The Bridgertons Happily Ever After - By Julia Quinn Page 0,85
choking. And then . . . Oh, Mama. Oh, Mama!” She threw herself against Violet’s side, burying her face where there had once been a curve of a hip. But now there was just a belly, a huge, massive belly, with a child who would never know its father.
“I need to sit down,” Violet whispered. “I need to—”
She fainted. Eloise broke her fall.
When Violet came to, she was surrounded by servants. All wore masks of shock and grief. Some could not meet her gaze.
“We need to get you in bed,” the housekeeper said briskly. She looked up. “Have we a pallet?”
Violet shook her head as she allowed a footman to assist her into a sitting position. “No, I can walk.”
“I really think—”
“I said I can walk,” she snapped. And then she snapped on the inside, and something burst inside of her. She took a deep, involuntary breath.
“Let me help you,” the butler said gently. He slid his arm around her back, and carefully helped her to her feet.
“I can’t—but Edmund . . .” She turned to look again, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It wasn’t him, she told herself. That’s not how he is.
That’s not how he was.
She swallowed. “Eloise?” she asked.
“Nanny has already brought her up,” the housekeeper said, moving to Violet’s other side.
Violet nodded.
“Ma’am, we must get you to bed. It’s not good for the baby.”
Violet placed her hand on her belly. The baby was kicking like mad. Which was par for the course. This one kicked and punched and rolled and hiccupped and never, ever stopped. It was quite unlike the others. And it was a good thing, she supposed. This one was going to have to be strong.
She choked back a sob. They were both going to have to be strong.
“Did you say something?” the housekeeper asked, steering her toward the house.
Violet shook her head. “I need to lie down,” she whispered.
The housekeeper nodded, then turned to a footman with an urgent stare.
“Send for the midwife.”
She didn’t need the midwife. No one could believe it, given the shock she’d had and the late state of her pregnancy, but the baby refused to budge. Violet spent three more weeks in bed, eating because she had to, and trying to remind herself that she must be strong. Edmund was gone, but she had seven children who needed her, eight including the stubborn one in her belly.
And then finally, after a quick and easy birth, the midwife announced, “It’s a girl,” and placed a tiny, quiet bundle in Violet’s arms.
A girl. Violet couldn’t quite believe it. She’d convinced herself it would be a boy. She would name him Edmund, the A-G alphabetization of her first seven children be damned. He would be called Edmund, and he would look like Edmund, because surely that was the only way she would be able to make sense of all this.
But it was a girl, a pink little thing who hadn’t made a sound since her initial wail.
“Good morning,” Violet said to her, because she didn’t know what else to say. She looked down, and she saw her own face—smaller, a bit rounder—but definitely not Edmund’s.
The baby looked at her, straight into her eyes, even though Violet knew that could not be true. Babies didn’t do that so soon after birth. Violet should know; this was her eighth.
But this one . . . She didn’t seem to realize she wasn’t supposed to stare her mother down. And then she blinked. Twice. She did it with the most startling deliberation, as if to say, I’m here. And I know exactly what I’m doing.
Violet caught her breath, so totally and instantly in love she could hardly bear it. And then the baby let out a cry like nothing she had ever heard. She wailed so hard the midwife jumped. She screamed and screamed and screamed and even as the midwife fussed, and the maids came running in, Violet could do nothing but laugh.
“She’s perfect,” she declared, trying to latch the tiny banshee onto her breast. “She is absolutely perfect.”
“What shall you name her?” the midwife asked, once the baby had busied herself trying to figure out how to nurse.
“Hyacinth,” Violet decided. It was Edmund’s favorite flower, especially the little grape hyacinths that popped up each year to greet the spring. They marked the new birth of the landscape, and this hyacinth—her Hyacinth—she would be Violet’s new birth.
The fact that as an H, she would follow perfectly after Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise,