“Dear Lord, how long is this going to take?” Connor asked, nervously pacing the corridor outside of their chamber.
Menzies, James, Malcolm, and Connor’s brothers were there with him looking amused.
“Ye’ve said this so many times before,” James sighed, stretching his bunched muscles as he sat on the floor.
“What are ye grumbling about? Ye were a mess with Katie! Hypocrite,” Connor mumbled. “Besides, I mean it this time. No more!” Connor said anxiously. He heard Maddie scream as another pain gripped her.
“Of course I was. That was her first labor! This is Maddie’s third!”
“It’ll be yer second soon enough.”
James pursed his lips but he grew paler the more he thought about it.
“They never want to let me in, but damn it, I doona care,” Connor said, walking to the door. “She wants me in there, I know it.”
“Easy, Connor. They are just preparing the room and Maddie for the birth. They’ve no intention to keep ye away from her.”
“Good, Father, because no one could keep me away from my wife at this moment,” he said and grimaced at his petite wife’s bellow of pain.
Menzies approached Connor. “She will be alright. She willna perish. My Anne was strong, but Maddie is stronger. She’ll survive,” Menzies said, gripping Connor’s shoulder affectionately.
“I’ve heard this too many times before,” Connor said grumpily.
Menzies and Malcolm both laughed. “Connor, ye still havena learned,” Menzies joked.
“No, it doesna seem he has,” Malcolm added.
“Learned what?” Connor said irritably.
“What a woman wants, she gets, especially when she has her husband wrapped around her small finger.” Menzies chuckled.
“She’s not getting her way again.”
Connor opened the door and ignored the men’s jests and snickers. He slammed the door on Malcolm, cutting his father’s words off when he was saying, “We’ve heard that before-”
The women in the room looked towards Connor and he grunted as he walked towards his stubborn, pain-ridden wife.
“Connor,” she said, smiling at him.
“Damn it, Madeleine. This is the last time,” he said, angrily.
The women laughed and Maddie gifted him with a beautiful, but pained, smile. “Aye, Connor,” she said, knowing it to be false. She knew he knew it for the lie that it was, too, because he couldn’t deny her anything.
Maddie looked towards Katie and Miriam. “I think it’s time you take the girls out. I don’t want little Anne and baby Isobel to be frightened with their mama screaming as I am. Hand them to Father and Malcolm. I think Iain gets a bit nervous around them, with Ginny expecting soon.”
Ginny, Iain’s wife, wobbled over to Maddie and laughed. She placed her hands over her large belly. “He needs the practice. Besides, he hovers like Connor,” she said, and all the women in the room laughed at Connor’s sour look.
“Then Katie, give Isobel to Uncle Iain.”
“I should give her to James. He pretends to be fine, but I see his worry, too. Nay so bad as Connor, but…”
The women laughed again, and Connor rolled his eyes.
When another pain consumed Maddie, she screamed.
“This is the last time, Maddie,” Connor said, his fear for her obvious in his eyes. “I mean it,” he repeated as he had twice before.
She patted his hand and gritted her teeth as the pains came sooner. “Aye, Connor,” she said as she always did.
Minutes later, Maddie gave birth to their third child, a boy. After the women helped clean her up, she rested back on pillows. They left the family alone in their room, after they’d brought in Anne and Isobel. Anne, now three, and Isobel, two, sat on the bed looking at their brother. Maddie placed the baby to her breast trying to make him feed.
Connor sighed. “A boy.”
Maddie smiled at him, radiating angelic, luminescent light. Connor’s breath caught, the same as it had with the births of Anne and Isobel. “I love ye,” he said hoarsely.
She smiled gently at him. “As I love you.” She placed the baby more firmly to the side and the baby latched on. She sighed in relief at his quick learning. “What shall we name him?”
“Douglas?”
She smiled brightly and nodded her head. “That’s a great name. Why not Douglas Malcolm, after both of our fathers?”
“Douglas Malcolm Ramsay,” he said, testing the name.
“We’re running out of names,” she said, placing the baby into his father’s arms once he was satisfied with the warm milk in his belly. “What will we name the next?”
Connor’s head snapped up to look at her as he brought the baby up to burp him. “I told ye, Madeleine, no more. Ye will not get yer way this time…I told ye…” and he went on and on.
She smiled again as she always did, basking in the joy of her overprotective husband, and her beautiful family. She brought her girls closer within her arms, hugging them. Her eyes closed, as Connor continued his lecture. She’d lost count the number of times she’d heard it. She usually mouthed it along with him, which always exasperated him.
Connor’s precious girls looked at him as he ranted and raved about the dangers of having another child. Slowly, they too, began to fall asleep. Connor carefully slipped into bed next to them, with Douglas in his arms.
He smiled down his family.
Anne looked like Maddie, and Isobel had Maddie’s face but Connor’s coloring. Then he looked down at Douglas, whom he thought looked much like himself.
Connor sighed resignedly. He leaned back, bringing them all within his protective embrace.
He didn’t go to sleep for a long, long while.
Nay, he was awake making plans to build a bigger bed and envisioning what their next child would look like.