Page 130 of A Wicked Kind of Husband

“Please, Cassandra. I have so much to tell you.”

She hugged her heavy, aching middle. “You cannot come and go and come and go, and play with me like this.”

“First, know that I do love our child,” he said. “I want and love our baby.”

“No. No!”

Her agitation was too much. It overcame the lethargy and the ache, and she hauled herself to her feet.

Wetness gushed between her legs. Her belly cramped. Her legs failed her.

He caught her before she fell.

Every muscle in her body clenched and she grabbed onto him hard. His face was pale and no longer gentle. His eyes held her: He held her up with the power of his gaze. If he looked away now, they would all fall down.

“There’s blood.” He spoke with no voice. She watched his lips move. “On your skirts.”

Her head began to float away. Then her arms and her torso. Floating away and dissolving into the rain. She felt so light. She had no weight. No, his arms took her weight. Her legs were no use to her now. She could not move. She could not speak. How could she move or speak when she could not even breathe?

I want and love our baby too. He had been afraid to love the baby and now she had lost the baby and he would hurt so much that he would turn away from her and she would lose him too, all over again.

She was losing both of them. She was losing everything. She had to stop this. She had to stop the blood. She had to stop time. She had to stop the sun from setting and the rain from falling and the flowers from growing.

“I can’t stop it,” she said.

Her hand ached. She looked at it, puzzled: a white claw gripping his arm. The arm that held her up. The arm that was all she had left in the world and that would leave her again too.

He scooped her up in his arms and, before she had gotten her bearings, he was striding out into the rain, away from her flowers and her fountain and her peace. She curled up into him and fisted her hands in his coat, while the rain slid down her neck in cold rivulets.

“It’s raining,” she said. “We can’t go in the rain. You’ll get wet.”

But all he did was hold her more tightly and walk more quickly. He looked straight ahead, the rain flattening his hair, sliding over his jaw. She buried her face in his neck so she did not have to watch any of this happening.

It was not good to walk in the rain. They’d get wet. He might slip and they’d all fall down. Or he might catch a chill. She would not like him to catch a chill. Her hair must be a mess and she had only washed it that morning. Because that morning she had not felt nauseous. Because the baby was not making her nauseous any more. They should not go in the rain. The rain would ruin her gown.

Never mind. The blood had already ruined it.

He held her so tightly. He walked so fast. She risked a glance at his face; it was hard and set and angry. She buried her face in his neck again. She did not want to remember him like this. She did not want to remember his face as it looked the day she truly lost him, lost him and their baby, and her hope and her love, lost everything all at once, all over again.

* * *

He carried her.His arms ached. His legs ached. No load had ever been this heavy or this precious. No walk had ever been so long.

It was so far. It had never been this far. How did it get so far? Another nightmare then: walking and walking and never getting closer, his shattered wife growing heavier in his arms, clinging to him, and him, helpless, no idea what to do for her, how to help her, only walking, walking, walking.

Then suddenly he was there, in the kitchen garden, muscling through the nearest door into the kitchen, where it was hot and fragrant and abruptly still.

“Get the doctor,” he barked at the first face he saw. “No, the midwife. Get the midwife.” He didn’t stop walking. He could carry her forever. “No, the doctor. The midwife. Get them both. Get everyone you can find.”

And then there was Mrs. Greenway, stoic and sure, and he came to a stop. Cassandra kept pulling on his coat, her eyes closed so no one could see her. Mrs. Greenway touched a light hand to Cassandra’s cheek. A benediction. The housekeeper had been there to help with Lord Charles. She knew what Cassandra had done that day. She knew Cassandra. She would know what to do.

“She’s bleeding,” he said. And then: “I don’t know what to do.” His voice cracked, but she understood. She put together “midwife” and “bleeding” and understood.

“You take her up to her chamber and put her on the bed and we’ll look after her,” she said. “This is women’s business. We know what to do.”

He turned, relieved. Cassandra would get the help she needed and it wouldn’t come from him. He wanted to help her. To do something. But what did he know of this? How had he grown up to be so useless?

Behind him came a barrage of calm, urgent commands: “Sally, get that hot water for Lady Charles’s bath and send it up for Miss Cassandra instead. Mary, get clean linens. Joseph, go now for Mrs. King,” and there was more, but he didn’t hear the rest, because he was heading up the stairs. Still she clutched him, pressing her face to his neck and making a small sound, a keening sound, like a wounded animal.

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