C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

A moment later, a small, slight man came charging down the stairs, the tails of his black coat billowing behind him, his satchel gripped before him in both hands. He had his head down, his lips clamped in an angry line, his prominent chin set mulishly. But at the sight of Sebastian, he drew up, nostrils flaring, his entire frame aquiver with his indignation.

“Lord Devlin,” he said, taking the last step down to the entrance hall and bowing stiffly. “I am pleased to see that you are here, for it affords me the opportunity to tell you that I refuse-yes, refuse! — to act as Lady Devlin’s accoucheur any longer. She is stubborn and opinionated, full of outlandish ideas gleaned from reading an assortment of ridiculous foreign publications. She ignores my advice, refuses my prescriptions, and just now she threw my basin at me when I attempted to insist that she allow me to bleed her.”

“And how, precisely, did you ‘insist’?”

Croft’s thin chest jerked with the agitation of his breathing. “Sometimes with expectant mothers, the emotions run high and a touch of male firmness is required.”

“You’re fortunate she didn’t take the lancet to you.”

Croft’s features darkened with a resurgence of fury. “Indeed, she threatened to do so.” He tugged at the lower hem of his waistcoat, which had become rucked up in his hasty descent of the stairs. “I cannot be held responsible for the outcome of a confinement when the patient refuses to submit herself to my Lowering System. Therefore, I resign my position. Nor can I in all good conscience recommend her as a patient to any of my colleagues. To be frank, under the circumstances, I can’t imagine how you will find anyone competent to agree to attempt to deliver her.”

“Under what ‘circumstances’?” asked Sebastian with deceptive restraint.

The esteemed Richard Croft opened his mouth, then thought better of what he’d been about to say, and closed it.

Sebastian advanced on him. “What the devil are you saying?”

Croft took a step back, his heels clattering against the riser of the first stair.

“ What circumstances , damn you?”

The accoucheur swallowed hard. “The child. .”

“Yes?”

He swallowed again. “The child is in the wrong position. By now, it should have shifted, so that the head is down in preparation for entering the birth passage. It has not done so. Instead, it is lying. . crossways.”

Sebastian felt as if someone had reached into his chest to twist his heart and elbow his gut, so that it was a moment before he was able to say, “What can be done?”

Croft shook his head. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“The child may turn itself.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

The accoucheur sidled toward the door. “Some babes which present in a breech position are born successfully.”

“And the mothers?”

“Some mothers survive,” said Croft. “But. .”

“But?”

Croft straightened his spine and met Sebastian’s fierce gaze with a fortitude Sebastian couldn’t help but admire.

“But rarely both.”

S ebastian found Hero standing at the window of her chamber, one hand on the panel of heavy drapes at her side, her gaze on the flurry of snow falling from the sky.

“I owe the poor man an apology,” she said as Sebastian came to stand behind her.

“Did you really throw his basin at him?”

“I did. Shameful, is it not?”

He slipped his arms around her and drew her back against him. She smelled of silk and lavender and herself, and for a moment the upswelling of emotions within him was so powerful that he had to squeeze his eyes shut. “Perhaps. But nevertheless understandable. The man is a pompous, pedantic ass.”

She shook her head. “Croft may be an idiot, but he means well. He truly believes in what he prescribes.”

When Sebastian remained silent, she said, “I take it he told you the child will in all likelihood be breech?”

“He said it might still turn.”

“It might.”

He brought his hands up to rest them on the swell of her belly. He hoped she didn’t notice that they weren’t quite steady. He said, “We need to find a new accoucheur-preferably one who is not an idiot.”

“They’re all idiots.” She tipped her head back against his shoulder, her lips curving into an odd smile. “If you ask me, the child’s position is the real reason Croft bowed out. He’s afraid.”

What accoucheur in his right mind wouldn’t be afraid of attending Lord Jarvis’s daughter in a difficult delivery? thought Sebastian. But he didn’t say it.

“What about Gibson?” she suggested.

“Gibson is a surgeon, not a physician or accoucheur,” he reminded her.

“You think I care for that? You know as well as I do that he’s delivered babies. Surely he could at least recommend someone.”

“Unfortunately, I believe he shares your opinion of the profession. But I can ask.”

He was silent for a moment, his thoughts crowded again with the memory of all the babes her mother had lost. Why had she lost them? he wondered. Were they breech? Or did they die for some other reason entirely? Some abnormality that had in the end come close to taking Lady Jarvis’s life, as well.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Hero. “But I am not my mother.”

She turned in his arms, her hand coming up to cup his cheek as she kissed him on the mouth. “Everything will be fine.”

He speared his fingers through her hair, cradling the back of her head and holding her close as he let his gaze drift over the familiar line of her cheeks, the soft curve of her lips. He wanted to tell her that the thought of losing her terrified him, that he could no longer even imagine a life without her in it. Yet he’d never said these things to her, never even whispered those three simple words, “I love you.” To say them now would seem to suggest that he feared she might die. And so he kept silent.

She was braver than he. “I don’t intend to die, Devlin.”

He rested his forehead against hers. But he still said nothing, for she knew as well as he that the hour of our death is rarely of our own choosing.

• • •

By the time Sebastian reached Tower Hill, the snow was falling thick and fast, big flakes that stung his face and rapidly covered the city in a blanket of white.

“Good God, Devlin,” said Gibson as Sebastian came in stomping snow off his boots. “What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing out in this?”

Sebastian shrugged out of his wet greatcoat. “I need the name of a good accoucheur, Gibson.”

Gibson paused in the act of leading the way to his small parlor to look back at him in surprise. “I was under the impression the esteemed Richard Croft would be attending Lady Devlin.”

“He resigned. He would have me believe it is because Lady Devlin is not the most meek and cooperative patient-which I will be the first to admit she is not. But if truth be told, I think it’s because he’s afraid of Jarvis. The babe is lying breech, Gibson.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much at this point; it’s early days, yet. The babe’s not due until April. It will turn when it’s ready.”

Sebastian met his friend’s gaze. “I’m afraid that’s a polite fiction, told to still the tongues of Society’s gossips. The child is expected in a week or two.”

“Ah.” The expression on the Irishman’s face confirmed every one of Sebastian’s worse fears, and then some. “Mother Mary,” he said softly, and turned away to pour two glasses of burgundy.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” said Sebastian, watching him.

Gibson held out one of the wineglasses. “Sometimes a babe will shift at the last minute.”