The Scottish Duke Read online

  “It would cause a scandal,” she said. “A duke can’t marry a maid.”

  “The world will be petty and brutal in their assessment of the situation. Do not delude yourself that society is anything but rapacious.” The duchess smiled. “But also remember this. Even kings married commoners. Elizabeth Woodville was married to Edward IV. Henry VIII married four women without a royal pedigree.”

  “I doubt they’d been maids,” Lorna said.

  “How many years were you in service, Lorna?”

  “Nearly two, Your Grace.”

  “And how many years were you your father’s daughter?”

  “For the whole of my life,” she said, understanding.

  “Which is longer and more important?”

  “The world will not think that.”

  “No, they shan’t, but they will be even crueler to your child if you don’t marry Alex. Would you have him labeled a bastard?”

  The calm and loving Dowager Duchess of Kinross uttering that word was a shock.

  “What would you do for your child, Lorna?”

  “Anything,” she said, the answer coming so quickly there was no need to think about it.

  “Then you know how I feel about Alex and, in turn, for this child. I would do anything for them. And for you, Lorna.”

  “A friend of mine says I see what I want to see,” she said. “That I ignore what’s real.” She glanced away, then back at the duchess. “I’m trying not to do that, Your Grace. Your son doesn’t care anything for me. He’s been cordial and charming, but I don’t pretend it’s anything more than that.”

  “You’ve always struck me as a proud young woman,” the duchess said. “You didn’t go to the poorhouse when you were desperate and alone. You sought out work on your own. You refused to wallow in self-pity. Why are you doing so now?”

  “I’m not.” The response came immediately to her lips. “How can you say I am? A marriage between us would be ridiculous, not to mention scandalous. People would never stop talking about it.”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” the duchess said. “But, then, they will talk regardless. If it wasn’t this marriage, it would be something else. People will find things to discuss. Alex is a wonderful topic for them. He’s brooding and a loner. He has a sorrowful past, and he’s handsome. What better target for their gossip?”

  She blinked at the duchess. What on earth could she say to such an attitude? Something, anything, to make the other woman understand. But before she could interject, the duchess continued.

  “You are going to find that people will criticize you regardless of who you are or who your family is or what your station is in life. Almost no one measures up. Your grandfather was an earl? My father was one.” She smiled. “The faster you realize that it doesn’t matter, the happier you will be. That is one thing I’ve never had to teach Alex. He doesn’t give a fig what anyone else thinks.”

  “That’s because he’s a duke.”

  “Oh my dear,” she said, “Alex has been that way all his life.” She held up a hand. “Before you say that it’s because he was the heir to a dukedom, I assure you that he was as self-possessed in the nursery before he truly understood who or what he was. You could do worse than to emulate him, and that’s said with a mother’s usual pride.”

  “Has he agreed?”

  “Yes,” the duchess said. “Now it’s your turn. I won’t have my grandchild born a bastard. Say yes.”

  What choice did she have?

  “Yes,” she said, the word uttered on a tidal wave of pain.

  Perhaps there was a place in Heaven where mothers go to be lectured. The admonitions would only last an hour or two, Louise was certain. After a respectable amount of time, and a genuine, soul-wrenching confession, the mother would be led away to the main part of Heaven and fitted with a pair of angel wings.

  At least that’s the way she thought it should be.

  She’d lied to Lorna. In addition, she had every intention of lying to her son. The result was worth any amount of chicanery. The child soon to be born must be a Russell.

  She sent Peter for the midwife, and when the woman arrived she motioned her into the bedroom.

  “Dr. McElwee will be here soon. If he needs to examine her, I’d like you to remain in the room with Lorna.”

  “Aye, Your Grace.”

  Louise turned and studied Lorna’s face. The poor dear was dozing. Lorna had some rough hours ahead of her. Russell babies were always large and birthing them wasn’t easy.

  “I’ll return in a little while,” she said, leaving the bedroom.

  To her surprise, both Dr. McElwee and Alex were in the parlor. Nan was making tea, while Peter was standing at attention as if ready to take orders from Alex at any moment.

  “Would you see to her, Dr. McElwee?”

  After exchanging a few words with the doctor, she motioned to Alex, grabbed her shawl, and left the cottage, walking some distance down the road toward Blackhall.

  “If you wanted to go home,” he said, striding toward her, “why didn’t you take the carriage?”

  “I wanted to talk to you. Alone. With no one to overhear.”

  She turned to face him and took a deep breath, praying for the wisdom to say the perfect words to convince him.

  Alex speared his fingers through his hair.

  “Is she going to be all right?” he asked. “This won’t be like Ruth, will it?”

  She frowned at him. “Of course not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “Did you feel that way about Ruth?” he asked.

  “Alex, Lorna’s going to be fine.”

  He nodded but didn’t look reassured. “Is she afraid? She never mentioned that she was to me. I know you two have grown close in the last weeks. Did she say anything to you?”

  “No, she didn’t, and I think she would have if she were. Alex, it’s all right.” She placed her hand on his arm. “Truly, it will be. In the meantime, we need to make plans.”

