Chapters 2 and 3 overlapped, so that has been fixed. I'm a dork when it comes to uploading chapters and apparently will never learn.

Kire3

I started to speak, but Julia put her hand up. "Her waters," she mumbled under her breath before she turned to me. "Stay here. I'll send the children over in a moment."

"No," I protested. I would be damned if I was rounded up along with the children and sent away. Unfortunately, without an ounce of forethought, I had no idea what I would do, but I was willing to stand my ground.

Julia didn't appear overly surprised by my protest. She allowed Alex to drag her toward the house and didn't argue when I followed her up the ramp and into the kitchen.

Ruby was standing by the stove when the three of us entered. "No breakfast, I'm afraid," she mumbled before she hurried from the room.

"Where's Lissy?" Julia asked Alex.

"With Uncle Charles in the study," Alex answered.

Julia looked at me and nodded before she marched out of the room. The moment she left, I heard Meg cry out again and I shuddered. The door at the end of the hall opened and shut and I heard Julia's muffled voice attempting to sooth Meg.

Alex wandered closer and looked up at me, his brow furrowed. "Why isn't there mud all over the floor?" he asked.

His question naturally caught me off guard. "What did you ask?"

He repeated his question, which still made no sense to me.

"Why would there be mud on the floor?" I asked him, growing impatient.

"From all the dirt and the water," he said, imitating my exasperation.

"Dirt?" I questioned.

He crumpled his face and shifted his weight as though he had lost his last shred of patience with me. "From Aunt Meg."

His words garnered my attention as I realized what he meant. I had forgotten he thought Meg was filled with dirt. Overhearing Ruby and Madeline, he also knew there was water involved.

There seemed no suitable explanation. I stared at him, uncertain of what to say.

"You said when you first held me, I was red as a tomato. Do you think I had red mud on me?" he asked before I could think of anything to tell him.

"Most certainly," I answered.

This seemed to thrill him. His smile widened and he took off like a shot down the hall to tell Charles he was a red dirt derived baby. I followed him into the study and found Charles blankly staring at the floor. He nodded while Alex rambled on and on, though I doubted he heard a word from my son.

Judging by his pinched features I knew he was listening for his wife. I couldn't imagine the torment of sitting down the hallway from her, listening to her struggle and knowing there was nothing he could do to provide comfort or release.

At once I turned to him. "Charles," I said sternly.

He looked up, his eyes wide. "I'm sorry, sir, were you speaking?"

"I was not yet," I replied as I walked behind him and pushed his wheelchair from the room, nearly colliding with Lisette, who pressed herself to the wall in dramatic fashion I could only assume was influenced by Hermine Leach.

"Where are we going, Monsieur?" Charles questioned.

"Out," I answered.

For the sake of our combined sanity, Charles and I needed to leave the house at once.

"Where?" he asked.

"Paris," I answered. That seemed general enough. Anywhere that lacked a laboring woman seemed suitable to me.

"May we come with you?" Lisette asked hopefully.

"Yes, yes, grab your coat and gloves," I ordered, knowing this was no place for them either. Lissy tore through the house with Alex at her heels and the two of them galloped like beasts into the foyer where I heard them wrestling each other.

They appeared at the back door, their cheeks rosy and chests heaving from their antics. Breakfast was in order, though I had no idea where we would go or for how long. We simply needed to leave and we could not exit the house fast enough for my liking.

Escaping the house was the extent of my planning and forethought. I wheeled Charles into the garden, then returned inside, took the stairs two at a time, and walked into my bedroom.

I stood before the mirror, smoothed my hands over my hair, and fit my mask into place for our excursion. In her bedroom below, Meg once again screamed, the sound of her pain stretched out into an unearthly moan.

"Be calm," Julia ordered. "Screaming will only make your pain worse. Look at me, hold my hand, and breathe, Meg. You're doing just fine."

"I'm afraid," Meg confessed, her voice trembling with emotion.

