The Gathering Storm (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 3) by Julia Brannan

Author:Julia Brannan [Brannan, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-06-23T18:00:00+00:00

“She’s coming,” announced Beth the night before Clarissa’s birthday party.

“Why am I no’ surprised?” said Alex, who had now fallen back into his dual role and felt no compunction about speaking Scots at home. “I suppose ye’re going to regale us wi’ the details of the campaign.”

“Of course I am,” said Beth smugly. “Caroline and I, after several visits, with the help of Freddie, who has behaved perfectly at all times in her presence, the little angel, have managed to persuade Anne that she owes it to her husband to ensure she has a healthy child. And that to do that she must cheer up and re-enter life a little.”

“What my wife is trying to say,” said Alex to his brothers, and Iain and Maggie, who were all draped in various relaxed poses around the drawing room, “is that she and her crony have terrified the poor woman into believing that if she has a moment’s unhappiness between now and April, the bairn will be born with two heads.”

“No we haven’t!” protested Beth. “What we have done is got her eating again, and looking forward to the future a little. God, the woman was a skeleton! She’d have been dead in a month if I’d left her to Charlotte’s tender ministrations. Sympathy is all well and good; encouraging someone to wallow for the rest of their life in self-pity is another thing altogether.”

“It sustains Charlotte,” pointed out Alex.

“True. But it was killing Anne.”

“Well done,” said Iain. “Now can ye turn your hand to stopping my wife eating, before she gets so big I canna fit in the bed wi’ her?”

“Haud yer wheesht,” said Maggie, who since becoming pregnant had indeed developed a prodigious appetite, but had not, in spite of Iain’s dire predictions, put on any great amount of weight, although her stomach was starting to round nicely now she was in her fourth month. “I’m eating for the bairn too, remember.”

“You must be having triplets then,” said Angus cheerfully, moving to take up a supine position by the hearth. Maggie and Beth, both sitting on the sofa, used him as a footstool in perfect synchronicity, then laughed.

“As long as they’re no’ born on the sixteenth of April, I dinna care if there’s ten of them in there,” Maggie said.

“It’d be an awfu’ bonny twenty-first present for me if they were,” said Angus.

“Not for me it wouldna,” said Maggie, wiggling her toes blissfully in the warmth of the fire. “I’ve nae intention of lying in my bed alone screaming wi’ birthing pains, while you lot are all roistering away down here.”

“I wouldna be!” said Iain indignantly. “I’d be with ye. Well, in spirit anyway,” he amended, remembering with relief that men were not allowed in the birthing chamber. He put his arm around his wife’s shoulder.

“Aye, it’s the spirits I’m worried about,” said Maggie

“Will ye be calling it Angus, then, if it’s born on my birthday?” persisted the footstool.

“Only if it’s a girl,” replied Maggie. “I’d be too afraid of it turning out like you, else.

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