She smiled at him. “And you’ve always been mine.”
{ Chapter 25 }
Her head tilting to the side, Laney’s mouth pulled back on the right side and she gave a slight shake of her head at him.
She could flap her head in admonishment all she wanted at him, Wes wasn’t leaving the room. Wasn’t letting her out of his sight. Never again if he could manage it.
“You’re tall but slight, so I am hoping this walking dress might do?” Lady Troubant waddled into the room with a pile of deep plum fabric in her arms that rested on her protruding belly.
She stepped over to the bed, unfurling the dress and laying it atop the coverlet. “It was the only one with both a train and a hem long enough in the front—I had it altered a few months ago before I was so large.” She pointed at the ripe mound swallowing her midsection. “But the extra length should work well for you. Though I must apologize if the color does not suit—I saw you were wearing black when you arrived. You are in mourning?”
Standing in a dry, but too short chemise by the fire, Laney took a deep breath and nodded. “I am. My brother died recently.”
Jules started. “Oh, of course, your brother was Lord Gruggin?”
“He was.”
“I apologize, I did not make the connection as it was such a flurry when you arrived with Wes—all I could think to do was get you dry and warm.” A slight frown marred Jules’s face and she shuffled across the room to take Laney’s hand, squeezing it. “You do not know how sorry I am for you, Lady Helena. For all that you have suffered.”
Laney’s eyebrows pulled together, surprise mixing with skepticism. “Thank you.”
Jules didn’t release Laney’s hand, squeezing it again. “I will have the maids clean your dress, but in the meantime I will also have some flounces added to several suitable dark dresses that will work well on your frame, so you have choices on what to wear.”
Jules turned away from Laney to move back to the dress on the bed only to jump, her hand flying to land hard on her chest as her eye caught sight of Wes sitting on the far side of the room. “Weston.”
Jules looked from his wet lawn shirt down to his damp wrinkled trousers. “You’re still soaking. How long have you been sitting there?”
“I never left the room, Jules.”
“Oh.” Her look shifted from him to Laney and back to him.
That Wes had stayed in the room while Laney changed out of her sopping clothes did not escape Lady Troubant.
Jules’s mouth quirked to the side. “Then I can assume—”
A sudden pained look shot across Jules’s face, cutting off her words as her hands went to her belly.
She gasped for breath, doubling over as much as her enlarged belly would allow.
Wes leapt to his feet and his hands locked onto her shoulders, making sure she didn’t fall over.
“Jules—what is it?”
It took Jules a full thirty seconds of panting before she could twist her head to look up at Wes. “It is the babe—it has been pondering making an appearance all day, but then you arrived and it was a whirlwind and now I think—I think you need to get my husband.”
Wes nodded. Laney had already moved to Jules’s side, her hands slipping under his to grasp onto the countess’s shoulders for support.
Looking at Wes, Laney motioned with her head to the door.
Thank the heavens—the last place Wes wanted to be was in the room with the wife of one of his closest friends giving birth.
Wes escaped out into the hallway and sprinted down the main corridor and staircase to reach the library where he’d last seen Desmond.
Crashing past the door, he skidded to a stop in the middle of the room. “Des, your wife needs your assistance.”
Desmond shot to his feet, his brow furrowed. “The babe?”
“Yes.”