Page 96 of One Day for a Valet

“You terrifying wonder of a woman. Come here.” Oliver crushed her in a hug, her feet dangling off the ground as she squeaked her disapproval.

“Dukes do not squash people, Your Grace. Put me down this instant.”

“Oh, you know you like it. Quit your squawking.”

Christopher choked out a laugh then quickly smothered it.

Oliver set her down and she briskly straightened the creases of her gown. “Yes, well, people should not be judged by the circumstances of their birth.”

That raised some eyebrows.

Their victories in London had been hard won. Oliver, Violet, Gabriel, and the children had arrived to their town home a fortnight after Christopher and Sofia’s wedding to consequences far more dire than any had anticipated.

The night they’d arrived, someone snuck into the mews and covered the Anson’s snowy white carriage horses in black tar. After that, the cut direct was doled out at every opportunity, and the personal and political attacks continued to escalate at a dizzying rate. Whites revoked Gabriel’s membership. Good-for-nothing milksop lords threatened to pull their support from every charitable organisation Gabriel remained a part of. Even the Royal Society of Literature kicked up a fuss and moved to have him ejected from the board when a donor with deep pockets threatened to pull his funding. The message had been clearly articulated at every turn—Gabriel must stop embarrassing the upper crust and hold his tongue. If he did not, they would cut off his ability to breathe, tightening one finger at a time until he twitched and gasped for mercy.

The Anson’s unlikely saviour had arrived in the form of Francis St Clare, a brilliant, shrewd caricaturist who worked for The Times and had little love for powerful, aristocratic brutes who would stab an honest man to death with their fancy stick pins.

St Clare had set off printing a run of political satire that embarrassed the lot of them into silence. After the first edition depicted the Earl of Ratcliff paying a well-known street gang to lob rocks at Gabriel’s children, then another that alluded to the Baron St John trading sexual favours to usurp Gabriel’s coveted position on the board of the Royal Society of Literacy … well, no one wanted to be St Clare’s next target. He kept coming at them anyway with clever, honest, vicious drawings until Whites re-extended its invitation for membership and society matrons begrudgingly added the Ansons back to their guest lists.

And now, the dowager had snuffed out the last of the instigators beneath her opulently embroidered slipper. Gossip would doubtless linger for generations and the loftiest sticklers of the ton would never accept their family, but it seemed that the worst had passed.

After the dowager’s announcement, the game continued a while longer, though the dowager and Violet left to escape the cold.

With muscles stiff from the chill, the remainder of their party retreated to the fireside to thaw their numb fingers and toes as afternoon waned. Christopher trudged through the snow to the stables, eager to return the pair of sleds he pulled behind him and rejoin the others. Off in the distance, he noticed a lone figure leaning against a tree near the flagstone path leading to the dowager house. Davies.

A moment later, Davies came alive before Christopher’s eyes. He stepped away from the tree, pulled his shoulders erect, and beamed. Following the path of Davies’s gaze, Christopher watched the dowager’s brisk, no-nonsense steps swerve unmistakably in his direction. He slipped off the path and circled the long way around the stables, attempting to avoid detection by the unlikely pair.

When Christopher opened the heavy stable door, he found Violet sitting in a pile of hay and squeezing a goat kid against her heavily pregnant belly. He suspected she meant to be cuddling it. Violet’s face had gone pale and Christopher imagined his was a similar shade. Dropping to his knees before her, he pried her fingers loose of the baby, who gave an indignant bleat and kicked off in the direction of his mother.

Violet redirected her strangling grip to Christopher’s biceps. He didn’t need to ask what was occurring. He wanted to get her inside and far away from his field of view before the bodily fluids and high-pitched profanity began.

“Put your arms about my neck, Vi, and I’ll carry you inside.”

“No,” she said, pushing him away. Then she wrapped her arms around herself, groaning at the onset of another contraction. Christopher sat gingerly beside her and laid an arm around her shoulders. She immediately shifted to lean into him and he stroked her back until her taut muscles relaxed again.

“You’re covered in hay and Gabriel will suffer apoplexy when he hears of you labouring out here. You are not livestock.”

She glared, then her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to go inside. Not yet. Gabriel has been impossible since Dr Higgins’s new partner suggested the possibility of twins. He didn’t seem to be soothed in the slightest at my observation that goats frequently have two, even three babies at a time.”

“I believe my livestock comment still applies here. And of course he’s become a beast. He’s terrified. And the quicker you deliver this baby—or these babies, as the case may be—safely into the world, the faster his usual charm will return.” He smiled and held out his hand again. “Come on, sweetheart. Up you go.”

Unwilling to wait for further argument, he scooped his friend into his arms and made for the door. Just outside the stables, Violet’s hand sank into the hair at the back of his head and yanked hard as another labour pain swept over her.

Christopher shrieked.

Violet moaned.

Servants came out of nowhere like ants at a picnic to see what the fuss was about.

Sofia appeared from the winter garden, and he didn’t think he could remember ever being happier to lay eyes on his very capable wife.

“Thank God.”

“I’ll get Gabriel,” Sofia said as if Violet was not pulling all the hairs from the back of his head.

“No. Don’t leave me here!” Christopher realised his behaviour was startlingly similar to that of a terrified ten-year-old, but he couldn’t bring himself to worry about that just now.

Sofia ran a hand across Violet’s brow and picked a bit of straw from her curls. “Hush, husband. You will be fine. Take her to her suite while I run ahead to alert Gabriel and send someone to fetch the doctor.”