Trouble With Harry (29 page)

“And what about me?” Harry asked calmly, as if the pistol weren't pointed at Plum's breast. Plum became aware that Harry's hand against her waist was exerting pressure to pull her backward. No doubt the foolish man believed that if he shoved her behind him when he disarmed Sir Paul, he would not be shot because she was his target. That wasn't true, of course. It was Harry he wanted to destroy. Dear Harry, normally so smart about these things, but this time, so obtuse.

Sir Paul smiled, a nasty, oily smile of pure malice that sent shivers of horror down Plum's back. “If you do not allow me to take your wife into lawful custody, you will regrettably be shot and killed while attempting to keep me from the course of my duty. A tragedy, but alas, an unavoidable one.”

Plum knew Harry was going to strike even before he moved. His fingers tightened on her, jerking her backward as he lunged forward. She was ready for that move, however, and knowing that Sir Paul needed her alive in order to torment Harry, she threw herself between the two men shrieking, “No!” just as Harry grabbed her.

The blast from the pistol deafened her ears; the smell of gunpowder burned her eyes. Time froze as she stood in front of Harry, watching as surprise dawned in Sir Paul's eyes. She looked down at herself, amazed to see a bloom of red on her side, quickly soaking her gown in an expanding circle.

“I was wrong,” she said somewhat bemusedly as Harry snarled an oath, jumping forward to knock the pistol from Sir Paul before grabbing him and slamming him against the wall of the library repeatedly until he hung limply in Harry's hands. Harry threw the man down, rushing back to where Plum was gently prodding the red stain on her gown.

“I was wrong. He did shoot me. I don't understand. I had it all figured out, but he shot me anyway. He wasn't supposed to. Harry, I've been shot. Do you think I should swoon?”

“Plum, Plum, my beautiful, brave, ridiculously wonderful Plum, you may swoon if you like. I have it on the highest authority that all the best ladies who have been shot do so.” Harry swept her up in his arms, cradling her as if she was made of the costliest porcelain. The strain in his voice warmed her, driving out some of the icy pain that started to throb in her side.

“Will it harm the babe, do you think?” she asked, suddenly feeling as if Harry was a very long way from her. His voice was distant and hard to make out, and his face seemed to be dimming.

“No, the babe won't be harmed. And neither will you. You'll be fit as ever in just a day or two, you'll see.”

“Oh, good. I think I'll swoon now if you don't mind. If all the ladies do it, I feel I should, too.” Now her voice sounded distant and strange, as if it belonged to another. She tried to cling to Harry, but couldn't make her arms work. She relaxed against him, giving up the struggle, sinking silently into the oblivion that claimed her.

“You are solely to blame for being in this situation, Plum.”

“Push, madam.”

“Oh! I am not! What a thing to say to me!”

“The blame lies completely on your head,” Harry said, scowling down at her. “I declaim all responsibility. You insisted, if you recall. I said no, I won't risk your health, but you insisted.”

“And another one, madam.”

“Ha! I like that! I never insisted, and you
are
responsible. If your seed was so potent that it could impregnate me after just a few incidences of spillage, it's most certainly your fault, not mine.”

“Perhaps you might put a bit more effort into the next push?” the gentleman lurking at the end of the bed asked her.

“I'm trying,” Plum snarled at the physician. She had a difficult time seeing him because of the bedclothes heaped on her massive belly. She struggled to sit up so she could give the man a really good glare, a quality glare, one that he would remember for the rest of his life. Harry, supporting her from behind, immediately came to her assistance, adjusting himself so that she could lean against his chest and level her glare at the physician. “It's not easy, you know!”

“I am aware of that fact, Lady Rosse. I am also aware that the babe's head is about to crown, and in order for it to do so, you need to push. Now, if you have gathered your strength, I believe another contraction is coming. Please oblige me by pushing at the peak.”

“No one ever told me about this,” Plum gasped, her gasp turning to a shriek as she bore down. Behind her, Harry murmured soft words of love and encouragement as she struggled to keep from shredding the skin on the arms he wrapped around her in support. She thought she was going to be sick from the pain, or swoon, or start shrieking and never be able to stop, but just as the pain grew so great she knew she was going to die from it, she pushed again, bearing down with every last bit of strength she had to rid her body of the invader, as she had taken to thinking of it. She pushed and pushed and pushed until there was nothing but a red well of all-consuming pain.

“Excellent, madam. A fine job. You may relax for a moment.” The physician turned to his assistant and asked for a cloth.

