Heyo! Jeez, can somebody please tell me to stop with the historical-ness? I'm just setting myself up for failure here. But even in Georgian England, they had sexual stuff, some coarse language, and violence. So expect to have some of that comin' at ya. Reviews are very appreciated (don't be alarmed if I slobber all over you, that is a natural response) and, as always, my friends, thanks for your eyeballs!

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PART I

England, 1760

It began, as it tended to do, with a boy and a girl.

Rather, in this case, with a man and a lady, for their ages were twenty-two and sixteen, respectively. He was of higher class than she, but it was a different class entirely; they were the same moneyed species, but in every other respect—even in the money itself—they were endlessly different. He was the heir of a noble. She was the daughter of a ship captain. He was clad in a fine waisted frock coat, silver buttons gleaming in the lurid summer sunlight. She was in her finest sack gown, its pleats of alternating crimson and rose entrancing anyone who happened to glimpse her and the colors of love rippling round her legs as she sashayed through Golden Square on the arm of this esteemed gentleman. He did not look at her, and she did not look at him, but everyone else looked at them, over shoulders and around fans and through windows. The pair rarely found a moment to be alone, and even on a stroll like this, they were under constant surveillance. She found it suffocating; he found it mundane; both were exasperated by the other's finding.

He was Arthur Kirkland. She was Marianne Bonnefoi.

"We're to marry, then," he remarked, as if they'd been discussing it all along, when really they had not spoken since they left the mansion, when he told her, It's the time to do it, if you'd like to have a stroll. Always in that rather gruff manner of his; he really wasn't very good at expressing himself, but then every Englishman was like that. Just as they liked their women bound in whalebone stays, they themselves were restricted by their own stiff upper lips. She refused adamantly to be laced, even going as far as to brandish a small knife and declare in French that The world will have me loose, or it will not have me at all! and put on a very convincing show of waving the blade toward her pale wrist, until the English dandies relented and allowed her to go about in the style of her homeland. The mother spoke no French, but one of the maids—Margaret, but my mother calls me Maggie—was fluent enough to have a conversation with, and indeed to be understood by when denouncing English attire. Since the courting began, the mother and the maids seemed to be constant companions around the house, persistently offering her advice on how to behave, how to dress, how to be an Englishwoman. She ignored it all.

"Oh?" she asked, because she wasn't sure what else there was to say. She knew they were going to get married from the moment she came across the Strait. Business, that's what her father said it was; a business deal between his shipping company and the invisible lines in the waters which the English nobleman seemed to control. A fair trade, they called it. An alliance sworn, if not in blood, then by the combining of it. She knew the pair of them were a walking taboo; she'd heard the whispers of frog and Frenchie behind her back, and behind his back, too. He simply ignored them and advised her to do the same. Nothing seemed to bother him, which would be a good thing, but nothing seemed to delight him, either. She had yet to see him smile once in the month they'd been courting. She longed to breach this strange distance he kept between them. Would it not be easier, then? If they had to marry, would it not be better to speak to each other, to be friends? Or would they remain in silence until they met in the marital bed? Surely he would make a sound then. She didn't imagine it with much enthusiasm, however. If English life was this stuffy and flavorless in other areas, she had low hopes for the bedchamber.

They stopped walking now, for they had left Golden Square long behind and found themselves in the Conduit Fields, where archers were practicing with their targets. They stood a safe distance away, watching from the side as a row of five men stood as if rooted to the ground, their upper bodies beautifully firm beneath their outdated jerkins, all of them robust Robin Hoods. Marianne observed them with admiration; Arthur's thick brows lifted slightly in stoic acknowledgement of skill. He was not a large man, not at all. His father and younger brothers dwarfed him; even Marianne was an inch or so taller without wearing heels, which she didn't do now that they were courting and thus always side-by-side.

All at once, she decided what she would do. She looked at him and tightened her grip on his arm so he would look back at her, and she said in careful but thickly accented English, "I will marry you, but you must do three things for me."

Now his brow furrowed in confusion. "The marriage isn't a choice for either of us."

