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Chapter Twenty Nine

You're thinking of Josiah," Rafe said.

Emma lifted her head from where it had been pillowed upon his chest. "How did you know?" she asked.

"You must've sighed ten times in as many minutes," he said, chuckling at the surprised expression that flitted across her face. "Emma, he's only been gone a week. And he's written you twice already." She'd read and re-read those treasured letters at least a dozen times, and scrawled out more than a few of her own.

"I know," she said, and settled down once again. "I know. I just—I always miss them, when they go." There was a slice of tragedy in the words; a loss no less profound for the fact that they had not been children she had brought into the world. Still they were the children of her heart whom she had had to send off into it. Each child took a piece of her heart with them when they parted.

She had held herself together just long enough to see Josiah off with a fond embrace and a proud smile. But she had maintained that strong fa?ade only until the carriage had cleared the street, and then she had sobbed in Rafe's arms for the rest of the evening. And Peter was not so very far behind Josiah. Then would come Helen, and then Elias, and then Joyce. By Rafe's count, Emma would likely lose four more of her children before the year was through. But there would be others. They wouldn't replace the children that had gone in Emma's heart, but they would fill a little of that void they had left behind them.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, wrapping his arm around her to pull her closer. "I hate to see you so bereft."

"Just hold me when I need you to," she said on a sigh. "It won't pass, but it'll grow a bit easier to bear."

She had been bearing it all alone these last years. Grief shared was grief halved, but there had been no one to shoulder the burden of it with her. No one who would understand it quite like she did, nor feel it so deeply.

"Oh," she said, breaking that comfortable silence that had settled between them. "Miss Finch is quite cross with me, since all of her copies of Shakespeare's sonnets have been thoroughly destroyed. I thought I might take some of the older children to a book shop with me to replace them. Would you—" She broke off abruptly as she glanced up at his face, and winced. "Never mind. Next time, I suppose."

"What!" Rafe protested, lifting one hand to his face as if he might feel the fading bruises upon it. They had ceased to ache as abominably as they once had, but he feared it would still be some time before they were fully healed. "It can't be that bad, can it?"

"Somehow, it's worse than it was only a week ago. The purple was quite pretty, honestly. But now the bruises have gone all sickly yellow and greenish. I'm afraid you look rather like a lemon that is somehow at once over and under-ripened." She offered him a consoling pat upon the chest. "Naturally, I still find you handsome."

A laugh caught somewhere in his chest. "But the children?"

"Will run screaming in the opposite direction at a single glance," she said solemnly, though her lips twitched just at the corners with the stirrings of mirth.

A scratch at the door dragged her attention away from him, and a tiny frown etched itself between the delicate arches of her brows.

"Probably Neil," he said, gently easing away to snatch up his discarded trousers from where they had landed on the floor, stepping into them one leg at a time.

"But it is so late," she said. "He should have been in bed by now."

In truth, it was half past midnight already. He had grown accustomed to a certain amount of privacy here, within Emma's wing of the nearly-palatial estate, so rarely did the staff intrude upon it. The sanctity of it was inviolable; unless directly summoned, they tended to stay clear.

Rafe padded to the door, pulling his shirt over his head as he went, and Emma disappeared beneath the thick counterpane just as he eased the door open a crack.

"Pardon the intrusion," Neil said, keeping well clear of the crack in a perfect show of circumspection. "It's just that Dannyboy has arrived."

A tiny gasp from somewhere behind him, followed by a rustle of bedclothes.

"I thought it best to put him in the green salon for the moment," Neil said tactfully. "I thought you'd want to know right away, of course."

"Yes!" Emma said, and from the corner of his eye, Rafe saw her streaking across the room, snatching up discarded garments as she went. "Yes, of course," she said. "I'll be down at once."

"I'll be down at once," he said. It would take Emma more than a few minutes to make herself presentable. And if Dannyboy had arrived at this hour of the night, he didn't want to make the lad wait longer still.

He slipped out the door, and Neil fell into stride beside him as they made for the stairs at the end of the long hall. "He's well?" Rafe asked. Nearly three weeks now, since they'd last seen the boy. Not even for only a brief visit over breakfast.

"Yes," Neil said, the tiniest tremor of hesitation threading through his voice. "That is, he's well enough, given the circumstances."

