Page 70 of The Scottish Duke
Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly, pretending a calm he didn’t feel.
He turned his head to see Peter standing there. He should say something to the young man, especially since the footman’s face was a peculiar shade of gray. Dear God, did he look the same?
“It’s all right,” he said, hearing the faint tremor in his own voice and making an effort to steady it. “Women do this every day.” So much for platitudes.
Peter nodded. “My sister went three days, Your Grace.”
Three days? He couldn’t last a few more hours. If he couldn’t, what the hell was Lorna going through?
How did women survive this? If his mother was in the room with him then, he would’ve pulled her aside and asked her the question. She would probably have patted him on the shoulder and smiled a Madonna-like smile, a combination of maternal wisdom and pity.
He couldn’t leave. They were waiting for the odious minister. The idiot Reverend McGill was the closest clergy.
Another scream, this one longer than the last, made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
Men were supposed to be the stronger sex, weren’t they? They went off to battle. They were seen as conquerors. They built things. They discovered continents. They manipulated science to create what would have been inconceivable a hundred years earlier.
Yet women continued the species. They labored to bring children into the world and did so without asking for recognition.
Fear was an icy fist in his stomach. It harnessed his breath and made his heart race. He would stay where he was, staring through a window at a world he couldn’t see.
Another scream had him walking to the closed door. It was as much a barrier as if it had been a brick wall. He wasn’t wanted or needed in that room. He was superfluous and unnecessary in the business of giving birth. All he could do was pray, an activity at which he was woefully inept.
Hopefully, God would not judge him on the infrequency of his prayers, or if He did, not apply his sins to Lorna or their child.
The front door abruptly opened, revealing Reverend McGill.
Their gazes met in recognition of the last time they’d encountered each other. McGill had called him a fornicator and he’d threatened to withhold any funds for the church roof if the man didn’t shut up.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, striding to the door. As if the man had any choice. He’d given Charles instructions to take someone with him to convince Reverend McGill that it would be advisable to agree to officiate.
He didn’t get a chance to explain anything because the bedroom door opened and his mother stood there. At the sight of the minister, she smiled.
“Just in time,” she said, motioning them forward.
Grabbing McGill by the sleeve, Alex made for the bedroom.
Chapter 19
The marriage of Alexander Brian Russell, ninth Duke of Kinross, to Lorna Anne Gordon, spinster, occurred only three minutes before the birth of their child.
Reverend McGill couldn’t help himself and launched into a speech about how women were duty bound to experience pain in childbirth. He was stopped in the middle of his tirade by the Dowager Duchess of Kinross who eyed him with disfavor and said, “A little less original sin, Reverend, and more wedding vows.”
A scant three minutes later, Robert Russell arrived accompanied by a gusty sigh of relief from the midwife, who knew only too well what had happened to the previous duchess. Alex, somewhat stunned by the events of the past hour, heard the news that he had an heir with calm acceptance. The Dowager Duchess beamed, her tear-dampened smile one of the first things the mother saw as she was given her large and demanding son.
The newly born Robert Russell—Robbie—was already voicing his displeasure with the proceedings, thereby echoing the Reverend George McGill’s mutterings as he affixed his signature to the necessary documents.
Lorna crooned to her child as he was placed on her chest. He immediately curled up and thrust his fist in his mouth.
He was going to be a duke. She’d given birth to a duke. How astonishing.
She was a duchess. It didn’t seem possible, especially when she glanced up and found herself pinned by her husband’s gorgeous eyes.Husband.The word didn’t seem the least bit plausible. She couldn’t be married to the Duke of Kinross. She’d watched him from afar, marveled at his handsomeness, dreamed of speaking to him one day.
Now they were married.
Now they were parents.
The whole thing was too improbable. Perhaps she was dreaming and memories of the hastily performed ceremony would disappear the minute she awakened.