"I know this. But if you do not agree to my three things, I will give you a kick dans la bite that will put you on your knees and I will throw myself in front of those archers and you will have no Bonnefoi to marry because she will be stuck full of arrows." She was getting better at her English every day, and the threat came out with relish despite the lack of color in the language. She wasn't exaggerating, either; with a mother dead of scarlet fever in '47, she was raised by sailors, and they had no qualms against fighting dirty. That was the way one had to be when pirates were making their last stand out on the roiling seas—and, indeed, when Englishmen were being bothersome when discussing marriage.

Arthur's green eyes searched her for a moment in that appraising manner his posh sort had, and finally he said, "What are your three things, then?"

"Un. When we are married, we must leave London. I will not raise my children in this rat nest of a city." Rat nest was putting it lightly. Summer in France was airy and lovely, the breeze smelling of sea salt and ripe grapes, the evenings lasting forever with accordionists singing love songs in every street-corner café. In London? The churchyards stank of the rotting dead, the streets—aside from the cleanest in West End—reeked of the loads the nightsoil men carted away, and the Thames . . . indescribable. No wonder the English ladies didn't mind being laced up so tight they couldn't breathe; who would ever want to inhale the stinking breath of London?

Arthur's lips parted to protest, but he thought better of it. "Fine, we don't need to live in London. We could live in Oxford. Bristol, perhaps."

She had not heard of Bristol, but she knew of Oxford, and replied, "I do not want any city. I want a peaceful place, away from all of this." She swept her free hand to indicate the bustling, nonsensical lives of Britons. Always hurrying, hurrying even to spend time with friends! She could not comprehend it. Worrying yourself over relaxing? Utter madness. "I want somewhere green, with trees, meadows, flowers."

Arthur's jaw—a sweet thing, rounded and not masculine at all—had stiffened now, at last. "And if we're attacked by savage animals, robbed by bandits? Part of the rustic appeal, I suppose?"

Marianne shook her head. "We will not be bothered by animals, and if we are robbed, you or I will shoot the bandits."

He sighed with displeasure. "Fine. We shall live in the country. And your other conditions?"

"Deux. You must talk to me, and treat me like I am your friend. I want to know you. Who would like to live with a stranger? We must know each other, and become close." Teasingly, she added, "This may be hard for you."

He tossed his head like a horse, affronted, but at her kind laughter he calmed and even allowed a ghost of a smile. "Alright," he said, "I shall try to be friends with you. I say, it likely shall be hard, what with you being so French."

"Mm, and you being so English," she agreed, giving his arm a comradely squeeze. "And the final one." She moved her lips to his ear, her breath feathering his skin, and, not so comradely now, murmured, "Trois. You must love me, no matter what I may do. You must give me your heart to hold, and trust me to hold it gently in my hands. If you love me always, I will be a perfect wife for you. But if you do not, I will break your heart and you will long for me until you find death."

Arthur shivered beneath the summer sun. Marianne said nothing more; she had laid herself bare, and now it was he who must make the decision. The pair of them watched the archers loose their arrows into the targets, the power of man in body and mind, muscle and tool, combined to send a stick of death straight into the eye of a bull.

"Alright," said Arthur again, his voice different this time, thinner and yet more real. Green eyes met blue. Time itself seemed to tremble with the force of those two gazes. "Yes. I will always love you."

He stumbled over the words, words he had not said since he was just a boy, telling his mother he loved her before bed or something of the like. He was the worst of his kind; no word of emotion had passed his lips in over a decade. Even his brothers spoke of emotions, though it was always anger or happiness, never sadness, or fear, or love. But he kept it all within. After all, he was the one inheriting the nobility when his father died; a long way off from now, everyone hoped. It was not proper for a gentleman to experience something as trifling as anger, and to act upon it was to give up all civility. A single cross word could ruin an entire legacy forever. In aristocracy, there were eyes and ears everywhere, and always a mouth attached to bawl about what had happened.

Marianne smiled at her groom-to-be. She was a beautiful girl, that was undeniable, and he was a handsome lad, despite the eyebrows. They were both spiteful and gleeful creatures, though of course he was more internally so. They would get along quite well, he suspected. He would need to spend more time with her if he was to fall in love, and he would need to come back to London when his father died, but that gave them a space of what he assumed would be about thirty years. Thirty years of happy marriage sounded agreeable to him. Plenty of time for children, memories, those such things. His future sprawled in front of him like the countryside he would soon live in.

