleeve of her pelisse. She might need her vinaigrette. She set the candelabrum on the dressing table.
Henry’s shadow reached out and massaged Mrs. Crescent’s back. “Push. Gentle now. We’re almost there. One, two, three. Right. Stop pushing.
Breathe. Excel ent.”
His shadow turned toward Chloe and bent to check his pocket watch. “How kind of the lady to pul herself away from her diversions to help us.”
“It was hardly a diversion. It was enlightening. And I would’ve been better off here.” Chloe stil couldn’t look at either of them. She curled her upper lip and talked to Henry’s shadow on the wal . Mrs. Crescent grumbled in pain.
Nothing else might have been real, but this was. Chloe pul ed off her gloves, rol ed up her sleeves, and looked down at her hands.
“Scrub up, Miss Parker!” Henry nodded toward a washbowl across the room.
Henry wore a bil owing shirt with the sleeves rol ed up and the col ar open. A slight tension pul ed the shirt across his broad chest and she could see the curve of his muscles. With his cutaway coat off, his tight drop-front breeches revealed a body more enticing than Sebastian’s, if that was even possible. But she was done with men in ruffled shirts and breeches, wasn’t she?
“What are you waiting for, Miss Parker? Wash up, please.”
My God, Mrs. Crescent was having a baby, and Chloe’s mind was in the gutter, even after a scrape in the ice- house with an absolute rake.
Mrs. Crescent started her breathing, and Chloe hustled to the wash table.
“Do put on a pair of latex gloves,” Henry instructed.
“Latex gloves?” The hot water scalded her hands and the soapsuds felt—real. She snapped the gloves on. She whispered to Henry, “When were these invented? Not during the Regency, I’m sure.”
Henry lowered his voice. “If you must know, Miss Parker, it was 1964. Now please come and help Mrs. Crescent relax.”
Relax? Nothing could’ve prepared Chloe for what she saw when she turned around, except gory hospital and crime shows that she never watched because she didn’t have cable.
Chloe rocked back on her boots, reaching behind her for something to lean on. Her hand awkwardly bumped Henry right on his tight ass. Al manners, he pretended nothing happened.
“I offered her a sheet for modesty as they would’ve done in the Regency, but she refused.”
Chloe knew there was no modesty in childbirth. She watched Henry unrol a suede package on the dressing table.
“Obstetric kit.”
It was an obstetric kit from the Regency era. The instruments, tucked in the suede kit with a strip of leather, looked more like pruning shears, great big tongs, some sort of a spatula, and the biggest fishhook she’d ever seen.
One glance would’ve been enough to get anyone—maybe even Grace—to sign on for a life of spinsterhood and celibacy. “You’re not real y going to—”
“To use these? Hardly!” He lowered his voice to a whisper as he pul ed out the wooden forceps. “But this is what the OB or ‘accoucheur’ would’ve used. We’ve come such a long way in just two hundred years. No wonder one in three women died in childbirth.”
“What?! One in three—”
“Uggggggggggh!” Mrs. Crescent’s face contorted into a grimace. Red splotches and sweat covered her face and neck.
Henry handed Chloe a stack of cool, damp washcloths. She hadn’t known that one in three women died during childbirth in the Regency. It was hard to reconcile the gowns and the glitz and the romance with this horrific statistic.
She scissor-stepped over to the bedside and dabbed Mrs. Crescent’s forehead with a washcloth. Her voice wavered. “Just think, Mrs. Crescent, soon you’l be holding your beautiful, healthy, happy baby. Your baby wil know you just by your heartbeat, your voice. It’l look up at you—”
“It’s a wonder you know so much about childbirth!” Mrs. Crescent exhaled deeply, focusing on Chloe’s torn gown barely covered by a hastily buttoned pelisse. “Whatever happened to your gown
