The Countess Read online

  Before Amelia and Thomas had left after Easter, she eyed my big belly and told me she was also pregnant. Even as she spoke to me, she couldn’t take her eyes off Thomas. She now had everything, she said. She was mistress of her own home, she would have a child, and, oh, goodness, just look at Thomas—and I did, of course. He was beautiful, nothing new in that, but more than that, he hadn’t been felled by a single cold, a single twitch, not even a single crisis of nerves. Actually, truth be told, he looked like a god now, completely fit, his face tanned from working with the farmers, another activity Lord Waverleigh recommended to keep him healthy. John just looked at his brother and grinned.

  Miss Crislock died the preceding November, which, I suppose, was a blessing for her. It still brought me pain when I thought of her and what she had become.

  As for my husband, the proud papa, in the days following Jarrod’s birth, he whistled a great deal, and laughed, and caught me behind a dressing screen to kiss me and tell me that he would allow me to drink brandy with him at dinner that night.

  Life, I thought, as I smiled at my sleeping small son, was very sweet. But having life, I knew that I had to savor every blessed moment. I looked up when John came into our bedchamber. He had a bunch of beautiful blooming flowers in his hands. “From the Batherstoke’s greenhouse, where our Miss Bennington used to live. The flowers are in appreciation for bringing George into her life and into theirs.”

  I heard George barking outside. John had inadvertently closed the door. I looked over at all of George’s offspring nestled together in the big basket by the fireplace, Miss Bennington licking them.

  John let George in, and he marched immediately to the basket. He took his post, standing tall, his topknot quivering, his tail waving gently to and fro, their protector.

  I laughed and hugged my son and his proud papa to me.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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