Circumstances? A strange knot of anxiety formed in Rafe's stomach. "And what circumstances are those?"

Again, Neil hesitated a fraction of a second longer than necessary—long enough for a distant whimpering to become audible at last, an irritable, high-pitched, and keening sort of sound steadily pitching toward a full-blown wail. Rafe charged ahead, taking the stairs two and three at a time, no longer requiring Neil's clarification upon the matter.

He knew, already, what the man meant to have said. Dannyboy had not come alone.

∞∞∞

Rafe was certain he looked like a madman as he crashed through the door of the green salon—his hair unkempt, the tails of his shirt still untucked, his feet bare. Dannyboy gave a horrible little jerk from his position on the couch, where he had been fruitlessly attempting to soothe the caterwauling which emanated from the blanket-wrapped bundle held across his lap.

The poor boy looked wretched, like he'd not slept more than a handful of hours in the last few weeks. His breath hitched in his chest, and his voice rose into a pitiful, plaintive wail to rival that of the bundle across his lap. "I'm s-sorry," he said on a frantic sob. "We ain't got nowhere else to go."

"It's all right." Rafe hadn't the talent for soothing children that Emma did, for the words had come out far too gruffly, and Dannyboy's face crumpled into despair.

"I'm sorry," the boy said again, through a succession of hiccoughs as Rafe rounded the back of the couch to crouch down before him. "She's ‘ungry," Dannyboy said. "And mum—mum—" A fresh burst of tears, leaving fresh salty tracks down his cheeks. "I thought I could do it all m'self," he said. "She's just little. I thought it'd be easy."

She. A little girl, probably no older than a week or two, perhaps three at the most. Dannyboy had wrapped the baby up tightly within a thick layer of blankets until only a sliver of the tiny face was visible. And it was screwed up in rage and indignation; the sort that was unique to infants. Rafe clasped Dannyboy's knee in one hand. "You did well," he said. "You did so well for her. You've done everything you could." But he was only a little boy himself. He could not possibly have been prepared for a task of this magnitude.

Neil arrived in the doorway at last, standing uncertainly within the frame of it. He looked as if he would have quite liked to slam his hands over his ears to drown out the baby's plaintive wails, though somehow he resisted what must have been a compelling inclination.

"Have you eaten?" Rafe asked Dannyboy.

Scrubbing one fist across his damp cheeks, Dannyboy shook his head. "Ain't had time," he gasped through tremulous breaths.

"Tea, Neil, if you please. And something proper filling to go with it." It was so late that there wasn't much hope of anything beyond perhaps some wedges of cheese and finger sandwiches, but still it would likely be a sight better than anything else Dannyboy had had recently. "Do you mind if I try to soothe her?" he asked the boy as Neil slipped out of the room.

Pure relief slid across Dannyboy's face. "You gotta hold ‘er like this," he said, sliding his hands beneath the baby's head and back. "Else ‘er ‘ead flops back."

Rafe had held his brother's son more than a few times as an infant, and though it had been well over a year since such caution had been required, he remembered it well enough. Carefully he eased the little bundle of blankets off of Dannyboy's lap and into his arms. The baby squirmed within the tight confines of the blankets wrapped around her, but the wailing softened to a mere whimper.

The furious scrunch of her face eased. Tiny blue eyes blinked up at him with a baby's curiosity at the advent of this new, unexpected face thrust suddenly into her own. The abrupt descent of silence from the chaos of moments ago made Dannyboy wilt upon the couch, as if every ounce of his exhaustion had dropped down upon his shoulders at once.

"It's going to be all right, Dannyboy," Rafe said. "Tell me what's happened."

"Mum left," Dannyboy said in a small voice, curling his knees toward his chest. "I don't know where. An' she took—she took all my coin wiv ‘er."

"All of it!" Rafe's hoarse bark startled the boy and baby both. The baby had managed to slip one tiny arm free of the blankets, and she flailed her small fist. In effort to soothe the disgruntled expression upon the baby's face before it could devolve once more into a cascade of tears and wails, Rafe eased the baby to the cradle of one arm and gave her his finger to latch onto with her own.

Such tiny fingers, wrapped around just one of his own. With perfect little fingernails rendered in miniature.

