A/N: I don't own what you recognize. Please review.

Normally, I probably would have spent days stewing over the nature of my feelings for George. But after his confession of love, he told me that he didn't need an immediate response. "Just think about it," he said. "I know that this is a big deal and it's hard on you. So take some time and think about it."

"George, you're putting your heart on the line. I can't leave you hanging."

"Why not?" he asked. "Paul did it to you all the time."

I smiled. "But I don't feel right about it."

"Emma, I sprung this on you. You weren't expecting this in the slightest and I just threw it at you out of nowhere. I have no right to expect an immediate response from you."

"But a girl should have an immediate response when I guy tells her that he lvoes her."

I smiled. "We don't have a normal relationship. We never have. We don't have to do things the way that normal people do."

The real reason, beyond George's kindness, that I didn't stew over his confession was the birth of our daughter. On Saturday morning, the day after our wedding, I went into labor and gave birth to a healthy baby girl around three o'clock Sunday morning. She weighed nine pounds, three ounces and was twenty inches long. "She's a chunk," was George's first response to holding her. "She's a chunk all right. But she's a beautiful chunk. And she's got your hair, Em. She has your gorgeous light brown hair. It's gorgeous. I love her."

I was tired. I was in pain. And I was completely and totally in love with George. I knew that as soon as I saw him walking around my hospital room cooing to Elinor. And so I whispered the only thing I could say at that moment. "I love you."

George's head snapped from Elinor to me. "You what?"

"Love you," I replied. "I love you. I love you so much, George."

"You love me," he said flatly.

"I love you like you love me," I persisted. "I love you like a wife is supposed to love her husband."

I've never seen George smile like he did at that moment. He had my baby-our daughter-in his arms and he was beaming like all of his Christmases had come at once. "You love me?"

I nodded. "I love you, and I swear by all I hold dear that this isn't just hormones making me say that."

"Are you sure?" George asked. "I know I must be pretty attractive right now with Elinor in my arms right now."

"Do you know how much I love that I don't have to carry her around all the time now? Now you can share the burden."

He grinned. "She is amazing, Em. She is utterly amazing. And you are fabulous. You did an amazing thing today. I am in utter awe of you. You were brilliant."

"The epidural didn't hurt."

He laughed. And then he kissed me.

Chris White had been right when he said that once a baby arrives, so do the grandmothers. My mother arrived the morning that Elinor was born and Madeline Knightley arrived the following day. There was no room for them in the apartment, but that didn't keep them from taking up residence there. Madeline took over George's bedroom and my mom commandeered the living room couch.

Elinor moved into the master bedroom with George and me. "This place is too small," George pronounced on Tuesday night. "We need a bigger place."

"We need a bigger bedroom," I replied. "We're too squashed in here."

George nodded. "There's no room in this place. I mean, it was fine when it was just you and me, but now with Elinor, we need more room."

"Do we need to buy a house?" I asked.

"Oh gosh, I don't even want to think about that." George sighed. "I mean that we need a house. But I don't want to think about buying one right now. That's just not what I want to think about right now. It's such a big thing. And I'm so tired with work and the baby and everything right now."

I nodded. "I know. But we will need a house…or something bigger than this apartment. There just isn't enough room for you and me and Elinor and all the people in our lives."

"Maybe it will get better after our mothers leave? Maybe it will be easier to navigate this place when it's just you, Elinor, and me."

"Maybe," George replied. But I could tell that he was becoming restless in the apartment. It shouldn't have surprised me. George was nearly thirty-five years old. Since starting university more than fifteen years earlier, he had moved from apartment to apartment. While we had lived in the same apartment for the past few years, we had moved in there with the intent that it would be a temporary arrangement. And I could see that George was becoming tired of temporary arrangements. He wanted a permanent arrangement. And while at that moment, when he was tired after a long day, the idea of buying a house might have seemed like it was too much, but I knew that a day was rapidly coming when he would not be so tired and he would want to buy a house.

A week after Elinor was born, Hannah and Weston arrived unannounced at the apartment with Paul in tow. When my mom let them into the apartment and I saw Paul's dark head of hair, my heart leapt into my throat. George had gone to the grocery store. Mercifully, the baby looked, as my mother was almost overly-fond of reminding me, like a perfect clone of me as an infant. I had never really seen any indication of Paul in her at all.

But Hannah had different thoughts. She barely even acknowledged me before taking my baby out of my arms and cooing over how beautiful "darling little Elinor Churchill" was.

"Her name is Elinor Knightley," I replied firmly.

Hannah smiled condescendingly at me. "That is ridiculous. This is the most Churchill baby I have ever seen."