  “Plans?”

  “You have to marry her, Alex. We haven’t much time. Lorna’s labor is well-advanced.” When he didn’t comment, she said, “Do you want your child born illegitimate?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I had this idea that I could petition the court after the fact, but that’s not practical, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  He nodded again. “It would necessitate the world knowing his status, of course. I’d be dragging his name and his reputation through the mud. Yes, he might be legitimized, but at what cost? He’d be known as the Bastard Duke. That’s unacceptable.”

  Folding his arms, he stared off down the road to Blackhall.

  “Even the word is ugly, Mother. I was at school with more than one boy whose birth was questioned. Life was miserable for them. I don’t want that to happen to my child. She must agree to marry me.”

  She blinked at him. This was much easier than she’d thought it would be.

  “She already has. She wants the best for her child, of course. This wouldn’t be the first marriage to be performed on the birthing bed. Besides, I think you and Lorna suit quite well.”

  He glanced at her. “Do you? Well, we don’t have any other choice, do we?”

  “Oh, my dear darling Alex,” she said. “The time to choose was approximately nine months ago. Now’s the time to pay the piper.”

  Everyone was too damn calm. They didn’t seem the least bit anxious, as if the sounds from the other room were normal.

  Alex had never been on the battlefield, but he could well imagine a wounded man making the same noises, especially as he tried to stifle his cries of pain from being heard by his fellow soldiers.

  What had possessed him to think that he needed to be here? He wanted to be a hundred miles away. Far enough that he couldn’t hear Lorna’s agony.

  What if history and tragedy repeated themselves? Was that why his mother had hugged him earlier, given him a bracing smile, then ins
isted on being in the room with Lorna?

  The cottage was too damn small. He knew that now. He’d paced off the exact distance from the front door to the farthest wall at least fifty times. Why didn’t he just go back to the castle with instructions for someone to send him news on the hour? How long was this supposed to go on?

  He halted at the far wall, but instead of turning and retracing his steps, he placed both hands flat on the window frame, wishing it weren’t night, that he could see beyond the glass.

  Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly, pretending a calm he didn’t feel.

  He turned his head to see Peter standing there. He should say something to the young man, especially since the footman’s face was a peculiar shade of gray. Dear God, did he look the same?

  “It’s all right,” he said, hearing the faint tremor in his own voice and making an effort to steady it. “Women do this every day.” So much for platitudes.

  Peter nodded. “My sister went three days, Your Grace.”

  Three days? He couldn’t last a few more hours. If he couldn’t, what the hell was Lorna going through?

  How did women survive this? If his mother was in the room with him then, he would’ve pulled her aside and asked her the question. She would probably have patted him on the shoulder and smiled a Madonna-like smile, a combination of maternal wisdom and pity.

  He couldn’t leave. They were waiting for the odious minister. The idiot Reverend McGill was the closest clergy.

  Another scream, this one longer than the last, made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

  Men were supposed to be the stronger sex, weren’t they? They went off to battle. They were seen as conquerors. They built things. They discovered continents. They manipulated science to create what would have been inconceivable a hundred years earlier.

  Yet women continued the species. They labored to bring children into the world and did so without asking for recognition.

  Fear was an icy fist in his stomach. It harnessed his breath and made his heart race. He would stay where he was, staring through a window at a world he couldn’t see.

  Another scream had him walking to the closed door. It was as much a barrier as if it had been a brick wall. He wasn’t wanted or needed in that room. He was superfluous and unnecessary in the business of giving birth. All he could do was pray, an activity at which he was woefully inept.

  Hopefully, God would not judge him on the infrequency of his prayers, or if He did, not apply his sins to Lorna or their child.

  The front door abruptly opened, revealing Reverend McGill.

  Their gazes met in recognition of the last time they’d encountered each other. McGill had called him a fornicator and he’d threatened to withhold any funds for the church roof if the man didn’t shut up.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said, striding to the door. As if the man had any choice. He’d given Charles instructions to take someone with him to convince Reverend McGill that it would be advisable to agree to officiate.

  He didn’t get a chance to explain anything because the bedroom door opened and his mother stood there. At the sight of the minister, she smiled.

  “Just in time,” she said, motioning them forward.

  Grabbing McGill by the sleeve, Alex made for the bedroom.

  Chapter 19

  The marriage of Alexander Brian Russell, ninth Duke of Kinross, to Lorna Anne Gordon, spinster, occurred only three minutes before the birth of their child.

  Reverend McGill couldn’t help himself and launched into a speech about how women were duty bound to experience pain in childbirth. He was stopped in the middle of his tirade by the Dowager Duchess of Kinross who eyed him with disfavor and said, “A little less original sin, Reverend, and more wedding vows.”

  A scant three minutes later, Robert Russell arrived accompanied by a gusty sigh of relief from the midwife, who knew only too well what had happened to the previous duchess. Alex, somewhat stunned by the events of the past hour, heard the news that he had an heir with calm acceptance. The Dowager Duchess beamed, her tear-dampened smile one of the first things the mother saw as she was given her large and demanding son.