"Even the purse ye gave me. I ‘adn't even the time to buy a cradle." He said the words as if they amounted to a personal failing. "Mum said she—she couldn't care for both o' us," he said, tucking a melancholy sigh into the curve of his elbow.

"Oh, Dannyboy," he said, but he was lost for the words necessary to comfort the child. He couldn't be expected to understand such adult matters. There was nothing he could say that would erase the hurt, and it would hardly be fair to offer the boy assurances which might prove themselves to be lies.

Dannyboy firmed his chin. "I can take care o' m'self," he said. "But she's just so little." Another sweep of his grubby fist across his eyes. "She needs to be somebody's," he said. "She's gotta ‘ave somebody what loves ‘er. And I thought—I thought maybe Lady Emma—"

God, Rafe was going to cry himself. It was there already, tearing at his throat. A massive, threatening lump through which he doubted he could comfortably speak.

"There was nowhere else I could go," Dannyboy said, and his head dropped against the back of the couch. "I ‘ad to do what's best for ‘er."

He hadn't just done his best. He'd done the best. The best there was to do. "Yes," Rafe said roughly, through the tight vise of his throat. And he knew he was making this promise for himself and Emma both—but he knew also that there was nothing that would please her more. "Yes. Of course." Some men became fathers the usual way, over the course of months and month as they waited for a much-anticipated child to grace the world with its presence.

But he had become a father in this very moment. With a tiny baby placed into his arms at an inopportune hour of the morning, within the walls of Emma's green salon.

"I promise you," he said to the boy. "She will be so very loved. But, Dannyboy, I can tell you from personal experience that every little girl deserves an older brother to look out for her, and she had got such a good one already. We can't take only her," he said. "It has got to be both of you."

Dannyboy smothered a sob beneath his fist. "You don't gotta," he said. "I can—I can—"

"Both of you," Rafe said. "If she's going to be our daughter, you have got to be our son. All right?" Carefully he reclaimed his hand from the baby's tight grip and held out his arm.

Dannyboy broke down into a noisy burst of tears, scrambling off of the couch to cast himself at Rafe, his thin arms latching around his neck.

And that was how Emma found them when she made it down at last, cinching her dressing gown around her waist. Dannyboy sobbing into his right ear as the baby wailed into his left. She paused there in the doorway, staring dumbly.

On some level, he knew, she must have had some sort of inkling as to what, exactly, had brought Dannyboy to her home at this hour of the night. The presence of the screaming infant had only confirmed it. And still she listed there, bracing one hand against the door frame as if her knees had threatened to buckle beneath her. Afraid, he thought. Afraid to hope that it meant what she thought it must. She drew a soft, shuddering breath, and pressed one hand to her heart as her eyes began to glitter with the advent of tears.

He hadn't asked her yet. His face was still a damned mess, his fingers still healing. He was going to go to his wedding looking like he'd come out the wrong end of a tavern brawl regardless.

But the time was now. It had to be now.

"There, now," he whispered to Dannyboy. "Emma's come down to see you. Here, take my hand." When the boy had withdrawn enough to seize instead at his hand, Rafe managed to climb to his feet in an awkward sort of struggle. Undignified it was, but he had a sort of uncanny feeling that there would be little room for dignity in his immediate future. Children had a way of trampling straight across it.

They faced her at last, the three of them—as much as the baby could be said to have faced her at least, tucked as she was into Rafe's arm. And he said, "Emma, I am asking now. Will you have us? All of us?"

"Yes." It was just a soft squeak of sound, issued before he'd even finished speaking, and it had been accompanied by an influx of tears. "Yes. Of course, yes." And she flew across the floor—not to him, nor even to the baby held in his arms.

She went straight to Dannyboy, who burrowed into her arms and let her stroke back the messy tumble of his hair. Just as a mother would do. She had mothered so many children across the years, but these two—these two would be hers. Theirs.

"And who is this?" she asked, as she settled upon the couch with Dannyboy at her side, and Rafe brought the baby at last to lay into her arms. With a mighty flail, the baby caught up a skein of Emma's hair and gave it a yank.

"My baby sister," Dannyboy said, wiping his face with the dirty sleeve of his shirt. "She's not got a name. Mum didn't—mum didn't give her one."

"But you did," Emma said with a soft smile. "Surely, you must've called her something." She gave a nod as Neil brought a tray into the room to lay upon the low table there before the couch.

