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"If you don't stop pacing," his father observed, "you will certainly wear yourself out faster than your wife."
His lordship the Marquis of Vidal turned wild eyes on him. "How can I be calm? Why the devil should I be calm?"
"Lady Vidal seems to be taking the matter with tolerable serenity," said the Duke. "I advise you to follow her example."
"That's Mary," Vidal said with admirable economical use of a large and filthy vocabulary. "She'd face her own death with - "
He paled significantly at this invocation of a dread spirit and fell silent. His Grace, reading the paper with less equanimity than might have been supposed, could only be thankful.
"If she dies," Vidal vowed suddenly (his father suppressed a sigh of irritation), "I will never forgive that child."
"Don't be ridiculous." Avon rustled the newspaper back into shape and looked at him. It was an expression that never failed to make Vidal shift uncomfortably. "Do you think I would allow that to happen?"
"Mary dying, or - "
"Either." Avon fixed him with a look. "The best obstetrician in the country is attending her, and if you think I would allow my grandchild to remain in such an environment as you seem set on providing for it, you must finally have gone mad."
"Not mad," Vidal protested.
"Are you afraid, then?"
"No - yes." Vidal, who would never have dared say it, felt the "damn you" was implied. "Don't I have a right to be, sir?"
"A right but not a reason," Avon informed him.
"Don't be cruel, Monseigneur," came his mother's voice from the staircase. She swept down the steps, looking extremely proud. "You have a son, Dominique."
"What about Mary?" asked his lordship, looking as fierce as he could. It didn't succeed, but not for lack of trying.
"Bon," said Léonie and her son was bounding up the stairs so quickly than she had to dodge. Laughing, she turned to her husband. "Our grandchild is very well, also."
"I'm sure he will remember it in a moment," Avon said dryly.
Since Mary was sitting up in bed nursing him, Vidal remembered it even sooner than Avon had thought.
"You don't need to do that," he said brusquely. "That's what the wet nurse is for."
"I daresay," said Mary, her voice unusually quiet, "but you didn't need to drive all the way here in a mad rush, either. That's what the coachman is for."
"Bah," said Vidal, who got his recklessness from both parents. "It would have been too slow."
"A lot of good it would have done us if you'd been killed," Mary began exasperatedly, but her eyes softened unexpectedly. "Vidal, come here. Look at him."
"I don't - " But she raised an eyebrow and Vidal came forward. His eyes widened in surprise.
"He is rather wonderful," Mary agreed with the unspoken sentiment. Vidal swallowed and glanced up at her.
"Mary - "
"We'll discuss his name later," she said, and smiled. "Let's hope he takes after the sensible people in your family."
"I hope he takes after you," Vidal said, much moved. Mary pulled the baby away from her breast and offered him to him. Vidal hesitated.
"He's your son, too," Mary said. The baby wailed a little and kicked her in the ear.
"So he is," said Vidal, sounding pleasantly surprised.