My Last Duchess

by James, Eloisa

  “I’ll go,” Wick said. “I’m the boy’s uncle. You’ll have to force Kate to give him up. I’ll walk him while the two of you nap for a couple of hours. Tell her that. I will walk up and down in the portrait gallery.”

  Gabriel looked up, his eyes heavy. “She’ll never accept it.”

  Wick pulled him to his feet. “Assert yourself, Gabe. Remember, you’re the master of the house, the paterfamilias, king of the castle, and all the rest of that rubbish. Grab your son, hand him to me, and take your poor wife off to get some proper sleep. You’d better go to your old chambers up in the tower because she won’t be able to hear Jonas cry from there.”

  When Wick let go of his arm, Gabriel actually tottered.

  “How long has it been since you slept?” Wick demanded, taking hold of his arm again and hauling him along the corridor.

  “Exactly how old is Jonas? I’ve lost track.”

  “Not even a fortnight. You need to get yourself and Kate to sleep,” Wick said, pushing him through the nursery door. A moment later, he was holding his nephew.

  “I’ll sleep for one hour, then I’ll be back,” his sister-in-law stated. She was a beautiful woman, but just at the moment she resembled one of those weird sisters in the Shakespeare play. Wick couldn’t remember which play it was, but there were three of them in the production he’d seen, and Kate would have fit right in. Her eyes were red, her face drawn, and grief and fear vibrated in the air around her. “He just had some milk . . . at least I think he did.”

  “More than an hour,” Gabriel said firmly, pulling her toward the door.

  She managed to stop her husband in the doorway. “Don’t let anyone else touch him,” she told Wick in a threatening tone.

  He nodded.

  “And whatever you do, if that doctor comes, don’t let him give the baby anything. I’m certain his dose made Jonas sicker, and he wanted to try opium. I know that’s a bad idea.”

  “I already forbade him entrance to the castle,” her husband said, managing to get Kate into the hallway.

  As the sound of their footsteps receded, Wick looked down at the baby, and Jonas looked back at him. Then Jonas opened his mouth so wide that Wick could view his interesting lack of teeth and screamed until his face turned red.

  Wick’s ears hurt. But something hurt in his chest too. Jonas looked thinner now than he had when he was born. His eyes were sunken, and there seemed to be a little less fire in his cry. He looked like a wizened old man, as if he’d lived an entire life in a week or two.

  Wick swore under his breath and set off down the corridor, then down a flight and into the portrait gallery. After he had walked for five minutes, Jonas settled down some. He turned his face against Wick’s chest and sobbed more quietly. He curled his finger around Wick’s rather than flailing it in the air.

  “Just don’t die,” Wick found himself whispering. “Please don’t die.”

  Jonas gave an exhausted sob.

  Wick walked for another half hour or so, up the portrait gallery, out into the corridor, around the bend, back down the corridor, back into the portrait gallery . . . at last, Jonas slept.

  Sometime later, footsteps sounded in the stone corridor behind him. “Mr. Berwick, oh, Mr. Berwick,” panted one of the footmen, as Wick turned toward him. “My apologies, Mr. Berwick, but Mrs. Apple says that the first of the new nursemaids has arrived, and she’d like you to be there for the interview.”

  “How can that be?” Wick whispered. “I sent off to Manchester only yesterday.”

  The footman had just realized what—or rather who—Wick held in his arms. He started walking backwards on his toes. “Don’t know,” he whispered back. “Shall I tell her you’re unavailable?”

  Wick looked down at Jonas. The baby was turned against his chest, a fold of Wick’s shirt clutched in one tiny hand. “I can’t stop walking,” he said. “Send the woman up here. Mrs. Apple can see her first, then I will.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Wick had just reached the far end of the gallery for the twentieth or perhaps fortieth time and was turning around to walk back the other way when the door opened and the nursemaid entered. His first thought was that she was too young.

  He had sent a footman to Manchester with explicit instructions to find experienced nannies and doctors, at least two of each. The baby didn’t need a pretty bosom to nestle against: he needed someone who could figure out what was wrong with him.

  But Wick walked back across the room, maintaining the same even stride with which he’d lulled Jonas to sleep. The girl didn’t meet his eyes; she was staring at the baby.

  “Your name and your experience with children?” he asked briskly, thinking to get the whole thing over within two minutes. There were strands of bright hair peeking out from the girl’s cap, and her eyes were moss green. Plus, she had an entirely delectable bosom . . . she would never do. She’d have the footmen at fisticuffs within the week.

  She didn’t seem to hear his inquiry. Instead, she came straight up to him and peered at Jonas’s face. “He’s wanting water, that’s for certain.”

  “Babies don’t drink water,” Wick said, and never mind the fact that he’d never held a baby before this one. “Babies drink milk.” Her ignorance of this obvious truth was another strike against her employment.

  “If they have the collywobbles, they need water as well.”

  “How much experience have you had with infants?” He could see the nape of her neck as she peeked more closely at his nephew. It was delicate, pale, and translucent, like the finest porcelain. “Have you been a nursemaid for long?” Then, annoyed by the fact he was looking at her neck, he added, “You’re far too young.”

  “I don’t have much experience, but what I have is the right sort,” she said, looking up at him, finally. He mentally revised his assessment of her eyes: they were not the green of moss, after all, but the green of the sea on a stormy day.

  Wick felt an altogether uncomfortable warmth in the area of his groin. He’d be damned if he would line up with the footmen to ogle one of his fellow servants.