"Good," she said. "It is a deal." They turned to head back to the Kirklands' mansion in Golden Square, and as they made their way along the cobbles, the finality of it all set in for her. No more waiting. No more living with Mrs. Kirkland and her chirping maids, Annie and Dorothy and Maggie who spoke French. No floundering, lost in a sea of heaving hoopskirts. In a month's time, her life would be something totally different than what it had ever been before. But one could not be pessimistic, so she said perkily, "We're to marry, then."

"Oh?"

. . .

The wedding was catered by English cooks, and so it was pointless in the eyes of Marianne. The whole thing was a blight, really, because the English hens had convinced her to wear a corseted wedding dress, and she spent the whole time feeling like she was about to faint. She wouldn't have entertained the notion if not for the fact that the dress had been passed down three decades, and she was now the fourth to wear it. Was it out of fashion? Absolutely. Uncomfortable and dusty where it trailed the ground? Indubitably. But she bore the burden, and once the ceremony was over, she let the assembled takers-off remove the cursed thing. She wore a much nicer evening gown after that, Arthur carrying her—with some effort—out to the waiting carriage. She asked, "Where are we going?"

Arthur gave a slight smile. "Home."

To her relieved delight, he was not referring to Golden Square. Not in the slightest. Their journey began early in the evening and ended sometime so past the waking hours it was neither late or early. The moon was covered by clouds, so they could see nothing through the frosted glass of the carriage, apart from the orange glow of the lanterns in either corner atop it. The ride would have turned monotonous, if not for the bottle of wine—imported from Paris, a wedding gift from her father—and its magical abilities of turning Arthur from a man of anxious silence into a playful, slightly slurred young gent.

"I'm glad to be in here with you, Marianne," he told her, his breath sweet and warm on the side of her face, for they had splayed over the cushioned seats, leaning on each other like old muckmates. Though the wine might have been clouding her memory, she was quite sure this was the first time he had said her name. It was a poor attempt; he said it in the English way, with those peculiar R's that came from the top of the mouth rather than the bottom. Words were such blunt, awkward things on the tongues of Englishmen. Nothing flowed together, nothing sounded beautiful—apart from the words they'd stolen from the French, of course. "I've not met a woman I enjoyed the company of until you."

"Not even your mother?" she asked, even though she knew how disrespectful the words sounded as they came out. Of course she knew; she intended them to be that way.

"My mother," he echoed in a way that suggested he was unfamiliar with the concept. He took another sip of the wine, straight from the bottle. (He'd cursed the servants for neglecting to supply glasses, but Marianne had simply laughed. It was not the first time she had drank from the bottle, she assured him, and would not be the last. He seemed surprised to learn what she had known from the start: he was the snobby goose, not her.) Arthur swallowed incorrectly and gave a rather wet cough into his gloved fist, clearing his throat loudly. "Excuse me, I beg your pardon. Something went a bit mad in my, er, gullet."

She raised an eyebrow at him, because it was impossible to see in the shadow of the carriage, but didn't point out that he was stalling. She knew that he knew what he was doing. He was either the smartest idiot or the daftest genius she'd ever met.

He scratched at an invisible hair on his cheek; he kept himself cleanshaven, though she quietly preferred a man with a bit of texture to him. "My mother is quite pleasant, as ladies go," he said, pacing the words carefully. "She was like you, she came from a family of lesser status. Her marriage to my father raised her up to his—my—our level."

"But I thought you were above me," she remarked, as innocently as she could.

Arthur blinked. He really could not hold his liquor. "Ah, well, yes. I am. I am the Master of our household." He glanced around the carriage interior as if he'd just now realized where he was. "Once we get there."

"I see. Oh, no, I have had enough wine. You finish it."

When they finally arrived, Arthur nearly fell down the folding steps. He righted himself with a damp sort of dignity and held out his hand to Marianne, which she accepted and—though she was tempted to hop down to the ground—made her stately way down the steps. Arthur tipped his top hat to the driver and led his bride to the front door of their home, which was nothing more than an obsidian goliath in the night. Arthur pushed the door open and lifted Marianne up for the second time of the night. He staggered like a newborn colt under her weight, and she half-expected him to topple over, but he managed to carry her over the threshold of their new home, hook the door closed with his foot, and deposit the pair of them on their newly nuptial bed.

