Mackenzie Family Christmas (The Perfect Gift)(48)

A homey room, a room for family. Hart had never known such a retreat before his marriage.

"Damn it." He halted his pacing, sank to the sofa, and buried his head in his hands.

Eleanor's presence filled every corner of this room. If she did not live through the night . . .

There, he'd thought it. If she did not live, Hart would never enter this room again.

He smelled the sharp bite of whiskey and lifted his head to find Ian holding a glass out to him, brimful of Mackenzie malt.

Hart took the glass and poured half the contents down his throat. He coughed, wet his lips, and gulped down the other half.

Ian took the glass away and returned with it full again. Hart drank half of that before he sighed and set the whiskey on a table. His head spun, his gut churned, and still he feared.

A clock ticked on the mantelpiece, another pretty gift, this one from David Fleming. The clock chimed eleven, the fire burned, and Hart waited.

No news came. Hart and Ian didn't speak. The clock kept up its relentless ticking--chiming twelve, one. Finally Hart rose, stalked to the mantelpiece, ripped open the clock, and slapped its small pendulum to a halt. Only Ian's presence kept him from dashing the clock to the floor entirely.

"What is taking so confounded long?" Hart growled, staring at the now-still clock.

"Beth took a long time with Jamie," Ian said. "A day and a half. You can sleep if you want. I'll call you."

"Did you sleep?"

"No."

"Well, then." Hart resumed his pacing.

He did concede to eat something when Marcel carried in a light supper. Marcel also brought the news that Eleanor was in labor but the midwife did not believe she'd give birth for a while yet. Hart returned to moody contemplation, barely remembering to thank Marcel for his trouble. Marcel departed after Hart had downed a few mouthfuls, and Hart's gloom descended once more.

Now that he'd put the clock out of commission, Hart had to check his watch for time, which he found himself doing every five minutes. Another hour crawled by, and another.

Hart told Ian to go, but Ian stubbornly remained. Even when Beth entered, smudges of exhaustion on her face, and embraced Ian, Ian did not offer to leave.

Hart couldn't make his lips move to form questions to Beth, or his legs unbend to rise from the sofa. Beth came to Hart, sat next to him, and took his hand. Always a bad sign, when a woman did that.

"Eleanor is very strong," Beth said.

"What does that mean?" Hart snapped. He heard the rage and impatience in his voice, but he couldn't take the time to apologize.

"The baby is ready to come, but Eleanor's body is being slow to make the passage wide enough. It happens. The midwife is certain she'll come through it, and the baby will be born without trouble. It's just taking time."

"Tell me what it really means. If she can't birth naturally . . ."

"Then we send for a surgeon. But it's early days, yet."

Hart's body went numb. He couldn't feel, couldn't move. "If they have to cut the baby out, El could die."

"Surgery has progressed in the last years, and you have the best surgeon in the Highlands waiting to be sent for if needed. She'll be in good hands."

But surgery was always risky, because though the surgeon might do a fine job, the wound could become infected, or Eleanor could lose so much blood that she wouldn't be strong enough to live.

Eleanor would die.

The thought whirled around in Hart's head and through his stomach, sloshing with whiskey and what little he'd managed to eat, and made him sick.

Hart stood up abruptly, throwing off Beth's helpful clasp, and ran out of the room. His old bedchamber smelled stuffy and cloying, but the bathroom that opened from it had a working cistern. Here Hart lost all the whiskey and dinner Marcel had brought to the bowels of the house.

He rinsed his mouth, dabbing his lips with a towel. When he left the bathroom, he found Ian waiting for him in the bedroom.

"Where's Beth?" Hart asked him.

"Back to Eleanor."

"You don't have to stay with me." Hart looked around his old bedchamber with its monstrously high ceiling, paintings of gods and horses around the frieze, and its old and chunky furniture. This had been his father's bedchamber--the dukes of Kilmorgan had slept here since the house had been built.

"Ian, if I lose her." Hart wandered to the bed he'd abandoned months ago to move into Eleanor's cozier bedchamber down the hall. "Losing Sarah and my boy was the hardest thing I've ever lived through. But even then, you see, I knew that Eleanor was with me. If not here, then at least in the world, where I could find her. I could think of her living in that old house with her father, I could write to her if I chose. She was the anchor in my world, no matter how far I was from her. But if I lose her . . . Ian, I lose myself. I can't live. Not without Eleanor."