Matthew Swift, who had been silent so far, asked quietly, “Which road will you take?”
“The one leading east,” Hunt replied.
“I’ll take the west.”
Daisy stared at Swift with surprise and gratitude. The storm would make the errand dangerous, not to mention uncomfortable. The fact that he was willing to undertake it for Lillian, who had made no secret of her dislike, raised him several degrees in Daisy’s estimation.
Lord St. Vincent said dryly, “I suppose that leaves me the south. She would have to have the baby during a deluge of biblical proportions.”
“Would you rather stay here with Westcliff?” Simon Hunt asked in a sardonic tone.
St. Vincent threw him a glance rife with suppressed amusement. “I’ll get my hat.”
Two hours passed after the men left, while Lillian’s labor progressed. The pains became so sharp that they robbed her of breath. She gripped her husband’s hand with a bone-crunching force that he didn’t seem to feel in the slightest. Westcliff was patient and soothing, wiping her face with a cool damp cloth, giving her sips of motherwort brew, kneading her lower back and legs to help her relax.
Annabelle proved so competent that Daisy doubted a midwife could have done any better. She applied the hot water bottle to Lillian’s back and stomach and talked her through the pains, reminding her that if she, Annabelle, had managed to survive this, Lillian certainly could.
Lillian trembled in the aftermath of each hard contraction.
Annabelle held her hand tightly. “You don’t have to be quiet, dear. Scream or curse if it helps.”
Lillian shook her head weakly. “I don’t have the energy to scream. I have more strength if I keep it in.”
“I was that way too. Though I warn you, people won’t give you nearly as much sympathy if you bear it stoically.”
“Don’t want sympathy,” Lillian gasped, closing her eyes as another pain approached. “Just want…it to be over.”
Watching Westcliff’s taut face, Daisy reflected that whether or not Lillian wanted sympathy, her husband was overflowing with it.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Lillian told Westcliff when the contraction was over. She clung to his hand as if it were a lifeline. “You’re supposed to be downstairs pacing and drinking.”
“Good God, woman,” Westcliff muttered, blotting her sweaty face with a dry cloth, “I did this to you. I’m hardly going to let you face the consequences alone.”
That produced a faint smile on Lillian’s dry lips.
There was a quick, hard rap at the door, and Daisy ran to answer it. Opening it a few inches, she saw Matthew Swift, dripping and muddy and out of breath. Relief swept over her. “Thank God,” she exclaimed. “No one else has come back yet. Did you find someone?”
“Yes and no.”
Experience had taught Daisy that when one answered “yes and no,” the results were seldom what one would have wished for. “What do you mean?” she asked warily.
“He’ll be upstairs momentarily—he’s washing up. The roads have turned to mud—sinkholes everywhere—thundering like hell—it was a miracle the horse didn’t bolt or break its leg.” Swift removed his hat and swiped at his forehead with his sleeve, leaving a dirty streak across his face.
“But you did find a doctor?” Daisy pressed, snatching up a clean towel from a basket beside the door and handing it to him.
“No. The neighbors said the doctor went to Brighton for a fortnight.”
“What about a midwife—”
“Busy,” Swift said tersely. “She’s helping two other women in the village who are in labor as we speak. She said it happens sometimes during a particularly bad storm—something in the air brings it on.”
Daisy stared at him in confusion. “Then whom did you bring?”
A balding man with soft brown eyes appeared at Swift’s side. He was damp but clean—cleaner than Swift, at any rate—and respectable looking. “Evening, miss,” he said bashfully.
“His name is Merritt,” Swift told Daisy. “He’s a veterinarian.”
“A what?”
Even though the door was mostly closed, the conversation could be heard by the people in the room. Lillian’s sharp voice came from the bed. “You brought me an animal doctor?”
“He was highly recommended,” Swift said.
Since Lillian was covered with the bedclothes, Daisy opened the door wider to allow her a glimpse of the man.
“How much experience do you have?” Lillian demanded of Merritt.
“Yesterday I delivered puppies from a bulldog bitch. And before that—”
“Close enough,” Westcliff said hastily as Lillian clutched his hand at the onset of another cramp. “Come in.”
