A Laird for All Time by Angeline Fortin (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📗

laird?” Margo nodded to the doorway and Emmy turned to find Connor hesitating on the threshold.  “Well, get in here, laird,” she urged.  “This is what you get for sending a man away on business when his wife is near her time.  You get to do his duty.”

“I don’t think…” he started but stopped at her level stare.  A jerk of her head propelled his feet forward of their own will.  Connor was horrified.  He had never attended a birthing before, had never had any reason to.  And didn’t necessarily want to.  He was the laird not a midwife.  Yet Emmy’s gaze was calm and commanding and he found himself wanting not only to please her but to see what she was capable of first hand.  “What do ye want me to do?”

“The baby is breech and I need to turn it,” she explained.  “I need you to keep her still for me, can you do that?”

Connor squared his shoulders at the deprecating question. “Of course.”

“Let’s get to it then.”  She waved him forward and he took his place as Emmy went to work.  In truth, she had never actually done this before in practice.  She was working entirely on theory and hoped her nervousness didn’t show on her face.  Cora moaned painfully and was panting erratically on the verge of hyperventilating.  “Get her to breathe evenly, Connor.  Talk to her.”

The laird murmured encouraging words to the woman to breathe with him slowly and asked her if she remembered bring him sweets from the kitchen when his father had banished him to his room for a week for striking Ian.  He couldn’t remember why he had done it.  “He rode your favorite pony and brought it up lame with a stone in its hoof,” Cora laughed shakily.  “You wouldn’t have been able to ride it for a week anyway, but got whipped by your father and sent to your rooms for the week instead.”

Connor laughed and nodded at the memory.  “Aye, that’s right I had forgotten!  And ye slipped me my favorite sweets.  Ye weren’t much more than a young lass yourself when ye did that.”

“Still in the scullery, I was,” she gasped and stifled a scream.

Emmy looked up.  “Okay, Cora, push now!  Come on!”

The woman bore down with another scream and Emmy viewed the results.  “Alright, one more!”

“Aye, now,” Connor’s encouragement joined hers and he took Cora’s hand.

“Push, mum,” Margo joined in.

Cora cried out and a moment later the baby’s cry joined hers.

“Your color is looking better, I think.”

“I’ve never seen a baby born before,” Connor told her as the carriage rocked slowly back and forth when they finally set out to return to Duart several hours later.  For a nearly an hour after the birth, he had taken his whiskey out into the chilly night to combat the nausea and sweats that had overcome him as the child, a boy, had been born.  It had been horrific.  Cows and horses were one thing, but….

“Supposedly it’s different when it is your own baby,” she assured him.  “You’ll be fine.”  She gave his arm a comforting squeeze.

“She nearly broke my hand, her grip was so strong,” he told her lightly but thought he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to witness such an ordeal again even if it was his own child.  He eyed Heather - or Emmy or whoever she was - thoughtfully and pictured her heavy with his child, his first, his heir.  Aye, he would love to see her in such a state, glowing with happiness as Dory had been the previous night.  He would place his hands on her belly and marvel with her over the life inside.  A life they had created together.  In that moment, he wanted that fantasy more than anything.

Oblivious to the vein of Connor’s thinking, Emmy yawned hugely and stretched.   “Man, I am beat.”  Emmy laughed softly and laid her head on his shoulder in fatigue.  Thankfully the coachman was taking the journey slowly in deference to her motion sickness on their previous trips. It would take much longer but at least the motion was tolerable.  “You were wonderful, Connor,” she told him.  “You were exactly what she needed.  Calm and distracting and not a hint of worry.”

“I was scared to death.”

“So was I,” she admitted.

Connor looked down at her in amazement.  “Truly?  I never would have thought so.  Ye were so incredibly competent.  I was impressed.”  He was, too.  She had praised the mother and congratulated her on the birth, handing Cora the baby boy and handling the rest with efficiency and an aura of good cheer that had immediately translated itself to Cora, Margo and himself.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” she hugged his arm and snuggled closer against the chill of the night.  “Thank you for helping.”

“She is one of my clan,” he shrugged off her praise knowing that it was her efforts that had saved Cora and her son.  McAllen would come back to Duart and know the laird’s lady had saved his wife’s life.

“You care for these people so very much,” she murmured tiredly.  She had never known anyone to accept and want the responsibility for the lives of so many people yet he seemed to thrive on.  She had never met anyone like that, like him and was fairly sure that she would never meet another who impressed her so much.  She yawned and murmured sleepily, “I’m not sure what I want more, food or sleep.”

Chapter 28

The rumbling of her stomach woke Emmy the next morning.  Rubbing her hands over her face, she rolled over with a groan.  She vaguely remembered Connor carrying her to bed the previous night.  Now in a state of consciousness, she marveled at his strength.  She was slight of build but tall and muscular and therefore weighed more than she looked.  With a grin, Emmy wondered if Connor had hurt his back in the process.

Still, it had been considerate, even chivalrous, for him to carry her up.