“Gil!” she cried again as she fumbled with the door. Another cramp seized her, more insistent than the last. Her thighs felt sticky. She threw the door open. “Gil?”
He wasn’t there.
His bed was untouched, the coverlet pristine, the pillows plump and smooth.
With a choked cry, she went back to her own room and reached for the bell.
Sarah arrived minutes later, a wrapper over her nightgown, a candle in her hand. She looked concerned. Rose never rang in the night. “Milady?”
“It’s the baby, Sarah,” Rose said wildly.
Sarah’s eyes flickered around the room. Rose saw her noticing something on the floor. She followed the direction of Sarah’s gaze. Blood. A trail of fat drips from the bed to the connecting door. The maid’s face went white. “I’ll send Jenkins for the doctor,” she said and dashed out.
She was soon back, followed by a scullery maid with an armful of linen.
“Sarah,” Rose whimpered. “I’m frightened.”
“You’ll be all right, milady,” the maid said reassuringly, but her gaze held concern, and she didn’t mention the baby. Not that she needed to. Rose knew the baby wasn’t going to be all right. She was not quite five months pregnant. The baby was dead. Or soon would be.
By the time the doctor arrived, the cramps had become quite painful. Rose lay on her back, and, after a brief examination, the doctor took her hand in his and looked into her eyes.
“My dear,” he said. “You know you are miscarrying, don’t you?”
She nodded. She had known since she saw her fingers coated in her own blood. And yet, to hear it confirmed by this stranger made it real. Tears leaked from the outer corners of her eyes and trickled through her hair to soak into the pillow beneath her head.
The doctor calmly told her that the next hour or two would be rather like having a baby, that her body was going to expel the foetus. He told her he would stay with her and examine what came out to make sure nothing was left inside. If it all came out all right, she would be fine. She would recover. In all likelihood, she would become pregnant again. All would be well. She would be a mother some other time.
She was grateful to him for his soothing words and did her best to believe him—about the being-all-right part, anyway. She knew she would never be pregnant again. Once Gil realised she was no longer having his child, he would not be so keen to have a real marriage. He had lost interest in having her in his bed weeks ago. And tonight, they had argued again. She had become a burden and a bore.
The doctor confirmed her suspicion that the baby was dead. It was better that way, he said, because it meant the baby wouldn’t suffer. He held her hand when he told her that. His hand was broad and warm and dry, and he stroked his thumb over her palm soothingly. And then he let her hand go and went to his bag to get his instruments out, and Sarah lit more candles until the room blazed with light. Rose watched as the doctor laid out a thick white cloth and placed his metal instruments on it. They looked barbaric.
It took another hour. The cramps got more intense and closer together, just as they were supposed to in childbirth. And as they reached their zenith, she sat up and got on her knees, driven by an inexplicable agitation.
“Milady,” Sarah said, placing a hand on her arm. “Come, you should lie down.”
“Leave her,” the doctor said gently. “She knows what she’s doing.”
She thought, What does he mean? And then, in the midst of another cramp, she began to feel a new flowering of pain. Sudden, surprising pressure brought her hands to the mattress in front of her and a soft, keening cry to her lips. And then there was a blooming sensation between her thighs, and her dead child began to emerge from her body, forced out by the convulsing of her womb. There was a moment of crowning pain and then an instant later, it left her body, warm and slick and rounded, and she cried out, with pain and with loss.
The doctor took the dead baby away from her to examine, all bundled up in a clean white linen.
Rose felt hollow. She stared at the bloodstains on the sheet, and all she could think was that everything had gone back to the way it was before. There was no baby. No Gil. She was alone again.
Warmth settled on her shoulders. A shawl. And Sarah’s hands wrapping it round her. She patted the maid’s hand with cold, shaking fingers.
“What’s this?” a loud male voice demanded outside the door. “What are you doing out here at this hour?”
James. There was the sound of murmuring, then his voice again, quieter this time, though still audible.
“Is she all right?”
“Sarah,” Rose pleaded. “Go and tell him what’s happened. Make him go away.”