Perhaps it was the excitement of the day lasting far too late into the night. Perhaps it was the fact that he'd drunk three quarters of a bottle of rich French wine. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. Whatever the reason, as soon as Arthur Kirkland untrussed and slipped between the sheets, he was asleep.

Marianne paused in unbraiding her hair, staring at her husband, his pale face glowing in a thin shaft of moonlight from the curtained window. He looked as innocent as a child, his lips parted in a way she knew would end up with a wet spot on the pillow. She stood, pulled the curtains fully drawn and joined her husband in the bed. I won't be the first to sleep a virgin on my wedding night, she thought, wrapping her arms around the boyish body of the Englishman beside her. It was only when the black wave of slumber swept toward her that she remembered: the night the stars were so bright and close enough to touch, the little hut overlooking the coast, skin so warm against her own. . . .

I'm not a virgin.

Her heart shivered at the secret, and she pushed the thought away as if Arthur could detect it through sleep, through the barrier of his mind and her own, and leap up and accuse her of the untruth she'd presented. Of course, no one had asked if she was a virgin. Who would ever ask that? And why would they bother? It was assumed for all young ladies to be virgins. How realistic that ideal was, Marianne could not say. But her past and present were tide pools with a vast boulder between them. Only an act of otherwordly intervention could bring them together.

Still, she held her husband closer, like something precious, something she did not want to lose. She whispered, "Bonne nuit, Arthur." He gave no response. She moved her lips against his mussed blond hair and whispered, "Je t'aime, Arthur Kirkland." The softest moan came from him, and he settled deeper into sleep. She smiled to herself. A marriage begun in false pretenses didn't have to end in tragedy. Love would always come through in the end. When she had nothing else to believe in, she had that, and the consolation of it finally allowed her to join Arthur in a dreamless, fearless sleep.

. . .

The house turned out to be ten rooms, including the attic and basement. It was larger than Marianne's family home but smaller Arthur's, and neither really seemed to know what to do with it. Neither were accustomed to needing servants; Marianne because she could live without them, Arthur because he couldn't. The house had been furnished with all the furniture and dishware they could possibly require—gifts from the Kirkland vault—but they had no one, as of yet, in their hire.

"A cook and a maid, to start," Arthur said the next morning as they took stock of their new abode, "and a scullery maid, perhaps, once we're on our feet."

The way he talked, one would think they were in hardship. Of course, they were far from it. It was a complicated business, but Marianne's understanding of it was this: Master Kirkland—she had known Arthur's father by the title for so long, it was forever jarring to hear the same name used in reference to her husband—owned several plots of land in and around England, and he taxed people for the privilege of living on it. This meant that, essentially, the Kirklands—and many other nobles, for that matter—got richer and richer without lifting a finger. The specifics of the deal that had resulted in her marriage were unknown to Marianne, and she suspected they would stay that way. She cared little about business matters; she preferred beautiful things, like art and nature. Any work she would have ended up doing would have been through her body, using it at best and selling it at worst. Of course, being a woman, it wasn't something she had to worry about. Marriage was the answer to all of life's problems, at least for some members of the fair sex. She wouldn't have minded being a farmer's wife, baking pies and pastries with fruits from the orchard, cooking meals with the vegetables and meat and eggs they raised. Then again, she did love fine clothes, and farmers' wives didn't wear anything they couldn't get muddy. It was difficult to be vain when you were reasonable. And vice versa.

"No cook," she told Arthur, firmly. "I will cook, or I will not eat."

He regarded her, face just a little pinched in irritation. "That wasn't one of your three conditions."

She shook her head. "Non, but if you want to be happy, you will let me cook. Have you had French cooking before?"

"Er . . . no," he replied, in the way that she would eventually learn meant not while sober.

"Well, I will make you breakfast, and you will tell me if we need a cook or not, oui?"

He paused long enough to make the decision seem like his own, then replied, "Very well, Marianne."

