His Christmas Princess Wife

Chapter 4

Time to time again Ed had repeated the same weary excuses. He needed more time, he had to find the right woman, to get it right this time. He just needed time. To do what? Somehow learn to read the character of the pretty young things paraded on the marriage mart? Discover insights he hadn’t possessed before, so he didn’t make another disastrous mistake? His own happiness didn’t matter, not any more, but he couldn’t risk Theo. I promise, he had said the last time he parted from his grandfather. I promise I will find someone. And he had left for the Continent, yet again.

He neither needed nor wanted a wife, not for himself, but Abbeywell needed a chatelaine and Theo needed a woman’s care.

‘What will you do when the baby is born?’ he asked, focusing on the exhausted woman beside him.

‘Do next? I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t think beyond this. There is no one. But I’ll manage...somehow.’

She’s not a conventional beauty, but she’s got courage, she’s maternal. Time seemed to have collapsed, the past and the present ran together. Two women in childbed, one infant he could not help, one perhaps he would save. But even if he did, nothing would prevent this child being born illegitimate, with all the penalties that imposed.

The germ of an idea stirred. Lily needed shelter, security for her child. Would she make a good governess for Theo? He pursued the idea around. Theo had a tutor, he did not need someone with the ability or knowledge to teach him academic studies. But he did need the softer things. Ed remembered his own mother, who had died, along with his father, of a summer fever when he had not been much older than his own son was now. She had instilled ideas about kindliness and beauty, she had been there with a swift hug and a kiss when male discipline and bracing advice was just that bit too harsh.

A mother’s touch, a mother’s instinct. Lily was not a mother yet, but he sensed that nurturing disposition in her. Theo didn’t need a governess, he needed a mother. Logic said...marry her.

What was he thinking? I’m too tired to think straight, my brain’s still scrambled.

In the stable the gelding snorted, gave a piercing whinny. Ed got to his feet, went to the outer door and peered through the faint mist the drizzle had left behind it. A couple of men, agricultural workers by the looks of them, were plodding along the track beside a donkey cart. He went back inside and Lily looked up at him. Her smile was faint, but it was there. Brave girl. Are you wishing for the impossible? Because I think it is walking towards us now.

‘We’re still in Scotland,’ he said, realising that his mad idea was possible to achieve. Am I insane? Or are those strangers out there, appearing right on the heels of that wild thought, some kind of sign? ‘There are two men, farmers, coming along the track.’ Witnesses. ‘Lily—marry me.’

* * *

‘Marry you?’

It was hard to concentrate on anything except what was happening to her, anything beyond the life inside that was struggling to be free. Lily dragged her mind back from its desperate focus on breathing, on the baby, on keeping them both alive. She remembered the mix of truth and lies she had told him and stared at Ed.

In the gloom of early-morning light he did not appear to have lost his mind, despite the blow to the head. He still looked as much like a respectable, handsome English gentleman as might be expected after a sleepless night in a hovel tending to a woman in childbed.

‘I am not married, I am not promised to another. I can support a wife, I can support the baby. And if you marry me before the child is born, then it will be legitimate.’ His voice was urgent, his expression in the morning light intent. He smiled, as though to reassure her, but the warmth did not reach his eyes.

‘Legitimate.’ Legitimate. Her child would have a name, a future, respectability. They would both be safe and Ed could protect her from the results of Markus’s scheming. Probably. Lily rode out another contraction, tried to think beyond the moment, recall why she couldn’t simply solve this problem by marrying a complete stranger. He could certainly hide her, even if unwittingly. She would have a new name, a new home, and that was all that mattered for the baby.

She was so very tired now, nothing else except her child seemed important. Ed was a doctor living in the wilds of Northumberland, hundreds of miles from London. That should be safe enough. But why would he? Why would he want her and her baby, another man’s child? Legitimate. We would be hidden. The tempting words swirled through her tired brain, caution fighting desperation and instinct. ‘But there’s no time.’

‘This is Scotland,’ Ed said. ‘All we have to do is to declare ourselves married before witnesses—and two are heading this way. Say yes, Lily, and I’ll fetch them and it will be done.’

‘Yes.’ He was gone before she could call the words back. She heard his voice raised to hail someone. Yes, I will do it. Another miracle to go with my good angel of a doctor. A Christmas miracle. He never need find out the truth, so it can’t hurt him. What is the term? An accessory after the fact. But if he doesn’t know...

‘Aye, we’ll help you and gladly, at that. I’m Amos john of the Red House up yonder and this is my eldest son, Ezikiel.’ The accent was broad Border Scots. ‘You’re lucky to catch us. We’re only going this way to do a favour for a neighbour.’

There was the sound of shuffling feet outside and Ed ducked back in. ‘May they come through now?’ Lily nodded and he stood aside for two short, burly, black-haired men to enter.

They seemed to fill the space and brought with them the smell of wet sheep and heather and peat smoke. ‘Good morning to you, mistress.’ The elder stood there, stolid and placid. Perhaps he attended marriages in tumbledown cottages every day of the week. Beside him the younger one twisted his cap in his hands, less at ease than the man who was obviously his father.

‘Good day,’ she managed, beyond embarrassment or social awkwardness now.

Ed produced a notebook, presumably from his capacious saddlebags. She wondered vaguely if he had a packhorse out there. ‘I assume we need a written record that you can sign?’

‘Aye, that’ll be best. You’ll be English, then? All you both need to do is declare yourselves married. To each other, that is.’ The older Mr Johnson gave a snort of amusement at his own wit.

‘Right.’ Ed crossed the small distance and knelt beside her, took her hand in his. ‘I, Edric Langford, declare before these witnesses that I take you, C—’

‘Marlowe,’ she whispered. He was only a doctor. They did not put announcements of their marriages in London newspapers.

‘Lillian Marlowe, as my wife.’

Another contraction was coming. She gritted her teeth and managed, ‘Before these witnesses, I, Lillian Marlowe, declare that I take you, Edric Langford, to be my husband.’

‘We’ll write the record outside, I think.’

She was vaguely conscious of Ed standing, moving the Johnsons out of the room, then her awareness shrank to the pain and the effort. Something was happening, something different...

Where was Ed? She listened and heard him, still in the stable.

‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ There was the c***k of coins. ‘I hope you’ll drink to our health. You’ll bring the donkey cart back down here after noon?’

‘Aye, we will, no trouble at all.’ That was the older man, Tam Johnson. ‘You’ll not find it far to Jedburgh now the rain’s stopped. You’ll be there by nightfall. Thank you kindly, sir, and blessings on your wife and bairn.’

‘Ed!’

He ducked under the low lintel and back into the inner room. ‘I’m here.’

‘Something’s happening.’

‘I should hope so.’ He took up the lamp. ‘Let’s see what this child of ours is doing.’

* * *

Ed made her feel secure, Lily thought hazily. Even in those last hectic minutes she had felt safe and when the first indignant wails rent the air he had known just what to do.

‘Here she is,’ he’d said, laying the squirming, slippery, red-faced baby on her stomach. ‘The most beautiful little girl in the world at this minute and very cross with the pair of us by the sound of her.’

Time had passed, the world had gone by somewhere outside the bubble that contained her and the child in her arms. She was conscious of Ed moving purposefully about. At some point he took the baby and washed her and wrapped her up in one of his clean shirts, then washed Lily and helped her into a clean nightgown and wrapped them both up in his coat.