Plum collapsed backwards against Harry, her body aching and still screaming with the echoes of agony. “No one told me about the pain,” she gasped, “not the real pain, not what it
really
feels like, not Delia, not Old Mag, none of the ladies ever told me it was going to be so very bad. All they talked about was the joy of holding their baby in their arms, but did anyone think to tell me that there would be so much pain involved? No, they did not. I am going to have a few words with them, on that you can—”

The sound of a baby's squall cut off her words. A tingle swept her body, a wave of joy and love and pride so great it brought tears to her eyes. Harry nuzzled her temple moist with perspiration, his hands warm and comforting beneath her breasts. “I love you, Plum. I love you more than anything I can think of—”

His words dried up too as the physician presented her with a bundle. “My lord, my lady, your daughter.”

“A daughter,” Plum said, tears of happiness spilling over her lashes as she took the baby, pulling back the cloth to admire the red-faced, pointy-headed, splotchy-skinned baby who yelled her opinion of the world she'd been pushed into, the volume of her protests indicating she would one day make a very fine opera singer. “She's beautiful. She's the most beautiful baby in the world, isn't she?”

“Yes, she is.” Harry kissed her temple again, reaching forward to stroke the baby's clenched fists. “The most beautiful baby there ever was.”

“I think so too. Harry, look! She has toes!”

“Ten of them, I'll wager. Shall we count?”

Delightedly, the new parents counted the baby's toes, then feeling giddy with delight, counted her fingers as well.

“Promise me something, Harry,” Plum said some time later when she had been cleaned and the babe tucked in beside her. He leaned across their daughter to kiss her.

“Anything, my darling,” he said against her lips.

“It's about the baby.”

“Whatever you want, my love. Ponies, toys, the best education, frocks galore—it's all hers.”

Plum's eyes were alight with love as she nipped his lower lip, soothing the sting by sucking it into her mouth for a moment before releasing it. “Promise me she'll never have children. It's the most ghastly experience I've ever lived through! No woman should have to go through it. You can't imagine the sort of pain you feel in labor. It's indescribable, it's absolutely indescribable, it's so bad you want to set your hair on fire just to distract yourself from the consuming, absolute horribleness of it all. I will never, ever forget it, it's bound to haunt me to the end of my days, giving me nightmares with the memory of the torturous, never-ending horror of it all. I think I'd rather be stomped on by a herd of elephants than go through another birth. Truly, the elephants would be nothing compared with the searing, burning, ripping, tearing, soul-rending sort of pain felt during the birth—”

“As you wish, my darling.”

The couple was silent for a moment, watching the child they'd made together, until Plum felt the burden of the things she'd said to her beloved husband.

“Harry?”

“Hmm?”

Plum gave him her most winsome smile, which considering the nightmare she'd just been through, said much of her character. “I didn't mean what I said earlier.”

“Ah. So you won't really castrate me with two egg cups and a fish knife if I ever touch you again?” The devilish glint she loved so dearly was back in his eyes.

“A
dull
fish knife, and no, I won't.”

“That's reassuring to know.”

Her winsome smile faded as she adjusted her position, her body protesting the action. “Mind you, if you impregnate me again, I will take your scrotum, pull it over your head, and—”

“Thank you, my dear, you have made yourself quite clear.” Harry laughed and stopped Plum's threats with the simple act of kissing her until she had no more breath, standing back when the door flew open and five children and Thom burst into the room, all chattering at once, all excited to see the new baby. Harry's gaze met Plum's as the children swarmed the baby, his heart filled with all the love and happiness she had brought him.

“What are you going to call her?” Thom asked, looking from Plum to him.

“We haven't decided yet,” Plum said.

“I have,” Harry announced, a slow smile filling his eyes with laughter.

“You have? You said you didn't have any preference. By what name would you have the baby called?” Plum asked him, her brow wrinkling in a puzzled frown.

He kissed her again, unable to keep from tasting the sweetness of her lips. His Plum, his delightful, entrancing, beguiling Plum.

“Vyvyan,” he said. “We'll call her Vyvyan.”

And so they did.

Read on for an excerpt from the brand-new title in the Noble series:

The Truth about Leo

A princess strives for modality of both voice and being. Discordant events, such as the refusal by a groom to allow one to ride one's father's stallion, are to be greeted with a slightly elevated eyebrow (no more than one quarter of an inch; anything else is considered mannish), and a slightly aggrieved expression. Under no circumstances should carbolic powder be placed in the groom's underthings so as to ensure unsightly and ceaseless itching of an Unspeakable Body Part.

—Princess Christian of Sonderburg-Beck's Guide For Her Daughter's Illumination and Betterment

“Princess!”

Dagmar tapped the end of the quill against her lips and considered best how to answer this latest demand from her cousin.

“Princess Dagmar!”

My
very
dear
cousin
Frederick
, she wrote, then decided that given the tone in her cousin's letter, the rotter didn't deserve such niceties.

