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  Lady Violet Holds a Baby

  The Lady Violet Mysteries—Book Five

  Grace Burrowes

  Grace Burrowes Publishing

  Lady Violet Holds a Baby

  Copyright © 2021 by Grace Burrowes

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  If you uploaded this book to, or downloaded it from, a free file sharing, torrent, or other pirate site, you did so in violation of the law and against the author’s expressed wishes.

  Please don’t be a pirate.

  * * *

  Cover Design: Wax Creative, Inc.

  Cover image: Cracked Light Studio

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  To my dear readers

  Lady Violet Goes for a Gallop—Excerpt

  Dedication

  This series is dedicated to my nephew, Jackson.

  Chapter One

  A handsome, passionate, inventive Frenchman was subtly inviting me to sample his charms.

  “Perhaps later, St. Sevier.”

  My traveling companion affected gentlemanly puzzlement. “You give me the look a farm wife aims at the father of her eleven children when I merely suggest we fold out the benches for greater comfort. What is amiss with my darling Violet?”

  “I don’t feel very darling.” The traveling coach rocked along while I pondered my own understatement. My late husband would have called my mood shrewish, but then, shrewish was one of many pejoratives for which no exact male counterpart had been invented—yet.

  In my present mood, I felt up to the challenge of remedying that oversight.

  “You face the prospect of another family gathering,” St. Sevier said, settling an arm around my shoulders. “This challenge would daunt Napoleon’s bravest cuirassiers. I myself would not venture into the company of the Deerfields without your stalwart escort.”

  My Deerfield family consisted of my four older brothers, two of whom were married, and my father, the Earl of Derwent. I could also claim some aunties and cousins, as well as a pair of nieces and one infant nephew.

  That I knew of. Given my father’s propensity for rascally behavior, I might have legions of half-siblings about whom I was ignorant. At least one of my brothers had sired a by-blow, as had my late husband. Papa dismissed his roguish deportment as reminiscent of an earlier era, and I had no reason to believe he’d changed with the times.

  Why my thoughts should wander to my father’s flirtations I did not know.

  “Shall I read to you?” St. Sevier asked. “You can explain Byron to me. He does not translate easily to the French.”

  “No Byron, thank you.” His lordship’s verse was exquisitely witty, also savagely bitter. Having not yet reached my thirtieth year, and enjoying great good health as well as the devoted company of a dear man, I was not entitled to bitterness.

  Nonetheless, my mood had that acrid, seething quality often associated with bitterness. My appetite had grown indifferent in recent days, and I had neither the energy for much activity nor the ability to sleep well.

  “St. Sevier, how does one know if a bout of melancholia is descending?”

  Hugh’s embrace became subtly protective. He was a skilled physician who’d also done service as a battlefield surgeon with Wellington’s troops—despite having French antecedents. I had come to know St. Sevier as more than a passing acquaintance when the time had come for me to emerge from mourning.

  I’d found myself barely able to emerge from my own house.

  For two years, that dwelling had been more a prison than a refuge. Nonetheless, when I’d finally completed my second year of mourning, I became inexplicably fearful of venturing out even to attend divine services.

  Hugh, whose path had crossed mine on one of my rare social outings, had suggested I start by reading at a window, if that was all I could manage. From there, I graduated to taking tea with him on the terrace, and then we’d strolled the garden while we discussed the many books I’d read in the previous two years.

  I had known St. Sevier prior to my bereavement as a passing acquaintance, but in widowhood, his strolls with me in the garden had become an escort to church or a carriage ride in the park. Then the blighter had coaxed me into attending some of the less glittering social occasions to which an earl’s widowed daughter was invariably invited.

  Hugh St. Sevier was tenacious, wily, relentless, and kind. In the year since I’d resumed a life beyond mourning, he and I had shared several adventures and grown close enough that he had asked me to become his wife.

  I was tempted. Hugh was everything estimable in a man, as my late husband had not been. Hugh was also affectionate, and I needed that almost more than I’d needed those walks in the garden. My late spouse, Freddie Belmaine, had been cut from the same self-indulgent cloth as my father, for all that Freddie had been an outwardly attentive spouse. He’d offered me his arm when he escorted me. He’d parted from me with a peck on my cheek and shown me reasonable consideration in bed.

  I did not miss Freddie, but neither did I hate him. He’d done the best he could, as had I, and no more need be said on the matter.

  “One does not always know when a bout of melancholia is descending,” St. Sevier said. “Melancholia is unlike a sick headache, where narrowed vision, distorted hearing, or a sensitivity to light can presage the onset of pain. Melancholia is diabolical. It can announce its approach with excessive good spirits, with fatigue, with unexplained tears, with no signs at all. Could you not simply be in the grip of a slight case of dread, Violet?”

  Of all the many qualities I loved about Hugh—his humor, his compassion, his integrity—his willingness to simply talk to me was near the top of the list. Then too, he was a fine-looking man at slightly over six feet, with chestnut hair and brown eyes that could shine with humor, ire, or understanding.

