‘That’ll pass in the blink of an eye. Now put your feet up on this stool. We don’t want your ankles swelling up again, do we? An’ then per’aps after lunch we could take a stroll round the gardens. A little bit of exercise will do you the power o’ good.’

‘What! And have the gardeners staring at me as if I’m a beached whale! I think not!’ Louisa snorted, working herself up into a tantrum.

Ruffy sighed as she collected up the clothes that needed washing. As much as she adored her young mistress there were times lately when she had tried her patience to the limit, so without another word, she swept out of the room leaving her to it. Hopefully by the time she got back Louisa would have calmed down a little.

Later that afternoon the doctor called in to see that all was well and as before he was mildly concerned. The child’s heartbeat wasn’t strong and Louisa was only weeks away from giving birth. He could only pray that this pregnancy wasn’t going to end in yet another stillborn baby because he knew how much it meant to Barnaby to have a child. Still, it was out of his hands, all he could do was keep a check on her and hope for the best, but as he left, he wasn’t feeling optimistic.

*

Once he had concluded his work at the shipyard, Barnaby rode his stallion up to the ruins of Whitby Abbey and tethered him to a tree before going to sit and look out to sea. He usually found a measure of peace here but today it eluded him as he thought of his wife’s attitude earlier in the day. She clearly loathed being with child and as much as he hated to admit it, he now realised that it wouldn’t be fair to put her through it again, which meant that if this pregnancy didn’t end well, the intimate side of his marriage would be over forever and he would never have an heir. He sighed as he watched the waves breaking onto the beach far below him, while the seagulls swooped and squawked above him. There had been a time when he had been so smitten with Louisa that he could think of nothing but her, but over the years his feelings had changed. Once he had found her spoilt nature amusing, but now he found it irritating. Looking back, he couldn’t remember ever holding an intelligent conversation with her. Her head was too full of the latest fashions and the characters in the romance novella’s she was so fond of reading.