Freed by the Love of an Earl Bonus Scene

Margaret put her hand to her belly and winced, feeling the kick of the baby just inside her. She'd grown comfortable with the little one for almost nine months now; and though there were some difficulties to her condition, she felt a kinship with her child and an eagerness to meet her baby.

"An active little fellow, isn't he?" Edmund asked, noticing her expression and the hand placement. He was sitting by the window at the Lockridge estate, holding a paper and pretending to read, although Margaret had caught him more than once looking in her direction. It was a peaceful Saturday morning, and they had begun it as they always did; with a bit of breakfast and a cool morning walk. The walks had shortened considerably as Margaret's pregnancy progressed, but they were still a highlight of her day.

"You know," she said with an arch smile, "when one reads the paper, one genuinely attempts to actually look at it."

"How can a man look at a bit of paper when his eyes are continually drawn to such a beautiful woman just across the room?" Edmund asked, setting aside the paper unseen and coming to sit at Margaret's side. He put his hand up and tugged teasingly at one of her brown curls. "If you are going to fault my studious nature, you have no further to look than your own distraction for condemnation."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm weary of my own book of poetry, so perhaps you can keep me engaged until the rest of the family arrives with tales of your time in the House of Lords."

She saw Edmund's expression change quite suddenly, and there was a smile behind his eyes that hinted at some secret joy. "Well, it was exciting yesterday, but if you think you are going to pry anything further out of me, you are quite wrong. We must wait until your brothers-in-law have arrived, and I will share the news then."

Margaret nodded at the discarded paper. "Perhaps I should just read it for myself."

He shook his head. "You wouldn't dare. And yes, before you ask, it did appear in today's issue."

Margaret sighed, but in truth she didn't have long to wait. Lord and Lady Crowan arrived with their little one toddling beside; and shortly afterwards, the carriage of Lord and Lady Whitehall appeared with their own bundles of joy rattling about the house. The children, although pleased to see the adults, soon rattled off after the nurse with promises of toys and sweeties in the far parlour.

"I can't wait until our own little one is tumbling along with them," Margaret said wistfully, standing to embrace her two sisters-in-law, who were both looking especially fresh today. Lucille had dressed in a dark green gown and Sarah a pale pink one. It made Margaret smile. "You have switched your garb again today," she said. "It reminds me of that hideous prank you played on society all those years ago, when you arranged for Sarah to go along with Lord Whitehall instead of Lucille."

"Not so very hideous," Reginald said, limping to a couch and taking his seat regally enough. Lucille came and slipped along beside him. "Just because two women are twins does not give society reason to have difficulty telling them apart. My Lucille was obvious to me from the start, even when Sarah appeared in her place and pretended to be her sister."

Sarah sighed and raised her eyes to heaven as though struggling for patience. "You were as much a man in love as I have ever seen, to be able to notice at once that it was I and not Lucille. We are quite literally identical in appearance, and I had only to wear pastels for a few months to fool my own father."

"It's not so very difficult to fool a fool," Reginald said drily, at which point Lucille kicked him rather subtly with her boot. He amended his statement with a wry smile. "We ought to speak well of the dead, especially today."

"Why especially today?" Sarah asked, frowning.

Margaret clasped her hands together. "Is this something to do with the secret regarding the House of Lords that you hinted at, Edmund?"

Lucille nodded. "It is, and I can't wait for you to hear."

Everyone in the room paused a moment and looked at Lucille, who exchanged a quick glance with Reginald, blushed a charming shade of pink, and then said innocently enough, "Oh, was I not to know?"

"Setting aside the fact that information seems to slide seamlessly between my sister and Lord Crowan," Edmund said drily, "I suppose now is the time for the other two long-suffering women in this room to hear the news of my father's good deeds."

Margaret blinked. "Your father? Edgar Lockridge? Good deeds?"

Sarah smiled. "As much as I also would like to make a habit of speaking well of the deceased, I am inclined to agree with my dear friend here in her pronounced incredulity."

Edmund walked over to the paper and, opening it crisply, began to read aloud.

"After a long discussion in the House of Lords the last few weeks, there has been a breakthrough in the bill brought forward by Lord Huxley, the recently departed Edgar Lockridge's only son. The bill in question allots a certain amount of money for the training and care of underprivileged people in the city who desire to better themselves with proper and decent businesses. This will allow for tax deductions in such cases and, at times, incentive for landowners of a wealthy disposition to come alongside said people in the bettering of their business attempts. His bill earned the underwritten support of Lord Crowan and Lord Whitehall, the former who endorsed it wholeheartedly and claimed that it was, on the whole, one of the most clever ways to help the downtrodden in our city yet introduced in the House of Lords."

Edmund paused and cleared his throat, casting a rakish smile in Reginald's direction. "To have the Fox call you clever; 'tis a great compliment indeed."

"Don't be getting all full of yourself now," Reginald said wryly. "It isn't a very good colour on you."

Edmund smiled and went back to reading. "The bill, while holding an official name that does not bear mention here, has, upon his son's request, been called colloquially 'Edgar's Bill,' in honour of his departed father."

At this last sentence, Edmund set the paper aside and turned a rather self-satisfied expression in Margaret's direction. She could see the humour of it all at once, but Sarah, hot-headed, burst out, "Edmund, the bill is grand indeed, but why would you undermine all your work by putting a name like our father's on it? He never did a single thing like that his entire life. In fact, he would have hated it; he would have thought that such a plan was pandering and would have threatened—"

She stopped, her face froze, and then a smile worked its way across her features.