  The newly born Robert Russell—Robbie—was already voicing his displeasure with the proceedings, thereby echoing the Reverend George McGill’s mutterings as he affixed his signature to the necessary documents.

  Lorna crooned to her child as he was placed on her chest. He immediately curled up and thrust his fist in his mouth.

  He was going to be a duke. She’d given birth to a duke. How astonishing.

  She was a duchess. It didn’t seem possible, especially when she glanced up and found herself pinned by her husband’s gorgeous eyes. Husband. The word didn’t seem the least bit plausible. She couldn’t be married to the Duke of Kinross. She’d watched him from afar, marveled at his handsomeness, dreamed of speaking to him one day.

  Now they were married.

  Now they were parents.

  The whole thing was too improbable. Perhaps she was dreaming and memories of the hastily performed ceremony would disappear the minute she awakened.

  No, the Reverend McGill was standing in the corner. She would never have dreamed about him.

  If this wasn’t a dream or a figment of her imagination, then she was certain that the rest of the world wasn’t going to be so pleased. Take the Earl of Montrassey, for example. Or Mary Taylor.

  Nan, bless her, had attended the hurried ceremony as they clustered around her bed. Toward the end Lorna had been hard-pressed to repeat the words of her vow because her son—their son—was demanding to be born. Thankfully, only the midwife and the duchess were in the room when that event occurred. After she and the baby had been cleaned up and the linen replaced, everyone returned to greet the heir.

  Now she wished they’d all leave so she could sleep.

  Robbie, however, didn’t appear sleepy. He was squinting up at her and pummeling her with his tiny fists.

  She glanced at the duchess, and bless the woman, Louise understood what was needed immediately. In moments she’d shooed everyone from the room except Alex.

  Today, Lorna reflected, she’d been naked in front of the duchess and the midwife, and now, in order to breast-feed her child, was revealing herself to Alex. It was the first time since that night nearly a year ago. She would have preferred to be alone, but how did she banish the duchess and her husband?

  Husband. One again that word didn’t make any sense. How could that gloriously handsome man be her husband?

  The duchess helped Lorna sit up a little, unfasten her nightgown, and put Robbie to her breast. Only then did he stop waving his arms around and settle down.

  Glancing up, she saw the duchess’s face contorted with the effort of balancing emotions. The older woman was weeping at the same time her mouth was curving into a smile. Robbie’s birth must have brought back memories of the children she’d lost.

  Somehow, she wanted to ease the pain of this moment for the duchess.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. “I haven’t missed my mother as much as I thought because you were here.”

  To her surprise, the older woman bent over the bed and kissed her cheek. Then she left the room, but not before Lorna saw the tears on her cheeks.

  “Was I wrong to say what I did?” she asked, glancing at Alex.

  “No,” he said. “It was the best thing you could have said.”

  He wasn’t looking at her, but at their son, rooting at her breast. Was he going to argue about her decision to nurse her own child?

  She would not change her mind. Although he could turn that brilliant blue green gaze on her and make her thoughts fly away as if they were frightened starlings, she wasn’t going to agree to a wet nurse.

  “He’s big,” he said.

  She kept her attention on their son. “Your mother said that her babies were all large.”

  “He has my hair.”

  She nodded. Her imagination had conjured up a shock of black hai
r, and that’s exactly how Robbie looked.

  “And my nose,” Alex said.

  She tilted her head slightly and studied her son. He was an infant image of the duke.

  “And your chin,” she added. “Plus, I don’t doubt he has a ducal temperament.”

  “Exactly what is a ducal temperament?” he asked.

  She would have smiled if she weren’t so tired. The effort seemed suddenly beyond her.

  Robbie was asleep, and she wanted, very much, to join him.

  “Could you put him in the cradle, please?”

  She always wanted to remember the expression on Alex’s face: startled bemusement followed by sheer terror. His hands flailed in the air as if she’d asked him to hold a pot of boiling water without a cloth between him and burning hot metal.

  “He’s your son,” she pointed out. “Did you never think to hold him?”

  He didn’t answer her. To his credit, he stepped closer to the bed. He might look like a condemned prisoner, but he manfully held out his arms.

  “Sit there,” she said, gesturing toward the side of the mattress with her chin.

  He did so, angling his body so that he was half turned toward her.

  “Now, cup your arms,” she said. When he did as she asked, she realized she wasn’t too tired to smile after all.

  She made the transfer easily. As he balanced their child in his arms, she buttoned up her nightgown.

  Words weren’t necessary at that moment. They would have been an interference as son met father. Robbie squinted up at Alex, waved his fists a few times, then made a soft snuffling sound.

  “He’s asleep,” Alex said a few minutes later.

  She nodded, almost asleep herself.

  “What if he wakes up when I put him in the cradle?”

  “Then you’ll have to rock him,” she said.

  She lay her head back on the pillow, the last image before sleep claimed her the sweet picture of Alex smiling down at his son.

  Those moments of sitting there, Robbie’s head cradled in his elbow, the baby’s bottom in his palm, were silent and almost prayerful.