Second Epilogue

“I don’t like pain.”

“I know, darling.”

“I don’t care for that endearment!” Yasmin bent over with a grunt. “Ow!”

Giles bent with her, one strong arm supporting her. “You are my darling.”

“Merde!” Yasmin cried.

Her husband turned her against his chest, her belly a hard mound between them. His voice was as close to a croon as a well-bred English aristocrat could manage. “Darling, dearest, sweetest Mina.”

Yasmin’s belly contracted again, pain shooting down her legs. Sweat was rolling down her neck.

“Her Ladyship may be more comfortable lying down,” their midwife suggested from the other side of the room, where Giles had banished her.

“No,” Yasmin gasped. She felt like walking, so walking was what she intended to do. She took a step and another step, looking down just in time to see that she’d peed all over her feet. “Merry warned me this would happen,” she gasped.

Giles began pulling up her wet nightgown, looking entirely unperturbed.

“This is just the beginning,” Yasmin said, panting because she could feel another wave of pain coming. “Childbirth is revolting, and babies are even worse. You’re going to rue the day that we got married. It’s all going to be so . . . so disgusting.”

“I will never regret a moment,” Giles said, throwing away her wet nightgown and accepting a towel. He crouched at her feet, drying off her legs, smiling up at her. He smiled now. Not all the time, and rarely in public, but he did smile.

“Merde, merde, merde!” Yasmin said vehemently. “This is too painf—” Her voice broke off with a deep grunt.

“I know that sound, my lord. On the bed!” the midwife cried, pointing.

Yasmin made it to the toweling when her body was gripped in a fierce contraction.

Giles lunged forward and barely caught his son and heir as Benjamin propelled into the world. “Bloody hell,” he said, dumbfounded, looking at the slippery little creature in his hands.

Yasmin’s hair was damp with sweat, her face exhausted from pain, but she erupted into a bellow of laughter. “How the mighty are fallen. The first words the future earl hears are blasphemous!”

Giles looked down at the wide eyes blinking at him. “He’s so beautiful, Yasmin.”

“From here,” his wife said with a dose of French practicality, “he looks very odd.” She reached out her hands.

“One moment, my lady,” the midwife said.

A few hours later, the three of them sat on the earl’s huge bed, a bed that had seen the births and deaths of five generations of Earls of Lilford.

The baby’s parents hung over the fifth earl’s squashed little face with that stunned, blissful look that lucky new parents have, no matter their title, their blue blood, their money, or lack thereof.

After a while, when it was clear that their son and heir was giving up on nursing and had fallen asleep, Yasmin asked, “Did you see the wardrobe that Lydia sent for Benjamin?”