The pantry foiled her plans. She had been about to prepare some elaborate French meal that would have him on his knees, begging her to cook for him forever. Instead, she found the bland ingredients the English used poorly to make their bland food. Enough lard and salt to kill a bear, bags of flour, sugar, beans, lettuce, some salted pork. There was good, flat ground behind the house, and a large wooden shed; she intended to turn the former into a garden and the latter into a chicken hutch. Until she did that, and convinced Arthur to invest in more palatable foods, she would just have to make do.

With some wasted effort here and there—and some strawberry preserves she found on the topmost shelf—she created a plate of crêpes that would not have impressed anyone across the Strait, but which had Arthur making pleased noises as he chewed.

Once he'd finished, however, he looked at her expectantly and asked, "Is that all?"

In a house that was supposed to be her own, she'd forgotten that this was not France. The English valued breakfast much like the Prussians did, starting the day off bloated with ham and beef and beans. She couldn't see the appeal; the French ate their first and last meals light, spending as long as needed to dine in the middle of the day. Plenty of time to digest, plenty of time to meet with friends. A contrast to the English, who made it to the middle of the day and ate only enough to stave themselves off for dinner, where they ate so much they often fell asleep in the sitting room shortly after, their stomachs straining at the buttons of their waistcoats.

Rather reluctantly, she asked, "Do you want me to make you more?"

Arthur considered this question long enough that she wondered if he was about to make some snide remark, but instead he shook his head with a curious expression. "No, actually, I think that will be enough. Thank you, it was quite good. You shall make us a lovely cook, my dear."

She took his plate back to the kitchen, smiling from the look of slight panic in his eyes. The first term of endearment he'd likely ever said. She found herself feeling honored to be the first. He isn't your first. She didn't acknowledge the voice in her mind. She suspected if she didn't pay it any attention, it would go away. Like an insect bite. If you scratched it, it would only swell and itch more. If you ignored it, it would heal quicker and vanish before you even realized.

After she'd had a bit of bread and jam for her own petit dejéuner, they went out to see their estate. There were no cobbles in sight here, just a dirt road that went a ways from their house before turning and vanishing into the trees. The trees, mostly fir and oak, lined the left side of the property, but the right side was clear. She had asked for meadows, and she had been given meadows. The ground sloped down, then up again, to a sort of ridge. The horses were grazing on this ridge; the fence of their pasture ran along it and down a ways—twenty strides, her future children would report—before joining up with the stable, where their carriage was stored. They had three horses, which was three more than she'd ever had in France, where she had walked everywhere and boated where she could not walk. She was eager to learn to ride, and asked Arthur if he would teach her.

"Ride? They aren't for riding. They're for pulling carriages."

"They are horses. Any horse can wear a saddle. Don't you know how to ride?"

"Of course. My father and I once rode regularly with the Hunt."

Poor foxes, she thought. "We will ride them someday. Or else we could get some that are for riding."

Arthur nodded thoughtfully. "Hmm. We could do that." He was starting to loosen up, she was glad to see; he didn't stride with the stiff, measured, quick steps he'd used on the London cobbles. Both of them walked slower, feeling the grass brush against their ankles (he felt the blades vaguely through his trousers). There were some flowers out here, and he picked her a daisy, delicately tucking it into her hair. She was shocked by the tenderness of it, and took his hand. He gave her an almost pained smile—making an effort, she could tell, to surpass his stoic upbringing—and twined their fingers together.

From the ridge, they had a view of what she considered to be a real meadow: a beautiful little field full of sweet-smelling grass, surrounded by trees, birds chirping and swooping down for building materials for their nests. It was the sort of place that would look beautiful at any time; blanketed in fluffy snow, red in an autumn sunset, golden and sparkling with dew on an early spring morning.

"Oh, how lovely," she said, a bit of whimsy in her voice. "I think this will be the perfect home for us. Look at this place, it would be complete if we had just a few more things."

He glanced at her, surprised to see her so agreeable. "What things would those be?"

"Well, I would like to have a garden and some animals."

"A garden would be nice, yes. What sort of animals?"

"Oh, the usual. Chickens. Maybe a pig. And we really should have a dog."

