A Debt to Delia by Barbara Metzger

Author:Barbara Metzger [Metzger, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

“What do you mean, what about the babe?” Ty almost shouted, forgetting where he was. Actually, he’d already forgotten where he was, but, oh, hell, one did not bellow at a deathbed. He dropped his arms from Miss Croft so fast she staggered, and he winced with the pain from his wounded arm at such sudden motion.

Belinda was still breathing, though barely, and old Mags had pulled the covers down to listen for a heartbeat. Then she moved her ear lower to that distended mass. “The infant’s heart is still going steady. Not for long, for neither of them, I wager, but there is a chance for the wee one.”

“But you said Belinda was not ready to give birth.” Delia blew her nose and watched the midwife poke at the mound of Belinda’s stomach.

“She will never be ready, not now. But we can make a way for the baby to come out. The Romans did it.”

“The Romans also left unwanted children outside the gates for the wolves to eat,” Ty said.

“Aye, but I have heard of a few other cases where it has been done,” Mags replied. “I read of two such at Edinburgh, where they teach the physicians what little the rattlepates know.”

“Yes, but were any of them successful?” Ty wanted to know.

“Not for the mother, that’s the truth. But sometimes the infant survives. I don’t see as we have much to lose, my lord.”

Delia’s face had drained of color. “You mean cut Belinda open, while she still lives? But that would be murder, would it not?”

Ty looked at Anselm, who shrugged. “I do not think Lady Tyverne’s life is ours to give or take any longer, but the child’s? That would be the miracle of birth, surely not a crime.”

“Macurdle!” Ty bellowed in his officer’s voice, loud enough to be heard above the roar of cannons. Belinda was past hearing, anyway.

The whole household, it seemed, appeared in an instant. The solicitor listened to what Ty asked, looked to the midwife with her sharp knife, and promptly slid to the floor in a dead faint. So much for the legal opinion. Winsted, who knew better than to ignore the major’s command, directed at him or not, dragged the lawyer out of the room. Mindle and Aunt Eliza leaned on each other, both ashen and trembling.

“You’d better hurry and decide,” Mags told the viscount. “Another minute and it will be no use.”

They were all looking at him. Of course they were. He was the woman’s husband, her lawful spouse, the one authorized by the church and the crown to make life-and-death decisions for her and the issue of her body. Lud, first he had held Miss Croft in his clumsy hands, now he held a child’s life. He was not qualified for either.

“Likely the babe won’t live anyway,” Mags was saying. “And if it should, you’ve got even odds it’ll be a girl, no threat to your title and all that nonsense men put such stock in. If it’s

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