Dannyboy grabbed up a handful of sandwiches and crammed two of them into his mouth at once. With a sheepish shrug, he admitted, "I call ‘er Kitty sometimes. When she's not screamin', she sounds a bit like a cat, I think."

"Kitty," Emma mused, peering up at Rafe. "That's often a pet name for Katherine. Like Dannyboy is for Daniel. Fine names, don't you think? And Kit will be so pleased."

No, he damned well wouldn't—but Rafe thought it was perfect. They were both perfect. Daniel and Katherine Beaumont. Just like that, his family had expanded.

Neil coughed into his hand. "I think there might be a cradle somewhere in the attic. I could have it brought down."

"Oh, please," Emma said. "I haven't got one to hand. Nobody's ever brought me a baby before. Wherever are we going to find a wet nurse at this hour?"

Right. Babies—most especially very young ones—required certain things that they were presently unable to provide. And Rafe hadn't even the slightest damned idea where or how one found a wet nurse. "I could ask Diana—"

"Phoebe," Emma countered swiftly, just a touch of desperation in her voice. "Ask Phoebe's family. She's got six sisters and a brother, and lord, they are all a fruitful set. I can't imagine that they won't know where to turn."

Well, he had his orders, and they were to march out into the brisk night and return promptly with a wet nurse for the benefit of baby Katherine, who continued squalling her magnificently-equipped lungs out. He'd signed himself for a lifetime of nights like this one, where chaos reigned and sleep was a far-distant thing.

And it was going to be glorious.

∞∞∞

Rafe returned an hour or so later with a woman in tow. Dannyboy had long since fallen asleep against Emma's shoulder, even though the baby had continued to whine for the emptiness of her poor little belly.

At least the woman Rafe had brought was, in some small way, familiar—if Emma recalled correctly, she had been engaged as a wet nurse for the son of one of Phoebe's younger sisters, and the boy was certainly old enough to merit weaning at this point.

Neil had roused half the household staff at least to assist him in the process of assembling the ancient cradle he'd dragged down from the attic, and to set up a suitable room as a nursery, the adjoining one for the wet nurse, and a third for Dannyboy. Luckily, the activity had been largely constrained to the upper floors, and so the noise had not disturbed the boy who had been sleeping with his head tucked against her shoulder for the better part of the last hour.

"This the little ‘un?" the woman asked, stretching out her hands for the baby.

"Yes. This is Katherine—Kitty, I mean to say." It was an effort to make herself surrender the infant to the wet nurse. "Could I have her back, when she has been fed?" Just to hold for a few moments longer. To stroke her cherubic little cheeks and count precious tiny fingers and toes.

"If ye like, my lady. Or I could put her in her cradle for ye."

Dannyboy stirred against her shoulder, a high-pitched whine of a snore erupting near her ear. "Please. After I've told her good night," Emma said to the woman. "Her brother will want to tell her as well."

"And her father. Don't move; I've got him." Rafe peeled Dannyboy away carefully, lifting the child into his arms. "His room has been made up for him?"

"Yes; it's the one straight across from mine."

"Ours." Rafe winced as Dannyboy sleepily hooked both arms about his neck, and he was forced to speak through the strangling pressure. "Ours," he said again. He gave a nod to Neil, who had come down to direct the wet nurse toward the nursery that had been prepared. "I'm sorry," Rafe said to Emma, "but we are going to have to be married in a hell of a hurry."

A special license, then. Emma managed to pull herself upright from the couch, grimacing through the pins-and-needles tingle that shot through her legs and feet, which had lost quite a bit of feeling in the time she had been sitting. "I've had one grand wedding already. I think I would prefer something a good deal smaller." Private. Intimate. Even a wedding by common license would have to take place in a church, and no doubt it would attract a great deal of attention. There would be certain expectations, certain preparations that would need to be made. It would be a matter of weeks at least, to arrange a wedding that would still scandalize for its swiftness.

If one were going to scandalize anyway, one might as well do it properly. A special license—assuming that Rafe could secure one from the Archbishop—might be only a matter of hours. They might be a family in truth in the eyes of God and by law as soon as afternoon tomorrow.

Time enough had been wasted already. She would not sacrifice one minute more than was necessary.

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