"Yes, I was thinking we should find ourselves a guard dog."

"You can get a guard dog if you want to, but I mean a family dog. A dog we can play with, and to keep us warm at night."

He blinked. "We won't be cold at night, I assure you. But if you want a dog like that, we can get one."

Her teeth, a bit yellowed by wine, shone in a grin. She knew there was no limit to the things they could have, not with the money his family—and, now, her family—had in its bottomless purse. She leaned closer to him, both of them swooning from the undeniable beauty around them: the birdsong, the knicker of horses, the clean air, the sunlight, the gentleman's beautiful eyes, the lady's beautiful smile.

"Children," she whispered. "Imagine this meadow, with our children and our dog running and playing and laughing. That is what I want."

He turned his face so their noses brushed. He looked into her eyes. Green met blue. He had never realized that what he truly wanted was a family who loved him. He had a family, after all, but having one was different than having a good one. He was the black sheep of his brothers, all of whom played sports and went hunting and could live off the land if they had to. He was the weakest, and while he enjoyed kicking a ball around and chasing a fox on the back of a horse, he could not do either of those things the way he was supposed to. He couldn't kick the ball into a goal. He couldn't bear to see the fox killed, let alone to do it himself. His father was distant, his mother was . . . well, how had he put it? Nice, as ladies go. She was good for entertaining guests in the parlor. She was good at gossiping. She was good at spending her husband's money and decorating the house and pushing out children. Aside from that, she was about as loving as a mossy stone. Soft and alive on the outside, but the opposite within.

But to have a family of his own? To sire children? To have a home full of people who loved him?

The thought brought tears to his eyes, so he closed them, and before Marianne could ask why, he kissed her. It was not the chaste kisses he had allowed himself to bestow while they were courting. It was all of the emotion she had stirred within him brought upward from his heart and through his lips. It was the clumsiness of his tongue, and hers mentoring his, leading by example. It was her teeth gently squeezing his lower lip. It was Marianne grabbing his sleeve and dragging him back to the house, in through to the bedroom.

"Now?" he asked as she unbuttoned his shirt.

"Better late than never," she replied, tugging him so sharply he just about fell on top of her as she lay back on the bed.

Fortunately, he was too concerned with his own performance—for he was a virgin, as if that wasn't obvious—to notice anything lacking in her own, namely the blood he had been told would be present. Marianne hadn't bled the first time, actually. It was . . . better if she didn't think about it. Comparing would be cruel. Not that Arthur was terrible in bed, especially since this was his first time. His kisses were passionate, if a bit wet, but he needed to work on his stamina. Practise makes perfect. Between gasps, he told her he loved her, and she smiled against his neck and replied, "I love you, too."

Afterward, they lay together, Arthur's thin arms around her, warmed by the sunlight shining through the window. She swirled her fingertips through the light dusting of hair on Arthur's chest. His skin was as soft as hers, softer in some places, like beneath his jaw. Arthur looked at her with heavily lidded eyes, such a vibrant green. Their sparkle reminded her of—oh, stop thinking about him. Stop it!

"Children," he murmured. "The first of . . . how many?"

She shrugged playfully. It was wonderful to imagine, a child forming inside her as they spoke, like a seed planted, to grow over the next nine months. She would fulfill that goal, at least, having a child before their one-year anniversary. She imagined having three children, one for each of the unused bedrooms. Why stop there? She imagined having three more beds built, doubling up the rooms, six children! A herd of them to chase their future dog, to sit around the table, to make every day be full of something new. She imagined the house's walls bowing, the windows shattering, unable to contain all the love she had for her family.

"Oh, I don't know," she replied brightly. "We will just have to wait and see what happens."

. . .

"OH MON DIEU, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!"

The raw-throated scream made Arthur wince. He stood in the hall outside the master bedroom, listening to the horrific sounds of his wife going through childbirth, which the door did absolutely nothing to muffle. He'd been barred, quite vocally, from the room by the midwife. Husbands might mean well, but they do nothing but get in the way, she claimed. And you won't want to see it anyway, sir, believe me. He certainly did believe her, now; he didn't want to hear it, let alone have the accompanying visuals. He'd considered going downstairs, or even out to visit the legion of chickens, but he didn't want to seem like a—

"ARTHUR! YOU BASTARD!"