She was not the only one. Her husband was terrified on her behalf and I was terribly uncomfortable with the entire process of birthing a baby within my home, not that I had any say in the matter.

"Oh, my poor Meg," Charles said weakly.

He would not be permitted to see or stay with her while she was in the process of delivering a baby, and no matter if she labored for hours or the better part of a day, he would be left to wonder and wait.

There seemed no greater torture—and I had experienced my share of torture and punishment.

I felt almost fortunate that I had not been present while Christine gave birth to my son. I wasn't sure what I would have done if I had heard her scream or cry out through her pains. I wondered if she cursed me for the state I had put her in, if she suffered for hours or days for one night of passion. I wondered if she knew what childbirth entailed and when she finally decided to give our son to me rather than raise him herself.

Even in the wake of Christine's death, there were still so many unanswered questions. I longed to know what had made her bring Alex to me and leave him in my care—and why she waited three months.

I wondered if my parents had happily anticipated my arrival, if at any moment they had welcomed the idea of a child into their lives.

After seeing the joy Meg and Charles had experienced as the months passed by, I could only imagine how appalled my mother and father had been at the sight of me. They had not given me a life, but they had permitted my existence. I felt almost greedy expecting any more from them, especially now that I had listened to the sounds of labor and knew from my reading that the pain intensified the closer the mother came to birth.

I could not blame them for wanting rid of me.

In a matter of minutes I was beside myself over hearing Meg's pains. With unbidden thoughts, I understood my parent's loathing, of how hours of labor ended with something so grotesque.

I had never cried out easily, not until physical abuse turned intolerable, and I didn't want to think of what Meg experienced with being so vocal. Physically she was a strong former dancer who could practice for hours on end without so much as batting an eye. Despite falling to her knees, blistering her feet, or rubbing a sore shoulder, she continued to dance without complaint.

The thought of Meg suffering made me shudder—and considering how my own mother had reacted when she saw me peek through the door at her when I escaped from the cellar, I wondered how Meg would feel when she looked at her child for the first time. I hoped that when she looked into her baby's eyes she would not be reminded of pain.

Every time my mother looked at me, her face twisted in horror, in pain beyond description. Christine had not looked at Alex once she handed him to Madeline. Once she was rid of him, he no longer existed to her. Perhaps I no longer existed to her either.

Thankfully Alex had arrived healthy, a son I had never expected to have—and whom I would have accepted regardless of his appearance or health.

I considered myself fortunate that I had not witnessed or heard his birth…and that Christine had given him to me. She could have very well abandoned him elsewhere and not necessarily alive. Many unwanted infants were cast out and left to die in refuse or alleys. Despite her illness, she had made a conscious effort to see her son safe.

When I looked at Alex, I couldn't fathom my life without him.

As grateful as I was to have him in my life, now I considered Julia and her desire for a family. This could have been my wife in a brief nine months, agonizing over our child, suffering through labor for the sake of giving me another baby.

There were too many risks involved, too many chances of infection, anemia, and death. Nothing was worth risking Julia's life. Nothing in the world.

Listening to Meg's ordeal, I had no desire to put Julia through such torment and pain. I wondered what her bastard of a husband had done the day she blessed him with a daughter. I doubted he cared much for her suffering as he had caused her nothing but pain in the years they were married. In his eyes, a daughter was failure. I doubted he gave much thought to her labor, the selfish pig. Thankfully she had only given him one child, and he did not deserve Lisette.

But I was not Louis and I would never intentionally harm Julia. I had told her before that I had no desire to father more children and now I was certain I wanted only my son and her daughter in our home. They were healthy and loved and we were fortunate. I saw no need to risk Julia's life for the sake of another baby.

I clenched my jaw and left the house, hearing Julia's soft, encouraging voice and hoped she would help Meg find an end to her torment.

Perhaps selfishly, I hoped Julia would never experience this agony again. I would not forgive myself if she were to suffer in such a manner. The risk of losing her forever was not worth the addition of a child. Not to me. Not for Julia.

She was everything to me.