Kitty Chalfont lost her child and her life in mid-February. She had struggled with her pregnancy from the start, but was reassured by Dr Evans, the family physician, when he said that the morning sickness that laid her low would probably abate by the end of the third month.
‘Still feeling a bit sick?’ he had asked on one of his regular visits.
‘Just a bit,’ admitted Kitty. ‘And some pain, in my side. I just can’t seem to get comfortable.’
‘Ah,’ said the doctor with a smile. ‘The joys of pregnancy. No bleeding, though?’
‘Just a few spots,’ Kitty said. She looked at him anxiously. ‘I’m not going to have a miscarriage, am I?’
‘No, my dear lady,’ replied the doctor heartily. ‘Whatever makes you think that?’
‘Nothing really,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s just that when it’s your first baby, you don’t know what to expect, do you? What’s normal, you know?’
‘Well, if you’re worried, I can examine you, if you’d like me to,’ suggested the doctor.
‘No,’ Kitty replied hastily, ‘no need for that, I’m sure.’ The thought of the old man seeing her naked stomach, feeling for the baby, running his hands across her belly and who knew where else, made her shudder. No one but Rupert, and possibly the midwife when the time came, should see the bare flesh of her abdomen.
It was Lady Blake, worried by her daughter’s listlessness and continued sickness, who suggested sending for Mrs Harper.
‘She’s an experienced midwife,’ she told Rupert. ‘Knows far more about having babies than any doctor.’
‘By all means,’ he said. ‘If you think it’s necessary.’
Lady Blake did think so, and the message was sent.
When Mrs Harper arrived from the village an hour later, Rupert left her to his mother-in-law; it was women’s business. He didn’t know what the problem was or what he should be asking her.
Lady Blake took her into Kitty’s room and closed the door behind her, leaving Rupert firmly outside. Once with Kitty, Mrs Harper was all efficiency.
‘Now then, my lady, I’m going to have to examine you. I need to look at your stomach. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt, but we just have to see if baby is all right. Don’t want him getting into trouble, now, do we?’
Kitty agreed that they didn’t and, closing her eyes, submitted to the gentle pressure of Mrs Harper’s hands.
Mrs Harper knew almost at once that there was indeed something wrong. The child was lying in quite the wrong place. She looked up and exchanged a glance with Lady Blake.
Gently she replaced Kitty’s bedclothes and smiled down into her fearful eyes. ‘There now,’ she said. ‘That’s over, not so bad, you see. Now, you get some rest while I have a word with your mother.’
In Rupert’s study Mrs Harper explained her fears – that the baby was growing outside Kitty’s womb and at this late stage there was almost nothing that could be done. Rupert immediately telegraphed for a doctor from Harley Street. He came at once by train but when he’d examined Kitty, he only confirmed that the midwife was right, the baby was trying to grow in the wrong place.
Kitty suffered more and more pain, and when the tube finally ruptured, as the London doctor had known it must, and she began to bleed, there was nothing anyone could do. There was no baby to save and the mother was beyond saving. As she lost too much blood, she lost her grip on life and Pilgrim’s Oak suffered its third death in six months.
She was buried in the graveyard of the church where she and Rupert had been married. Apart from the priest there was no one but Kitty’s parents and Rupert and Fran at the church or the graveside. Sir James and Lady Blake stood rigidly dry-eyed as their daughter’s coffin was lowered into the ground, Rupert and Fran beside them. Rupert watched as Kitty’s mother scattered a handful of soil into the grave, heard it clatter on the coffin lid and felt ineffably sad. He hadn’t loved Kitty as a wife should be loved, but he had loved her as a childhood friend and bitterly mourned her passing. Frances stood erect and silent at his side and he wondered at her strength. Three funerals of people she loved. All that were left to her now were him and their mother.
Amabel still spent her days in her parlour, and though Rupert had told her that poor Kitty had died in childbirth, she had simply given him a sweet smile and said, ‘How very sad. Poor Justin!’
Rupert moved himself and his office back into Pilgrim’s Oak itself. The Dower House, with its memories of Kitty’s short tenure, was too sad a place to live and he knew that Fran would welcome his company back in the main house. Their mother was far beyond running a household, and Fran continued with the task as she had since Justin’s accident. It was to her that Mrs Crowley came for orders every day.
Rupert threw himself into the running of the estate. The two estates would never be joined as Sir James and Sir Philip had planned, and it was unlikely Sir James would now fund any of the improvements Rupert had been planning. He would have to do what he could on his own, and he was beginning to consider offering some of the tenant farmers the freehold of their land.
If Papa knew I were disposing of land, he thought ruefully, he’d be spinning in his grave.
It was one evening in late March when he was searching his desk drawers for a tenancy agreement that he found Annette’s letter. It was several weeks old now. With everything that had happened, he had almost forgotten about it. He had certainly never replied. He read it again, and again wondered what had happened to the lost letters. Had someone intercepted them? It was just possible, he supposed, but again he came up against the problem of who would do such a thing. Surely no one at Pilgrim’s Oak. He didn’t want to believe that; he couldn’t believe it. Someone at Belair? But why? Monsieur and Madame St Clair had already accepted him as a suitor for their daughter. He read Annette’s letter through again. Was it too late to reply to it now? She had kept her promise to write to him about Hélène, and though such a long time had passed, she deserved an answer. Before he could change his mind, he sat down at the desk and picked up his pen.
He was about to send the letter to her at Gavrineau. After all, that was where Hélène would be living now, and where she was, Annette would be too. But something made him hesitate. If his letters had gone missing before, the same might happen again. When he had finished writing the letter, he decided to address the envelope to Pierre at Belair.
Pierre could be trusted to pass it on to Annette somehow, Rupert thought as he walked to the village to post the letter. He would rely on Pierre as he had relied on Annette, for he knew that both of them had Hélène’s interests at heart.