Arthur's eyes widened. He had never heard such language from a woman. It was unbecoming. And it was, well, surely that was an offense worthy of beating? He'd seen his father give his mother a back-handed smack once, at the peak of a heated argument. They had not quarreled like that ever since, so the method proved to be beneficial. Then again, it was widely known that birthing a child was a hideously painful activity. No man could deny that women had to be admired for the burden they beared, and for the ability to bear it in the first place. Having a baby? Creating life! It was a god's task, a miracle. But the process . . .

Marianne gave a final, agonized scream, barely sounding human. Arthur thought he heard a sort of splashing sound, something wet, but he couldn't really hear through her panting, everything was muddled and he stepped forward to press his ear to the door just as the purest, sweetest cry rang out. In that second, Arthur felt as though his heart had grown big enough to fill his entire body; he was a heartbeat, he was held breath, he was numb fingers turning the doorknob and seeing his wife, cheeks patchy from exertion, hair curled with sweat at her temples, and the baby in her arms, chubby and scarlet-faced, wailing relentlessly as if to make sure the world knew, I'm here! I'm here! I'm here!

Arthur stepped into the room on weak legs and fell to his knees beside the bed, eyes round with amazed adoration. "I . . ." What could he say? What words were adequate for this feeling? None, not in his language. So he simply kissed his wife's hot cheek and whispered to her, "I love you, my dearest," before looking down at the baby, their baby, his baby, and touched the tiny pink fingers with the tip of his own. So small, so fragile, a marvel. An utter marvel.

"A girl," the midwife remarked, as if it wasn't one of the most momentous pieces of information in the world, which it absolutely was, as far as Arthur Kirkland was concerned.

His gaze hurried back to Marianne, hopeful. "Does that mean—"

She chuckled, made soft by her weariness. "Oui, Arthur. We can call her Amelia."

That was their deal. Their marriage was one of endless negotiations, compromises usually made by him submitting to her adamant requests. (It wasn't that he was afraid of confrontation, or anything like that. He just preferred things to remain civil, if at all possible. Besides, he was going to inherit a lordship one day. He had to have complete control over his temper, and what better place to practise than at home?) Arthur had wanted their dog to come from a respected breeder, for instance, and Marianne had insisted they adopt the little ball of white fluff advertised as Male Stray Mongrel Pup. To be fair in that case, however, the puppy was absolutely adorable, and what sort of man would he be to turn away an orphan? But the baby's name had been an even deal, for once. If it was a boy, Mathieu. If it was a girl, Amelia.

Arthur embraced his wife, gentle and a bit awkward with their given positions and the fussing baby between them. Arthur and Marianne leaned their heads together, watching fondly as their daughter rooted around for a moment before at last latching on and taking her first long drink of milk.

"Welcome to the family, Amelia Kirkland," he whispered to her, running a fingertip lightly over the fuzz of her head, soft as the down of a chick. Our little gosling, he thought. A little silly goose.

The midwife, pausing in gathering the bloodied sheets and cloth, thought to herself that any baby born of people from opposite sides of a rift filled with hatred (which was arguably the case between the British and the French) might as well be cursed. It would be like cats and dogs having young, how could that ever work? It couldn't. Yes, the midwife was certain, there was something dark in the future for this baby, and any other babies this pair had. She wouldn't be here to witness it, that was certain—and indeed, when the pregnancies that followed reached their end, the midwife was absent, visiting relatives for the second and dead for the third. (She slipped and cracked her head open on rocks during a beach holiday. It could have happened to anyone. Marianne often wondered what became of their first midwife, and once remarked, "We should find her, send a card. It would be nice." And Arthur had snapped, as was his wont by then, "Since when have you concerned yourself with being nice?")

But this was long before that, before any of the people in the bedroom could comprehend those things as possibilities. Arthur and Marianne exchanged a loving kiss in the shape of each other's smiles, Amelia snuffled and suckled dutifully at her mother's breast, and the midwife took the sheets down to the maid to dispose of them and went out to the carriage that was waiting to take her back to the nearest township.