A hand grasped his arm. “My lord, you must leave this room,” said a courteous voice at his ear. Alex swung about wildly. A doctor was standing before him, looking at him gravely but with an unmistakable air of command.

“You’re very young,” Alex said.

“You must leave this room now,” Dr. Seedland said. “Your wife’s birth is proceeding well, for a first baby. But she cannot lose strength arguing with you. The child is large.”

“Please … please make him go away!”

Alex looked back at Charlotte. She had been clinging to the bedpost, but she pulled herself up. Her hair was roughly pulled back from her face; her eyes were enormous and black. Oh, my God, she’s in pain, Alex thought. He felt such a wave of tenderness that he instinctively started toward her. But the doctor’s arm tightened on his like a vise.

“Out,” he said. “You must not remain here.”

“Go away,” Charlotte said pleadingly. Her pupils were so dilated that her eyes looked like black pools. “Please, please, go away.” She broke down and started weeping.

“My lady.” The doctor turned around, frustrated. “You must not waste strength like this!”

Sophie wrapped her arms around Charlotte’s shaking shoulders and met Alex’s eyes with a silent order. Slowly he backed out the door, even as he heard Sophie’s soothing words.

“It’s all right, darling. I won’t let him take your baby. I’m here.”

And, as the door swung to, he heard a wailing scream. Charlotte had been hit by another contraction.

Alex stood outside the door, struck to the core with the enormity of his own idiocy. His wife—his wife!—was delivering his child, and she had looked at him with utter terror. His heart wrenched with grief and self-loathing. It would be better if he just went out and shot himself.

But at that moment Patrick’s strong arms circled around him in a rough, unaccustomed hug. They stood for a moment, two large, powerful men. In the twilight of the corridor they looked uncannily identical. The silence was broken by a shuddering scream, and another, and another, arching above the murmur of voices in Charlotte’s bedroom.

The doctor’s voice rose above the rest. “My lady, you must stop screaming and conserve your strength. Lower your voice!”

Alex struggled in Patrick’s arms. “My God, he’s yelling at her. I’ll kill him!” he said through clenched teeth.

Patrick gripped his hands on Alex’s shoulders. “Have you seen a woman give birth before?”

“It was different,” Alex said fiercely. “She just lay down and there was the baby … blood, but then she had a glass of wine, and the baby started sucking.”