One year later
“I am telling you all will be well,” Melborne assured. He sat and watched Sterling pace up and down the drawing room where they awaited news from upstairs of Elizabeth giving birth to their first child.
The Duchess of Melborne and Sterling’s cousin, Gwen, were with Elizabeth, those three ladies having become fast friends. The doctor and Peggy were also in attendance.
Sterling rounded on his friend. “You cannot possibly know that.”
“Next to Grace, Elizabeth is the strongest woman I know,” Melborne admired before sobering. “She had to be with that monster for a father-in-law.”
The eleventh Earl of Whitlow had duly met his demise at the end of a rope only weeks after being arrested.
The twelfth Earl of Whitlow, five-year-old Christopher, was currently upstairs in the nursery with Mary, his nursemaid, awaiting news of his new brother or sister.
“And if I lost Elizabeth, I should not wish to live,” Sterling admitted bleakly.
The past year of having Elizabeth as his wife and Christopher as his son had been the happiest Sterling had ever known. He could not even tolerate thinking of a future without her and Christopher.
“You will not lose her—” Melborne broke off, both men turning toward the door as it was flung open and a flushed, disheveled, and obviously pregnant Peggy—she and Jimmy had married only a week after Sterling and Elizabeth—stood in the doorway. The weak sound of an infant crying could be heard in the distance.
“Elizabeth…?” Sterling choked.
“Waiting to see you upstairs, Your Grace,” the young woman beamed.
“Go to her, man,” Melborne encouraged.
Sterling gave Peggy’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze as he rushed from the room and up the stairs, barely acknowledging Gwen and the duchess as they stood in the hallway outside the bedchamber, the doctor with them.
It was the same bedchamber Sterling and Elizabeth slept in together every night, neither of them wishing to be apart from the other even for a night. Their dressing rooms were on either side of that main room.
His beloved Elizabeth had insisted on giving birth in the same bedchamber in which their son or daughter had been conceived.
* * *
Elizabeth smiled at her husband as he stumbled into the bedchamber. He looked less than his usually sartorial self, his face pale, his hair in disarray, his neckcloth askew. “All is well,” she hastened to assure him. “Come and say hello to your son and daughter.” She indicated the two tiny babies she held, wrapped in a warm blanket, one in each arm.
“My—” Sterling choked, his face becoming even paler.
Elizabeth’s smile was wide with her happiness. “We have given Christopher a brother and a sister, my love. We have another son, and we also have a daughter.”
Tears cascaded unashamedly down her husband’s cheeks as he leaned over to look at the two sleeping babies. “Are they both well? Are you well?” He looked at her anxiously.
“We are all perfectly well and happy, my darling,” Elizabeth assured, knowing it was true.
Because they were, and always would be, with Sterling to love and protect them.