Jane Feather - Velvet

She reached up and grasped his bandaged wrist. “I’llmanage.”

"Yes, I know you will. Come on, Dan, let's get these swine off this boat."

They tied the four unconscious men, lowered the rowboat over the side, and heaved the bodies into it.

"They'll probably get picked up, more's the pity," Nathaniel said, squinting through the morning mist to the rocky cliffs of the French coast. "Let's hope we get the hell out of here before anyone else comes along."

"We'll fly the French colors," Dan said. "That might give us some leeway."

Nathaniel looked across at Gabrielle. Her hands were steady on the wheel, her feet btaced wide apart, her eyes on the mainsail. She was like no other woman. And she had more courage in her little finger than a regiment of marines.

The courage of her convictions too. It still hurt to think that she'd deceived him, that he'd been duped by Talleyrand. But he thought how it had begun. He knew Gabrielle's passion. He understood her need for vengeance for her lover's murder. He would have felt it himself. And he now understood the curious logic that had brought them to this point. Gabtielle wasloyal. In fact, her fault, if it was one, lay in too much loyalty. By an accident of birth she had a foot in both camps. A tempestuous and passionate nature would not allow her to abandon either one.

And he loved her. He loved her for that courage and that loyalty as much as he did for her passion and her warmth and her generosity.

And she was carrying his child.

He went over to her. "Let Dan take the wheel now."

She relinquished it with a weary shrug of her shoulders, trying to ease the aching stiffness, the residue of the night's ordeal. "I'll make a sailor yet," she said, smiling.

The smile was such a brave attempt that his heart turned over anew. He reached for her, but suddenly she clutched her throat, murmured, "Oh, no, why now?" and fled to the rail, retching miserably. But she'd eaten almost nothing in the past twenty-four hours and the spasm eased, although the queasiness didn't.

"What is it, love?" Nathaniel drew her against him. "The sea's like glass."

"I seem to have time to feel sick again," she said. "I don't suppose you have a piece of bread on you?"

"Bread? No. Why?"

"It's the only thing that helps. It's the most horrid inconvenience, Nathaniel. Was Helen sick?"

"I don't believe so." He leaned against the rail, and his expression was both somber and confused. "Just howdid it happen?"

She gave him another wan smile. "You mean there's more than one way?"

"You know what I mean." He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning in frustration. "How could you-"

"Hey," she interrupted. "It takes two, I'll have you know."

"Yes, I know." He pulled her against him, pushing her hair off her forehead. "But I'm frightened."

"What of?" She smiled, touching his mouth. "I rode without stopping for ten hours. It's been a night of trial by ordeal. And I'm still here, aren't I? Still pregnant? I'm tough, Nathaniel. It may not be a particularly feminine characteristic, but I grew up in a hard school."

"I know that." He caught her chin. "Your poor mouth." Tenderly he kissed her swollen lips.

"And do you understand what… why…" She needed his words although she knew he did understand now.

He laid a finger over her mouth. "It's over, Gabrielle. We both made mistakes. We didn't trust each other enough, and maybe with cause," he added gravely. "Trust comes with knowledge. It's taken us a long time to know each other."

"But you know me now?" She leaned into him.

"As I know myself."

"That's what Ifind frightening," Gabrielle said. "We're so alike. Can one fight with oneself?"

"All the time," he said with a wry smile. "And I suspect we're going to be the living proof."

Jake stood outside Gabrielle's closed bedroom door, listening. He could hear voices, people moving around, but nothing to give him an idea of what was going on in there. He couldn't picture what was happening. He'd asked Primmy and she'd said he wasn't old enough to understand. He'd asked Mrs. Bailey and she'd blessed him and given him a jam tart and told him to run along. He didn't think there would be any point asking Nurse. She didn't know much about anything except keeping things clean and generally fussing.

He slid down the wall at his back until he was sitting on the floor, facing the door and hugging his drawn-up knees. He was scared, but everyone else in the house seemed excited. They went around smiling and whispering in corners, and he'd heard Ellie giggling about a book that Milner was keeping in the stables about whether it would be a boy or a girl. Why would he keep a book about that in the stables?

His eyes fixed on the cream-painted door, willing it to open. Papa was in there. He wished he would come out and tell him what was happening.

Behind the closed bedroom door Nathaniel stood in the shadows of the bedcurtains, out of Gabrielle's direct line of sight but close enough to respond if she wanted him. He didn't know what else to do. If he touched her or spoke to her when she was distracted, she cursed him like a trooper, but when he'd tried to tiptoe from the room, she'd called him back urgently, telling him she needed to know he was there.

There was nothing concrete he could do. The doctor, the midwife, and Ellie were all moving around with unhurried efficiency, talking softly to Gabrielle, ignoring her occasional oaths.

He wasn't frightened, Nathaniel realized. This was nothing like Helen's time. The woman on the bed was a tigress, hissing and spitting at the pain of this ghastly ordeal, yielding to her body and yet never losing herself in the violent paroxysms. Her spirit was hovering way above the suffering body on the bed, and despite six hours of this, she didn't seem to be weakening. If anything, she grew ever more peppery as the contractions increased.

"Goddammit, Nathaniel," she said with sudden clarity. "If you ever do this to me again, I'll kill you…" She gasped, sweat breaking out on her forehead, and then relaxed, turning her face toward him. To his amazement, her crooked smile touched her lips. "That was a piece of rank injustice, wasn't it?"

"Even for you," he agreed with an answering smile. He wiped her forehead with a lavender-scented cloth.

"I wish I knew who'd coined the phrase Mother Nature," she said in another moment of respite. "No female would have inflicted this on women."

She grabbed his hand suddenly, clinging to it as the pain tightened unmercifully, impossibly, gripped for an eternity, and then slowly receded.

"Jake's outside the door," she said, her voice weaker than before. "He needs reassurance."

"How do you know he's there?"

"Because he would be." She was lost again, and Nathaniel stood helplessly for a minute, and then went to the door.

Where did she get her strength from? It far exceeded his own at the moment. She was keeping up this banter to make himfeel better. And she was worrying about Jake, when he hadn't given the child a thought.

He opened the door and his heart went out to his son, sitting wide-eyed, scared, and uncomprehending, on the floor.

"What are you doing here, Jake?" he asked gently, closing the door behind him.

"I don't know what's happening." Jake stood up. "Is Gabby going to die?"

"No, of course not." Nathaniel squatted on his heels so that he was on a level with the child. "Everything's going just as it's supposed to. Gabrielle is fine, although she's a little cross because it's not very comfortable having a baby."

"My first mother died." Jake's eyes were big brown pools of anxiety and confusion. "She died because of me."

Nathaniel shook his head. "No, not because of you, Jake. You must never think that." He drew the child against him in a fierce hug. "And I promise you that Gabrielle is notgoing to die. She's too busy being rude to me." He drew back with a teasing smile, pushing the child's hair off his forehead.