"I don't see my daughter wearing bowler hat or smoking a cigar."

"Oh, Emma, you're so funny. Elinor looks just like Paul's baby pictures. Don't you agree, West? Paul, come see your baby."

Paul and West were standing stiffly by the apartment door as if they weren't sure what they were supposed to be doing. I could tell from only a few moments' observation that they had not come to my apartment of their own volition. This had decidedly been Hannah's idea.

"I'm all right," Paul said to Hannah. "If she wants the baby to be a Knightley, that's fine with me. I don't care."

"No, you have to see her, Paul. She's darling. West, come here."

I stood up and looked at my friend. "Hannah, could I please have my baby back?"

"I'm her aunt."

"Only if George and I choose that for you two," I replied. "She is our daughter."

"She has Paul's DNA."

"And Paul doesn't want children," Paul called from his spot by the door. "Can Paul leave now?"
"Fine by me," I snapped. "I didn't invite you anyway."

"I just want him to see his daughter," Hannah insisted.

"She isn't his daughter," I said. "She's George's daughter."

"How do you figure that?" Hannah asked.

"Well, she's my daughter, and George is my husband. Therefore, she must be George's daughter."

"You married George and you didn't tell me?"
"Based upon the way that you've been trying to run my life of late, I didn't feel the need to tell you. Mark and Betsy came to the wedding. They'll be Elinor's godparents if we decide to have her baptized or whatever."

I knew that last comment was a low blow considering my long friendship with Hannah, but she was bothering me. She kept dragging Paul back into my life despite my attempts to eliminate him from it and his attempts to avoid me. She couldn't see what was plain as day in front of her face. Paul and I did not want to be near each other. We wanted nothing to do with each other. He wanted nothing to do with Elinor. There was no reason to continually try to reunite us. That ship had sailed. Now, George was the only show in town as far as I was concerned.

And then that show walked through the front door with his arms full of groceries. "Paul? West?" he said flatly. "What the hell are you two doing here? Hannah, who invited you over?"

"Oh, I didn't realize that we needed an invitation to see our niece."

"I would really rather not have people coming in and out of the house unannounced. It doesn't help with trying to establish a sleep schedule for Elinor."

"A sleep schedule?" West repeated. "How old is she again?"

"A week old," I replied.

"She's a week old and you're already working on a sleep schedule for her? Are you two crazy?"

I shrugged. "I just like the idea that maybe, just maybe, I'll get to sleep for more than five minutes together at some point in the next year."

"Control freak," Paul muttered.

I rolled my eyes at that comment, but I could see immediately that George's reaction was far more dramatic. Before I could see anything else, however, the baby stated crying. "What does she want?" Hannah asked.

"To be fed," George and I said at the same time.

"Oh, can I feed her?" Hannah begged. "Please?"

"No," I said firmly. George was still glaring at Paul.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm the only one who can feed her," I replied flatly.

"Control freak," Paul said again.

"Try breast-feeding mom," George said in a clipped tone. "Now, Hannah, give my wife the baby so she can feed the poor thing."

"Your wife?" Paul repeated. "You actually married her? Man, you're even more pathetic than I thought you were. It must be a result of coming from the same nation that produced Jane Austen."

"Get. Out." George barked. "Get out of my home right now, or I won't be responsible for my actions."

Paul wisely tucked his proverbial tale between his legs and fled the apartment. Hannah, shaking slightly at the revelation of George's darker side, handed me Elinor. "I'm sorry about him, Emma. I really thought that he was better than this."

"He's a scoundrel," George said. "Actually, he's far worse than a scoundrel but I refuse to curse in my daughter's presence."

I pressed my lips together as I fed Elinor and looked up at Hannah. "Perhaps it would be better if you and West left. Call me in a week or so, and we can make arrangements for a time when you and West can come over. And please never bring Paul here again."

"I understand now," she said. "I really thought that seeing the baby would change everything."

I shook my head. "Nothing would change that man. He doesn't want to be a father, and that's fine with me because Elinor already has a wonderful father."

Hannah left with a genuinely chastened look. She finally understood what I had wanted her to understand for months.

After West and Hannah left, George put the groceries away and then came back into the living room. "How are you, darling?"

I shrugged. "I'll be fine soon. And you're wonderful. You truly are the best man in the world."

"What brings this about?"

"You're so good to me and to Elinor. You take such good care of us."

He put a bony arm around me and pulled Elinor and me to his chest. "You're my girls. You're the most important things in my world. Without you, I'm nothing, so I'm going to fight for you to the end of the world."

"I love you, George."

He smiled. "I love you too, Emma Clare."

A/N: Please review!