dated to september 20th

[bennet_beauty]

After so long of a wait, Jane found that the actual event rushed onwards. It seemed as though her small child was not willing to come out. It seemed as though Lydia would celebrate her fourth birthday before Richard ever established the date of his own birth. And then, suddenly, it was as though God above had challenged her and deemed that she

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[niceofyoutoask]

Back home, Lipton would know his place in this process. He would be waiting outside, likely pacing around and wearing a hole in the floor, getting infrequent updates by a uniformed nurse. It was what men did in West Virginia in the 1940s - but this was a far different time and place, and Lipton had read enough baby books to be far more informed on the process since day one than he ever would have been before. He had a natural tendency to worry, to plan, to evaluate options and eventualities and contingencies. It would have driven him crazy to be relegated to a waiting room, but he wouldn't have questioned it. Before the war, he never drank and he never smoked. On the night before D-Day, after the cancelled jump and everyones' nerves were on end, he wasn't mindlessly chain smoking, or swigging from a flask - he was studying

[bennet_beauty]

Jane was beaming as radiantly as she ever thought was possible at the sight of her dear Carwood and her precious children all within arm's reach. It was something that she felt blessed by, for it was something that she had doubts she might achieve. There had been times when she thought she might die an old maid, but life had changed all of that. "Darling," she murmured throatily. "Would you like to hold him while I hold Liddy?"

[niceofyoutoask]

For a moment, Lipton hesitated, consumed with worry that he might do something terribly, horribly wrong. He was a man who had done a lot of things in his twenty-six years, but holding an infant was something entirely new. He may have raised his younger siblings, but the the youngest had been four when his father died - not at all close to this tiny, fragile thing that was his son.

Then he simply nodded, and, awestruck, carefully took their bundled up child from Jane's arms and cradled him against his chest. "Like this?" He asked quietly, mentally running through everything he'd read about supporting a baby's head.

[bennet_beauty]

"Just like that," Jane concurred, arranging the blanket better so that Richard would not fall cold for even a singular moment. There was a great amount of love brimming over her features and she felt, fully, delighted. She was ecstatic to have her family so close at hand and she did not think anything might ever compare. "Are you as awed as I was? When I first had Lydia, I could not believe that I had a child."

[niceofyoutoask]

"He's a little miracle," Lipton murmured, quite honestly, despite everything he now knew about the biological reality. A little perfectly miniature hand slipped out of the blanket, only to be tucked carefully away by Jane, and Lipton smiled softly down at their wonderful creation. "He's perfect. How could we have created something so perfect?"

[bennet_beauty]

Jane could not stop smiling. She would find it far more terrible if it were not a wonderful thing. Instead, she thought that she could smile until the end of time quite happily so. "Well," she softly teased. "You are one of the most handsome men I have ever been privileged to look upon."

[niceofyoutoask]

"How very lucky for me," he said, the seriousness of his tone belied by his soft smile. He turned slightly to press a brief kiss to her lips, holding the baby steady in his arms. "But I think the credit lies with his beautiful mama. Especially for that blonde hair!"

[bennet_beauty]

Jane leaned up to press a kiss to his cheek, smoothing her palm over the skin as she finished in order to clean up any mess. "Babies are normally blond upon birth," she admitted. "My sisters and I all were, but only my hair remained the colour," she mused. "I do think it will stay, though."

"Well, Carwood? Is it everything you imagined?"

[niceofyoutoask]

He remembered reading something of the sort, but based on her and Lydia's hair, he'd figured it was a pretty good bet that RIchard's hair would stay the same as well. His own hair was an unobtrusive brown, and hopefully not much of a threat. He just hoped his son didn't inherit his receding hair line - and that thought alone was enough to bring renewed joy to the expression on his face. His son.

"That and more." He said decisively, satisfied.

[bennet_beauty]

Jane was most delighted to witness Carwood bonding with Richard. She sat up slowly, ensuring that Lydia was well-settled, before she eased up to her knees and pressed a slow kiss to Carwood's brow, her eyes falling shut as she did. "Thank you for not disappearing," she whispered. "Stuart, he left when Liddy was so little."

[niceofyoutoask]

It wasn't something he could promise, not with the island working the way he did... but he had everything he'd ever wanted, right in this bed with him. "I won't," he said anyway, and hoped with as much intensity as he could that the island wouldn't make a liar out of him, not with a wife he loved more than anything else, not with two small children he would do anything to protect, not when he was finally happy.

[bennet_beauty]

"Even if you do go, I will know you didn't do it on purpose," she assured him, hitching up Lydia so that the young girl was properly in Jane's lap, quite thoroughly asleep as she pressed her cheek to Jane's shoulder. "He's quite fussy," she observed, with a concerned line to her brow. "I wonder if that will continue."

[niceofyoutoask]

Lipton looked down at the bundle in his arms, the little boy shifting restlessly about, even in sleep. "Liddy didn't do the same?" He'd have thought that was normal, given how high-spirited he remembered his own siblings being when they were little. Then again, Lydia was the most well-behehaved toddler he'd ever seen, so perhaps not.

[bennet_beauty]

"She was very calm. Abnormally so," she reassured Carwood, for Richard was acting more like young babies were supposed to (according to all that she had heard and read). "Oh, Duckie," she exhaled with great fondness, her eyes upon the young baby. "He is so beautiful, I hardly know how to take my eyes away from him. I do know from experience that this, too, will diminish, but I am afraid I do not wish it to."