Frederick:

I have received your missive dated today and have to say that I'm shocked that a man who Dearest Papa always insisted had so much potential would use words like “blot on the existence of my life” and “irreverent, mouthy, and in essence, painful to be near” to a lady like me, let alone one of royal blood, but as the good book—and I refer here to my sainted mother's detailed journal—always says, breeding will tell.

“Princ—oh, there you are.” A slight form appeared in the open doorway, bobbing a little curtsy before entering the room. “I've been hunting all over for you. There's a drunkard in the garden.”

I shouldn't have thought it necessary to point out that the other good book—the Bible—mentions it as a sin to turn one's back on one's destitute and orphaned cousins—

Dagmar paused, glancing over to where her companion stood patiently waiting to be acknowledged. “Oh, hello, Julia. Do you know what the Bible says about cousins?”

The slight, blonde woman of forty-some years looked puzzled. “No. What does it say?”

“That's what I was asking you.” Dagmar tapped the quill on her lips again. “Is it a sin to claim that the Bible says something if it really doesn't?”

“I think it is, yes.” Julia sat, clasping her hands in a pious gesture that just made Dagmar sigh. It wasn't that she was especially intolerant, or even irreligious, but the truth was that she was forever being taxed with being sinful by her cousin Frederick, who had long claimed that Dearest Papa had let her run wild and had not in the least tiny bit drummed into her how a proper lady should behave.

“Which is ridiculous, because there's no way anyone could mistake me for a man,” she muttered, glancing down to where her front was quite obviously not that of a male. “I think they're getting bigger.”

Julia considered the offending bosom. “I don't think so, dear. They look just the same to me.”

“That's because you're around them all the time.” Dagmar gave her front one last dark look. “But my green gown is going to have to be let out again, else I'll pop out of the bodice. Where was I? Oh, yes, the Bible. Well, it may not be in there, but it should be.”

“I'm sure you're correct. Did you not hear me mention that there was a drunkard in the garden?”

“Yes, I heard you.”

A slight pause followed, ending when Julia said, in a flustered, breathless manner, “Do you not think anything of this?”

“Not particularly. Well, to be honest my first thought was to answer ‘When wasn't there a drunkard in the garden' but I realized that we haven't been blighted with over-many garden drunkards in years past, so I decided to keep it to myself.”

“But…but…” Julia waved a hand in one of her vague gestures of mild distress.

Dagmar took pity on her. “Is this man doing any harm?”

“No, but he's lying right out in the open, where anyone who ventures into the garden might see him.”

Dagmar dismissed him from her thoughts. It wasn't as if she didn't have more pressing concerns than some silly man who had imbibed too much and stumbled into their garden. “Don't let it distress you. He's probably sleeping off a night at the tavern and will leave once he wakes up.”

“But he might be injured or worse!”

“What's worse than injured?” Dagmar asked absently, wondering how best to put her situation before her blighter of a cousin.

“Dead!”

“Ah. Excellent point. Why don't you go check and see if he's dead while I finish this?”

A blissful silence followed Julia's departure. Dagmar dipped her quill and continued.

—destitute and orphaned cousins who are due your protection, but if you want to spurn God right to his face and damn your eternal soul, then that's your choice. I, as an innocent and did I mention destitute and orphaned young princess of your own blood, albeit one that is somewhat distant relationship-wise if Dearest Papa's genealogical chart is correct, will simply have to throw myself on the mercy of the king, your father, our beloved monarch and supreme ruler. I'm sure he will not turn his back on his own family and throw me out of the only home I've ever known, especially since I am still in mourning for Dearest Papa.

All too quickly, Julia was back. “He's not dead.”

“Good, good.”

“He refuses to wake up, however.”

“Ah.”

Julia wrung her hands for a few seconds. “Oughtn't you to come see him for yourself?”

“I've never really found high entertainment value in gazing upon insensible drunkards, so I believe I will stay here and finish this. How do you spell ‘misanthrope'?”

“I would feel better if you did assess the situation for yourself.”

“Why?” Dagmar looked up from where she had been adding a word or two to the letter.

More vague hand gestures followed. “Well…he might not meet with your satisfaction.”

Dagmar tried very hard not to laugh. “I assure you most sincerely that I will have no undue expectations of this poor soul.”

“And then there's the fact that he's just lying out in the garden. He might hurt himself in his stupor. Or someone might trip over him. Or wolves might devour him while he is without his senses. I would feel much better if you were to view the situation.”

Dagmar set down the quill. “You're not going to let me finish until I do, are you?”

“I would never presume—”

Dagmar stood, knowing the sooner she went out and viewed the man, the sooner she could return to pleading with her cousin. “Very well, let us view this new addition to the garden.”