Amber got up, dropping the dog onto the floor where he stretched and yawned lazily, putting out his long pink tongue. “If you do you’re a greater fool than I think. The marriage-contract gives me control of all my money. Now get out of here and don’t trouble me again—or I’ll make you sorry for it!” She gave a furious wave of her arm and as Lady Stanhope hesitated, glaring, Amber grabbed up a vase and lifted her hand to throw it. The Dowager Baroness picked up her skirts and went out on the run. But Amber did not enjoy her triumph. Slamming away the vase she collapsed into a chair and began to cry, overwhelmed with the dark reasonless morbidity of her pregnancy.
It was Dr. Fraser who delivered Amber’s son, for many of the Court ladies were beginning to employ doctors rather than midwives—though elsewhere the practice was regarded as merely one more evidence of aristocratic decadence. The child was born at three o’clock one hot stormy October morning; he was a long thin baby with splotched red skin and a black fuzz on top of his head.
A few hours later Charles came in softly and alone to see this latest addition to his numerous family. He bent over the elaborate carved and inlaid cradle placed just beside Amber’s bed and very carefully turned back the white satin coverlet which hung to the floor. A slow smile came onto his mouth.
“Ods-fish!” he whispered. “I swear the little devil looks like me.”
Amber, pale and weak and looking as if all the strength had been drained out of her, lay flat on her back and smiled up at him. “Didn’t you expect him to, Charles?”
He gave her a grin. “Of course I did, my dear.” He took the baby’s tiny fist which had closed firmly over his fingers and touched it to his mouth. “But I’m an ugly fellow for a helpless infant to take after.” He turned to her. “I hope you’re feeling well. I saw the doctor just a few minutes since and he said you had an easy labour.”
“Easy for him,” said Amber, who wanted credit and sympathy for having suffered more than she had. “But I suppose I’m well enough.”
“Of course you are, my dear. Two weeks from now you won’t know you ever had a baby.” He kissed her then and went off so that she might rest. A few hours later Gerald arrived, and woke her up.
Though obviously embarrassed, he came swaggering into the room dressed in a suit of pale-yellow satin with a hundred yards of ribbon looped about his sleeves and breeches, and reeking of orange-flower water. From his silver sword to his lace cravat, from his feather-burdened hat to his richly embroidered gloves he was the perfect picture of a fop, a beau gallant, reared in England, polished in France, inhabiting the Royal Exchange and Chatelin’s ordinary, the tiring-rooms of the theatres and Covent Garden. His prototype was to be seen a dozen times by anyone who cared to stroll along Drury Lane or Pall Mall or any other fashionable thoroughfare in London.
He kissed Amber, as any casual caller might have done, and said brightly, “Well, madame! You’re looking mighty spruce for a lady who’s just laid in! Eh bien, where is he—this new sprig of the house of Stanhope?”
Nan had gone downstairs to the nursery to get him and now she returned bearing the baby on a cushion with his long embroidered gown trailing halfway to the floor. Swaddling was no longer the fashion at Court and this child would never be bound up like a mummy until he could scarcely wriggle.
“There!” said Nan, almost defiantly, but she held him herself and did not offer him to Gerald. “Isn’t he handsome?”
Gerald leaned forward to examine him but kept his hands behind his back; he looked puzzled and uneasy, at a loss for the appropriate comment. “Well! Hello there, young sir! Hmmm—Mort Dieu! but he has a red face, hasn’t he!”
“Well!” snapped Nan. “I’ll warrant you did too!”
Gerald jumped nervously. He was almost as much in awe of Nan as of his wife or mother. “Oh, heavens! I meant no offense, let me perish! He’s—oh, indeed, he’s really very handsome! Why, yes—he looks like his mother, let me perish!” The baby opened his mouth and began to squall; Amber gave a wave of her hand and Nan hurried him from the room. Left alone with her, Gerald began to fidget. He took out his snuffbox, the last word in affectation among the fops, and applied a pinch to each nostril. “Well, madame, no doubt you wish to rest. I’ll trouble you no longer. The truth on it is, I’m engaged to go to the play with some gentlemen of my acquaintance.”
“By all means, my lord. Go along. Thanks for waiting on me.”
“Oh, not at all, madame, I protest. Thank
Amber smiled. “Charles, if it pleases your Lordship.”