  “I don’t dread my family.” Did I dread this gathering? Did I wish the coachman would slow the team from a brisk trot to a walk?

  “You regard your family with wary affection. I came to feel something similar for my late wife. I cared for her, I wanted her to be happy, but I suspected that sometimes her happiness and mine had an inverse relationship.”

  For a man whose native tongue was French, St. Sevier could wield English with impressive delicacy. “She enjoyed making you miserable?”

  “We were young, and a jealous husband is a husband showing some regard for his wife. Ann and I married as a result of wartime expedience, and I had hoped we would grow to be friends. I was not the jealous sort, though—I was too tired to be jealous—and this vexed her exceedingly.”

  St. Sevier did not often speak of his past, which was understandable. As a French émigré who had volunteered to provide medical services to Wellington’s army, that past was full of sorrows, conflicting loyalties, and regrets.

  His three brothers had served under Napoleon, and not a one of them had survived the war.

  “Did you dread your wife’s company?” I asked, rather than return to the dreary topic of melancholia.

  “I would go through my day in the infirmary and surgery, longing to return to the tent or billet I shared with her. I would grow famished for the domesticity of a meal taken with my wife rather than with the officers. I wove fancies about trading gossip, because men and the women in a military camp gossip differently, and yet, as the sun set, and the time came to rejoin her… I would dither.”

  “Because,” I said, “you and she argued when you should have chatted. The meals were taken in silence, and nothing you did was ever good enough for your spouse. I was relieved when Freddie died.”

  After five years of marriage, we’d reached a truce that had grown colder with each passing season. Freddie had his numerous frolics, and I had my anger at him for enjoying the pleasures any man of means expected to indulge in. Seventeen-year-old brides were ripe for disillusionment.

  Spoiled husbands brought that out in them.

  “Ann hated army life,” Hugh said, his gaze going to the lovely English countryside beyond the coach window. “Then she was widowed, then she married me rather than become a regimental commodity. I was not relieved when she abandoned me to make her way back to Scotland alone, but neither was I surprised.”

  “And when she did not make it home?” She’d been killed in an ambush, though details were vague. A French patrol? Spanish guerrilleros? Deserters? Brigands? Spain had been a cauldron of violence and shifting alliances for the duration of Wellington’s campaign.

  St. Sevier left off pretending to study fields, pastures, and endless stone walls. “I was sad to learn of Ann’s death, Violet, but to make war is to make sadness, and the sadness in its way can be more deadly than the bullets. Let us turn our conversation to happier topics. Will Lord Dunkeld be on hand when we arrive at Derwent Hall?”

  Sebastian Ma
cHeath, Marquess of Dunkeld, was to be godfather to my new nephew. Sebastian had fought in Spain with my youngest brother, Felix, and spent many summers and school holidays racketing around rural Surrey with my siblings.

  And with me. War was a less cheery topic than the present incarnation of Sebastian MacHeath, but only just. As a youth, he’d been my dearest friend—my only friend—and his decision to join up had vexed me sorely.

  That decision had also vexed his titled uncle, the previous Marquess of Dunkeld, and at the time, I’d thought twitting the old marquess had been Sebastian’s sole motivation.

  “Lord Dunkeld was making the rounds in London,” I said, “hunting a marchioness, no doubt. I’ve told him he ought to find himself a stalwart Scottish lass to fulfill that office, but he says they know better than to marry a man with a castle.”

  “Impossible to heat, expensive to maintain.” Hugh kissed my temple, the exact sort of casual gesture I usually found so endearing from him. “Tell me of the rest of the gathering. Extended family? Neighbors, in-laws? I want the whole list, and please tell me your lady cousins have declined to attend.”

  My lady cousins had made St. Sevier’s acquaintance on the occasion of Felix’s wedding. To say they’d been smitten was an understatement. More accurate to label their reaction to Hugh as stricken with a dire case of hen-witted infatuation.

  I had not been infatuated with Hugh, but I had been attracted to him. He had been wise enough to allow that interest to ripen into a deeper regard, one kiss, one embrace, one passionate night at a time.

  “I’m not sure who all is expected,” I said, “but as godmother, my presence is required. The house will doubtless be mobbed, because this is the earldom’s next heir whose arrival we’re celebrating.”

  I was overjoyed for Felix and Katie, who were besotted and not at all high in the instep. They would be loving parents to the boy and prevent my father from meddling overmuch in his grandson’s upbringing.

  “Is that what has you in such a brown study, Violet? Does the child cause you heartache?” Hugh asked, brushing his fingers along my cheek.

  I closed my eyes, enjoying his caress. “Hmm?”

  “Never mind,” he said. Even with my eyes closed, I could sense the shift in the light that occurred when Hugh drew the coach’s shades down. “Have a nap, and by the time you waken, we will be tooling up your father’s drive.”

