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."

Ian listened with his usual expression--focused, brows slightly drawn, mouth straight--saying nothing.

Whether he followed Hart's words or not, Hart didn't know. He never knew, with Ian.

He looked up at the ceiling. "God, I hate this room. I'm removing all furniture to the scrap heap and tearing out those bloody awful paintings. After . . ."

Ian held out his large hand to Hart. "Come with me."

"Come with you where?" Hart wasn't in the mood for expeditions.

Ian said nothing. He never explained. He simply expected Hart to trust him.

Hart gave up and followed his brother out of the room. Ian didn't go far. He led Hart down the hall to the chamber in which Eleanor lay and pushed open the door without knocking.

Hart smelled closeness, heat, the bite of the coal fire, too many people in a room with no fresh air, and blood. The room was too dark, too stuffy.

A maid swung around, alarm in her eyes. "You can't be in here, Your Grace. Your lordship."

The room teemed with women, maids in caps and aprons, the plump midwife, the wet nurse with her own baby, waiting to take Eleanor's. Beth sat on a chair on one side of the bed, holding Eleanor's hand.

Eleanor lay on her back, the covers bunched around her to form a kind of nest. Her arms, shoulders, and breasts were covered with her dressing gown, the rest of her exposed. Her knees were up, her skin dripping with sweat, her eyes closed in a pale face.

"Not really the place for you, Your Grace," the midwife said, without turning from the foot of the bed.

"We'll let you men folk know when the time is right."

Eleanor opened her eyes. Hart thought she might call to him, but her face distorted, and she emitted a long wail that ended in a scream. Her body arched, spasms wracking it.

She fell back to the bed, breathless. Beth stroked her hand, her attention all for Eleanor. Eleanor gasped for a few seconds, then she wailed again.

Hart was across the room, pushing aside the maids, reaching for Eleanor. Eleanor moaned again, her head moving on the pillow, but she grasped Hart's outstretched hand and held it hard. More than hard. She squeezed it to the bone.

She fell back again, spent. "Hart."

"I'm here, El."

"Really, Your Grace. It's not fitting." The midwife, a large Scotswoman with fire-red hair, put her hands on her hips. Hart might be a duke, but this was her demesne.

"Please, let him stay," Eleanor said. "Please."

Hart read the pain in her blue eyes, the fear, the hope. He kissed her fingers, her hands so pitifully swollen.

"Beth says it shouldn't be long now," Eleanor whispered.

Hart saw, out of the corner of his eye, the midwife and Beth exchange a glance. They'd lied to soothe her.

"Good," Hart said. "That's good."

Ian, saying nothing, came around the bed, dragged a chair next to Beth's, and sat down. He took Beth's hand in his, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

Hart knew Eleanor's fears and shared them. She was thirty-three, this was her first child, and first children could be difficult. Eleanor was much more robust than Hart's first wife had been, but childbirth was dangerous in any case.

Hart had taken far too long to find Eleanor again. They'd had less than a year together, and he might lose her tonight.

Eleanor squeezed his hand, this time gently. "Are you all right, my love? You look a bit green."

"Which is why husbands should wait outside," the midwife said. "They're not good with what a woman can take in her stride.

"I'm fine," Hart snarled. "I . . ." He swallowed, forcing the bile down. "I'm fine, love."

"Good," Eleanor said. "I'm fine too." She closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath, and then her body went slack.

"What's the matter with her?" Hart asked in alarm.

The midwife looked harassed, but Beth answered. "She's only asleep. She's been drifting off from time to time. It's all right. Sleep is good for her. Gives her some peace."

But Eleanor looked too wan, her face too waxen for Hart's comfort.

The night wore on. There was another confounded clock in here, ticking, ticking. Eleanor woke up, groaning in pain, but the midwife still shook her head. Not yet.

Eleanor drifted off again, moaning a little in her sleep. Ian stayed with Beth, holding her hand as he dozed.

Hart stroked Eleanor's hand, wishing he could take all the pain away. In the days before his marriage to Eleanor, he'd spent time with women who liked Hart to inflict pain on them--to bind them and command them, and to use the pain, binding, and words to drive them to pleasure. He'd been good at it. Hart had mastered the technique of squeezing a woman's throat just enough so that when air cut off, her climax was that much more robust. A dangerous practice, but Hart had had the touch.