Page 98 of My Scot, My Surrender
It also wasn’t as though Briannon’s guest list had been filled with names he did not recognize. No, this wasn’t like the ostentatioustonhouse parties that the old Duke of Bradburne had been accustomed to holding when Brandt and Archer were lads. This was a reunion, with he and Sorcha, along with the Viscount and Viscountess Northridge, and the Earl and Countess Langlevit all in attendance for the next fortnight. People Brandt truly liked and cared for, and not one of them someone with whom Brandt felt the need to make hollow, pleasant talk.
His discomfort over the last five days had nothing at all to do with his surroundings and everything to do with his wife.
From his seat, he watched Sorcha and Lana, Lady Northridge, strolling through the arbor, one of his wife’s hands pressed against the curve of her lower back while another pushed a pram. Lana guided a second pram as they walked an idle pace. The cut of the dress Sorcha wore attempted to conceal the swell of her stomach, but the heavy afternoon breezes were not only rustling the rose shrubs and shaking the trellis, they were also gusting against the yellow fabric, shaping it around the full expanse of her rounded, very pregnant abdomen.
The doctor in Montgomery had been certain by his count that the babe would not come for another month or two at least, and so Sorcha had insisted on attending the reunion to celebrate the Duke of Bradburne’s birthday. Briannon had been planning it for so long, she’d argued, and who knew the next time all of them would be able to converge at the same time? He’d relented, unable to deny his lovely wife anything she wanted so desperately that she’d promise not to sit a horse or lift a bow or tax herself in any way.
But they had barely arrived in Essex when Brandt saw the faint frown etching her brow, and the heavy, shadowed look in her eyes. It had been a little over two years since she’d last entered labor, hours later delivering a dark-haired, hazel-eyed boy that Brandt had instantly fallen head over heels in love with. They’d named him Robert William—Rabbie for short—after both grandfathers, and since then he and Sorcha’s lives had revolved around him. But two years had not been long enough for Brandt to forget the way his wife had looked a day before she’d gripped her stomach and announced it was time. The frown etching her brow, the shadowed look in her eyes.
And now five days had passed, and every day she grew more reserved. Quieter.
“Just keep drinking,” came the advice of the earl sitting beside him. Langlevit smirked into his own snifter of whiskey. “I was in your very shoes months ago.”
Considering the earl’s twin sons—John and Gregory—currently nestled inside the prams Lana and Sorcha were pushing, were six months old, Brandt figured his concern was as transparent as water.
Langlevit’s wife, Irina—enjoying a well-needed respite in the chair beside her husband as her sister, Lana, took her nephews for a quick turn about the garden—chucked the earl lightly on the arm. “Nonsense, Henry. Lady Glenross will have an easy time of it when her babe decides to arrive. Don’t worry His Grace unnecessarily.”
The countess’s labor had been long and difficult, Brandt knew, and from what Sorcha had imparted in whispered confidence just the other night, Langlevit had admitted to Irina that he’d been afraid he’d lose her. But she had come through, and their infants had been hale and hearty. Though Brandt thought he saw a remnant of worry ghost across the earl’s eyes as he gazed at his wife.
Birthing was no easy or assured thing. Healthy in body and mind, Sorcha had done well with Rabbie, and Brandt couldn’t stand to consider any alternative with this second babe. Still, she looked exhausted. And ready. But it wasn’t time…and that was what scared him most of all. Because if the babe came early, it portended complications. Foretelling due dates wasn’t an exact science. Even Rabbie had come a few weeks after he’d been due, which had been another of Sorcha’s arguments to travel to Essex.
“I wonder only if we should have stayed put in Montgomery with her being so close to her time,” Brandt replied as a new burst of screeches erupted from the dogwood trees directly behind him.
“Your wife is healthy,” Gray, Viscount Northridge, said, catching his soft comment as he resumed his seat across from them and reached for his refilled snifter. He’d disappeared a quarter of an hour earlier to check on his youngest, eight-month-old Thomas, who was sleeping inside while his wife walked with Sorcha and the Radcliffe twins. Gray was followed by Archer and Briannon. “And the fresh air and walking will do her good.”
Langlevit snorted. “Is that your professional opinion, Doctor North?”
North was Gray’s nickname, just as Archer was known to his friends as Hawk, courtesy of one of his lesser titles, the Marquess of Hawksfield.
Gray grinned. “With four children of my own, I’m clearly the most virile of you lot, so yes, it is indeed my expert opinion.”
His sister Briannon’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. “Gray! Such talk is entirely inappropriate. What will the servants think?”
“What they’ve always thought, Brynn dear,” he replied with a long draught from his glass. “That we’re shockington.”
“Speak for yourself,” Archer put in, sitting with a relaxed sigh and stretching his legs out in front of him. “I am the epitome of blue-blooded English decorum.”
Brandt couldn’t suppress his snort.
Archer had disdained those aristocratic roots of his…until Briannon. Each of the men here, in fact, had been changed in some integral way by the women they’d married. And Sorcha. God, she had changed him the most of all. He’d been rootless, wandering, and adrift in his own head until she had grounded him. Tethered him. He’d found peace because of her…peace in who he was as a son, father, brother, husband. He glanced at Archer, his oldest mate. Brandt had even become a worthier friend for it.
In a word, Sorcha made himbetter.
He was torn from his thoughts by a volley of delighted squealing as Rabbie and Brandon ran at full tilt toward the table looking for sweets left over from the afternoon tea they’d all enjoyed in the garden.
“Papa,” his son squealed and climbed up into his lap. “Pòg.”
Brandt smiled at the demand for a kiss. Catriona had been teaching him Gaelic and the boy was a quick study. Brandt looked into eyes that were mirrors of his own and kissed his son’s pudgy, dirt-smudged cheek with a loud smack, making Rabbie giggle. The young English nanny hovered, clearly rattled that her young charge had disturbed the adults, which was frowned upon in most aristocratic households. Brandt did not mind. In Scotland, Rabbie had the run of the keep and drove his doting grandmother, along with everyone else, to madness with his antics.
“Getting into trouble, are we, lad?” he said. “Best we listen, aye?”
“I ken, Papa,” Rabbie said.
Brandt would never get used to the feeling of wonder that overtook him whenever he looked at the miracle that he and Sorcha had created. Rabbie yawned and rubbed his eyes, clearly in need of an afternoon rest after all the excitement. Brandt kissed him again before handing him off to the waiting nanny.
“It’s time for your nap, too,” Briannon said to Brandon who had immediately gone to his mother. She kissed him, watching as the nannies took them back to the manse. “They grow up so fast,” she murmured. “Don’t they?” The duchess’s hand fluttered over her midriff and a secret smile crossed her face, one that Brandt was not the only one to notice.
“Brynn,” Irina shrieked, her mouth falling open. “You’re not…”