  Hugh had, in his gentle, oblique way, pointed me in the direction of a painful insight. Freddie had had his light-skirts, his commerce, his clubs, and his wagers. He’d had a by-blow or two, while I had had a household to manage and a husband who’d occasionally visited my bed.

  And yet, after five years of marriage and two disappointments, to use the hideously genteel term, my nursery had still been empty.

  Always, achingly empty.

  Papa greeted me at the door, exuding the genial welcome of a patriarch with much to celebrate. He was tall with a mane of white hair and snapping blue eyes, though slight evidence of prosperous living was beginning to accumulate around his middle.

  “None of your damned dramas, Violet,” he muttered, kissing my cheek. “No intrigue, no uproar. This is a joyous occasion.”

  “Delighted to see you too, Papa.” I treated him to my best Mayfair ballroom smile, all teeth and no charm. “If I recall, the damned drama at Felix and Katie’s wedding was the work of one of your guests. Offer St. Sevier a civil greeting, or I will sing after supper tonight.” The squawking of a broody hen was more attractive than the music I could produce before an audience.

  Papa looked as if he’d like to embellish on his opening remarks. Fortunately, my oldest brother, Mitchell, Viscount Ellersby, joined us in the foyer.

  Mitchell was a handsome man in the style of the lanky, blue-eyed country squire. He had wavy chestnut hair, a nose worthy of a Roman philosopher, and a formidable intellect. The Almighty had been parsimonious with Mitchell when it came to small talk and warmth, however.

  “Violet.” He bowed over my hand. “You are looking well. The girls will be delighted to see you, as will Lady Ellersby.”

  Delight was of course far too untidy an emotion for Mitchell to allow himself. Poor man. He looked tired, and not only in the sense of having missed a night’s sleep. Mitchell was something of a mystery to me, having been too much my senior and—as the heir—too dignified to racket about the countryside with me and the other boys.

  We younger siblings twitted Mitchell about his serious demeanor, but none of us envied him the role of Papa’s understudy.

  “I will make it a point to start my day tomorrow by calling on your womenfolk,” I said. “If the weather is fair, perhaps the girls can join me in a picnic.”

  A hint of warmth flared in his eyes. “They would enjoy that, I’m sure, and the nursery staff would be eternally in your debt. St. Sevier, a pleasure to see you again.”

  The gentlemen exchanged further remarks about the weather, the roads, and the year’s hay crop while I awaited a sense of homecoming that never arrived. I had grown up at Derwent Hall, lost my mother here, become engaged here, but I might as well have been at a particularly commodious inn for all the welcome I felt to be back at the family seat.

  A well-trained staff never carried luggage in through the front door, and thus I had no idea if my trunks had been taken to the correct room or left to sit in some corridor on the wrong floor. Then too, I craved solitude. St. Sevier was the best of traveling companions, but he, too, would want some time to himself before dinner.

  I had written to the housekeeper, Mrs. Stephens, to instruct her to put me in the guest wing rather than in my old rooms. I had made the decision not to bide in my girlhood apartment until the appointments had been updated. The violet and fleur-de-lis wallpaper was faded, the bed small, the cheval mirror speckled.

  Besides, in the guest wing, I would have proximity to St. Sevier, which was one benefit of traveling with him. In London, our opportunities for intimacy were limited by propriety, hovering staff, and my own timidity about openly taking a lover.

  With connecting balconies, our sojourn in the countryside could be a very enjoyable interlude indeed.

  I located my preferred guest room, assured myself St. Sevier had been assigned the one next to it, and found my maid, Lucy Hewitt, already hanging up my dresses.

  “Lord Dunkeld is biding on the property next door,” Lucy said, “at MacHeath’s Ford. Mr. Upjohn left a note for me belowstairs inviting me to a pint and a plate in the village, if that’s acceptable.”

  Lucy was blond, sturdy, and inclined to get above herself. I loved her, because she was also practical, tolerant, and ferociously protective of me.

  “You are free to do as you please for supper. I will go down to dine early and ambush my father and brothers in the library. If I wear the sprigged muslin, I can get myself undressed tonight, and you need not wait up for me.”

  Lucy’s smile said she knew exactly who would help me out of my dress. “You’ll want the mulberry shawl. High summer it might be, but the evenings can be chilly here in the shires. The last of the guests won’t arrive until the day after tomorrow, according to Mrs. Stephens, and Lady Ellersby is in a taking over seating arrangements. Two baronies originating in the same year has her quite vexed.”

  The order of precedence was a formidable challenge at any large gathering, and Annabelle, Viscountess Ellersby, was espected to play hostess at Papa’s grander entertainments. She was also thed e facto senior steward at the Hall during Papa’s extended jaunts to London.

  When Mitchell went up to Town, he usually stayed at his clubs or Papa’s town house.

  He most assuredly did not stay with me, and for the first time, I wondered why that should be. Mitchell had all but avoided me in mourning and hadn’t been much friendlier in the year since I’d put off my weeds.