"Doubly clever," Reginald said with his own smile.

"You see," Edmund said, coming back to Margaret and winding his arm around her shoulders as he perched on the edge of her chair, "I have had to live in this house every day since his death, bearing the weight of not just his physical debts, but of his intellectual heritage as well. I have people in the streets telling me that I am the son of Edgar Lockridge and therefore a man with no principle; I have to sit beneath the very balcony where he was pushed to his death because of his blackmail and deception, and all the while I kept finding it difficult to pull out from under his dark shadow. But then I look at my wife and child and I realise that I want a different heritage for them: I want them to see kindness in the world, and to see the Lockridge name as a stamp of approval on that kindness."

Margaret wrapped her hand around her husband's and smiled up at him, pride welling in her heart. "It was a good thing you did," she said gently.

"Good, and a bit of a jab too," Sarah said with a mischievous grin. "I don't half mind that father would have hated to have his name on such a thing. In the end, he has done good even after his death that he would never have done in life."

Suddenly, Margaret felt a sharp twinge in the base of her abdomen. She clutched at it, feeling the pain deepen and stretch along her belly, and gasped suddenly. She had had some pains lately, but this—this was different.

Lucille was the first to notice. "Are you alright?" she asked kindly, jumping to her feet.

Margaret looked up at Edmund with a weak smile. "You know those children you're so desperate to set a good example for? Well, you'd best fetch the doctor because I think the first one is on the way as we speak."

***

"Perhaps a stiff glass of brandy?" Reginald asked from his place by the fire, where he had his wounded leg stretched out on an ottoman and a pipe lit and ready in one hand. Augustus was sitting next to him, fiddling with a chess set on the nearby table, while Edmund paced back and forth through the room, starting at the door, walking away from it to clear his head, and then back to it again just in case word came of the struggle happening just upstairs.

"No," he said. "I want to keep my head."

"I tell you, lad," Augustus said with a smile. "Sometimes the best way to keep your head is to indulge in a bit of strong drink."

Edmund paused and looked over at the two men who looked so relaxed before the fire. He could see a smile playing on both of their faces; a smile of amusement, it was.

"Why are you looking so self-satisfied?" he asked.

"Because," Reginald said casually, reaching out to move the bishop forward on the playing board between him and Augustus, "we have been exactly where you were—I, not so long ago—and we both know what it feels like to have nothing but pacing at your disposal, and nothing but worry in your head. But I'm going to tell you what wiser men before told me—" he turned to Augustus and the other man finished the sentence for him.

"—worrying won't hurry it along, and your lass is stronger than you think."

"I don't want her to have to be strong," Edmund said with a sigh, coming over to sit at last by the other men. "I want to take this from her, the way I try to take all the pain from her. It's the one thing I can't help with, however, and it's driving me mad."

"I think we forget," Augustus said in his simple, quiet way, "exactly what those three women we call wives are capable of."

"That's right," Reginald added with a smile. "I think we have a responsibility to care for them and to love them, but each in their turn has been in a dangerous situation and has, with their own cleverness and courage, found their way out of it. I doubt a single one of us could do what they're doing now; we must trust their grit. Trust your Margaret, man."

Edmund did trust her, or at least he tried to convince himself he trusted her, but he was still desperately grateful when at last the door to the study opened sometime in the early morning and Sarah was standing there wringing her hands on a pinafore. Lucille stood just behind her with a smile on her face.

"Is it—" Edmund could barely get the words out as he rose to greet them. "Is she—"

"She's quite safe," Sarah said.

Lucille came fully into the room. "And so is your little boy," she added with a smile.

"A boy!" Edmund didn't even pause at the door; he just left the two women to their tired and happy husbands, himself taking the stairs two at a time until he was knocking on his wife's door. The maid opened it, took one look at his face, and then bowed aside and showed him in.

Margaret was sitting up in the bed, her brown curls all awry; her face flushed and happy. There was a little bundle in her arms, a little bundle that mewled and moved about in a way that fairly tore at Edmund's heart. He came quickly to her side.

"You're alright?"

"She's alright," the doctor said in that even, smiling tone doctors always take with new fathers. "You may sit with her now for a time and I'll send up the maid later to help her tuck in for the night. You should be very proud of Lady Huxley. She did a marvellous job indeed."

The doctor and maid left, and in the quiet space remaining Edmund turned to Margaret. He felt the sharp prick of tears in his eyes at the sight of her beauty there before him, the happiness in her eyes, and the little screwed-up face of the newcomer in her arms.

"Would you like to hold him?" she asked quietly.

He nodded and, frightened lest he hurt the fragile baby, picked up the little one tentatively. As soon as he felt the tiny weight in his arms, though, he was filled with a confidence and courage and love that he had never known.

"He's ours," he said in quiet wonderment.

"All ours," she agreed.

"What shall we name him?"

They'd already talked about this, but in the moment, looking into his son's face, all memory and logical thought seemed to be fleeing him.

"I think after all we've endured we need a name meaning strength," she said. "Would you be satisfied to leave all the relative honouring aside and name him Maxwell?"

Edmund's heart felt near to bursting as he thought about the meaning behind all that they had endured, and the promise that his son was. "It's perfect," he said. He slipped down on the bedspread next to his little wife, leaned forward, and kissed her tenderly on the lips. "It's all perfect."

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