Daisy allowed the man to enter the room, and she stepped outside with another clean towel.
“I would have gone to another village,” Swift said, his voice roughened with a note of apology. “I don’t know if Merritt will be of any help. But the bogs and creeks have overflowed and the roads are impassable. And I wasn’t going to come back without someone.” He closed his eyes for a moment, his face drawn, and she realized how exhausting the ride through the storm had been.
Dependable, Daisy thought. Wrapping a corner of the clean towel around her fingers, she wiped at the mud on his face and blotted the rain caught in his day-old beard. The dark bristle of his jaw fascinated her. She wanted to stroke her bare fingers over it.
Swift held still, his head bent to make it easier for her to reach him. “I hope the others have more success at finding a doctor than I did.”
“They may not make it back in time,” Daisy replied. “Things have progressed rapidly in the last hour.”
He pulled his head back as if her gentle dabbing at his face bothered him. “Aren’t you going back in there?”
Daisy shook her head. “My presence is de trop, as they say. Lillian hates being crowded, and Annabelle is far more able than I am to help her. But I am going to wait nearby in case…in case she calls for me.”
Taking the towel from her, Swift scrubbed the back of his head, where the rain had soaked into the thick hair and made it as black and glossy as a seal’s pelt. “I’ll return soon,” he said. “I’m going to wash and change into dry clothes.”
“My parents and Lady St. Vincent are waiting in the Marsden parlor,” Daisy said. “You can stay with them—it’s far more comfortable than waiting here.”
But when Swift returned, he didn’t go to the parlor. He came to Daisy.
She sat cross-legged in the hallway, leaning back against the wall. Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice his approach until he was right beside her. Dressed in fresh clothes with his hair still damp, he stood looking down at her.
“May I?”
Daisy wasn’t certain what he was asking, but she found herself nodding anyway. Swift lowered himself to the floor in a cross-legged posture identical to hers. She had never sat this way with a gentleman, and had certainly never expected to with Matthew Swift. Companionably he handed her a small glass filled with rich, plum-red liquid.
Receiving it with some surprise, Daisy held it up to her nose for a cautious sniff.
“Madeira,” she said with a smile. “Thank you. Although celebration is a bit premature since the baby still isn’t here.”
“This isn’t for celebration. It’s to help you relax.”
“How did you know what my favorite wine was?” she asked.
He shrugged. “A lucky guess.”
But somehow she knew it hadn’t been luck.
There was little conversation between them, just an oddly companionable silence. “What time is it?” Daisy would ask every now and then, and he would produce a pocket watch.
Mildly intrigued by the jangle of objects in his coat pocket, Daisy demanded to see what was inside it.
“You’ll be disappointed,” Swift said as he unearthed the collection of items. He dumped the lot into her lap while Daisy sorted through it all.
“You’re worse than a ferret,” she said with a grin. There was the folding knife and the fishing line, a few loose coins, a pen nib, the pair of spectacles, a little tin of soap—Bowman’s, of course—and a slip of folded waxed paper containing willowbark powder. Holding the paper between thumb and forefinger, Daisy asked, “Do you have headaches, Mr. Swift?”
“No. But your father does whenever he gets bad news. And I’m usually the one who delivers it.”
Daisy laughed and picked up a tiny silver match case from the pile in her lap. “Why matches? I thought you didn’t smoke.”
“One never knows when a fire will be needed.”
Daisy held up a paper of straight pins and raised her brows questioningly.
“I use them to attach documents,” he explained. “But they’ve been useful on other occasions.”
She let a teasing note enter her voice. “Is there any emergency for which you are not prepared, Mr. Swift?”
“Miss Bowman, if I had enough pockets I could save the world.”
It was the way he said it, with a sort of wistful arrogance intended to amuse her, that demolished Daisy’s defenses. She laughed and felt a warm glow even as she recognized that liking him was not going to improve her circumstances one bit. Bending over her lap, she examined a handful of tiny cards bound with thread.
“I was told to bring both business and visiting cards to England,” Swift said. “Though I’m not entirely certain what the difference is.”
“You must never leave a business card when you’re calling on an Englishman,” Daisy advised him. “It’s bad form here—it implies you’re trying to collect money for something.”
“I usually am.”
Daisy smiled. She found another intriguing object, and she held it up to inspect it.
A button.
Her brow creased as she stared at the front of the button, which was engraved with a pattern of a windmill. The back of it contained a tiny lock of black hair behind a thin plate of glass, held in place with a copper rim.
Swift blanched and reached for it, but Daisy snatched it back, her fingers closing around the button.
Daisy’s pulse began to race. “I’ve seen this before,” she said. “It was part of a set. My mother had a waistcoat made for Father with five buttons. One was engraved with a windmill, another with a tree, another with a bridge…she took a lock of hair from each of her children and put it inside a button. I remember the way she took a little snip from my hair at the back where it wouldn’t show.”
Still not looking at her, Swift reached for the discarded contents of his pocket and methodically replaced them.
As the silence drew out, Daisy waited in vain for an explanation. Finally she reached out and took hold of his sleeve. His arm stilled, and he stared at her fingers on his coat fabric.
“How did you get it?” she whispered.
Swift waited so long that she thought he might not answer.
Finally he spoke with a quiet surliness that wrenched her heart. “Your father wore the waistcoat to the company offices. It was much admired. But later that day he was in a temper and in the process of throwing an ink bottle he spilled some on himself. The waistcoat was ruined. Rather than face your mother with the news he gave the garment to me, buttons and all, and told me to dispose of it.”
“But you kept one button.” Her lungs expanded until her chest felt tight on the inside and her heartbeat was frantic. “The windmill. Which was mine. Have you…have you carried a lock of my hair all these years?”
Another long silence. Daisy would never know how or if he would have answered, because the moment was broken by the sound of Annabelle’s voice in the hallway. “Daaaisyyyy!”
Still clutching the button, Daisy struggled to her feet. Swift rose in one smooth movement, first steadying her, then clamping his hand on her wrist. He held his free hand beneath hers and gave her an inscrutable look.
He wanted the button back, she realized, and let out an incredulous laugh.
“It’s mine,” she protested. Not because she wanted the dratted button, but because it was strange to realize that he had possessed this tiny part of her, kept it with him for years. She was a little afraid of what it meant.
Swift didn’t move or speak, just waited with unyielding patience until Daisy opened her fingers and let the button drop into his palm. He pocketed the object like a possessive magpie and released her.
Bewildered, Daisy hurried toward her sister’s room. As she heard the sound of a baby crying, her breath stopped with anxious joy. It was only a few yards to her sister’s door, and yet it seemed to be miles.
Annabelle met her at the door, looking strained and weary but wearing a brilliant smile. And there was a tiny bundle of linen and clean toweling in her arms. Daisy put her fingers over her mouth and shook her head slightly, laughing even as her eyes prickled with tears. “Oh my,” she said, staring at the red-faced baby, the bright dark eyes, the wealth of black hair.
“Say hello to your niece,” Annabelle said, gently handing the infant to her.
Daisy took the baby carefully, astonished by how light she was. “My sister—”
“Lillian’s fine,” Annabelle replied at once. “She did splendidly.”
Cooing to the baby, Daisy entered the room. Lillian was resting against a stack of pillows, her eyes closed. She looked very small in the large bed, her hair braided in two plaits like a young girl’s. Westcliff was at her side, looking like he had just fought Waterloo singlehandedly.
The veterinarian was at the washstand, soaping his hands. He threw Daisy a friendly smile, and she grinned back at him. “Congratulations, Mr. Merritt,” she said. “It seems you’ve added a new species to your repertoire.”
Lillian stirred at the sound of her voice. “Daisy?”
Daisy approached with the baby in her arms. “Oh, Lillian, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Her sister grinned sleepily. “I think so too. Would you—” she broke off to yawn. “Show her to Mother and Father?”
“Yes, of course. What is her name?”
“Merritt.”
“You’re naming her after the veterinarian?”
“He proved to be quite helpful,” Lillian replied. “And Westcliff said I could.”
The earl tucked the bedclothes more snugly around his wife’s body and kissed her forehead.