  He’d accepted long ago that ladies were not for him. True, he was the son of a grand duke, albeit a grand duke in far-off Marburg. But he had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Raised in a castle and yet a bastard—which meant that he couldn’t marry anyone of respectable birth. And he was too educated to settle for a milkmaid who wouldn’t mind his questionable parentage.

  “What sort of experience is the right experience?” he asked.

  But she had bent near again and was studying the baby’s face. “I don’t like the look of him,” she said, pursing her lips. They were rose-colored, those lips.

  Wick looked past her lips to Jonas. “At least he’s sleeping,” he said. “He cried all night.”

  “That’s because of the pain,” she said. “You’d better give him to me. We have to get some water in him, first thing, then we’ll deal with the milk.”

  Before he knew what was happening, she slipped her hands around the baby and lifted him deftly out of Wick’s arms. “Here! You can’t do that,” he said, alarmed at the very thought of Gabriel or, God forbid, Kate knowing that he’d allowed a stranger to take the baby.

  But the girl—

  “What did you say your name was?” he asked.

  She finished tucking the fold of the blanket under Jonas’s face before she looked at him. “I didn’t,” she said. “I am Philippa Damson.”

  “Like the jam?” Wick asked. She was sweet as jam, and that part of her name suited her. He’d like to lick—

  He wrenched his mind away.

  “Exactly like the jam,” she said, turning toward the door. “Now come along, Mr. Berwick. This baby needs water immediately.”

  Wick stared after her for a moment.

  At the door, she looked over her shoulder. “You have to show me to the kitchen.”

  “Kitchen?” he echoed, trying to figure out how to get Jonas from her arms without waking him. Gabriel would n
ever forgive him. He didn’t even want to think about how Kate would react. “Look, you must give the baby back to me. I promised His Highness that I, and I alone, would hold Jonas—that is, the young princeling.”

  “He needs water,” Miss Damson said. “Or he will die.” She looked down again. “I think there’s a chance he won’t live through the night, actually. Babies die awfully quickly if they don’t drink enough.”

  Wick walked forward and pushed the door open before her. “Straight to the end of the corridor and down two flights.”

  When they reached the kitchen, nine or ten heads swiveled almost in unison. The castle’s kitchen was a vast space with a stone floor. Worktables were arrayed around the room, scrubbed to a fare-thee-well, and covered with copper pans of all sizes and shapes. It was full of people, as always: the cook, three kitchen maids, a dairymaid, and a couple of scullery maids working at the sink to one side.

  They all snapped upright at the sight of Wick, except for Madame Troisgros the cook, who considered herself his equal, if not his better. The already complex hierarchy of castle staff was further complicated by Wick’s relationship to the prince. Even had Gabriel (who showed no such inclination) wished to keep their fraternity a secret, one of his elderly aunts regularly took pleasure in shocking polite company by announcing that she preferred Wick to his brother Gabriel.

  By rights, a young nursemaid would find herself quite far below the cook, though certainly above the dairymaid. And yet Philippa Damson walked into that kitchen like the lady of the house. She unerringly put her eye on the cook, a lady twice as broad and four times as fierce as anyone else in the room.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?” snapped Madame Troisgros.

  Without pausing for breath, Miss Damson broke into charming, if urgent, French. As all could see, she had the little prince in her arms. He needed water, but it must be special water, water boiled, then cooled. And she also needed a cloth, a clean linen cloth, to be boiled in a different pot of water, then cooled.

  Madame Troisgros had the eyes, Wick thought, of a rabid French weasel, if such a thing existed—small and rather crazed-looking. As she opened her mouth, undoubtedly to refuse, Miss Damson walked across the kitchen to her.

  “Regardez,” she said, drawing back the cover that protected the prince’s face.

  Confronted by that tiny, exhausted face, Madame Troisgros flinched and pointed with her ladle to a chair. Miss Damson obediently sat down. A few minutes later, an immaculate piece of linen was shown to Miss Damson for her approval, then carefully placed in a pot of boiling water.

  Even more servants began drifting into the kitchen, although the room remained as silent as a church as everyone strove to keep Jonas asleep. The housekeeper appeared and hovered in the background; two or three footmen had apparently deserted their posts in the front hall as they now stood quietly against the walls. The knife boy had stopped sharpening his wares and was sitting on a three-legged stool, his mouth open.

  “Stop hovering!” Miss Damson ordered Wick in a low voice. “Babies don’t like nervous influences.”

  “Gabriel might have woken; he might be searching for us in the gallery,” Wick said, entirely forgetting that he generally referred to his brother as His Highness in public. Miss Damson was that sort of woman. She made a man lose his head.

  “Why not send a footman to stand outside the prince’s bedchamber so as to inform him of our location when he wakes? Meanwhile, you’ll have to take the baby while I wash my hands,” she said, and slipped Jonas back into Wick’s arms with no more fuss than if she were transporting a pudding.

  To Wick, Jonas looked worse than he had even an hour before. The skin around his eyes was the deep blue of a bruise. His little nose stood out from his face, as if the skin had receded around it. He was an extraordinarily unattractive baby, which did nothing to assuage the feeling of pure grief and panic Wick felt at seeing his nephew in this state.

  “It’s not too late, is it?” he heard himself saying. Everyone in the kitchen froze.

  Miss Damson had washed her hands, and was now wringing out the cloth and dipping it in the pot of boiled, cooled water. “Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “Sit down.”

  Wick thought a bit dazedly about the fact that he never took orders except from his own brother, but he sat. She bent over and slipped the corner of the wet cloth into the baby’s mouth. He sucked reflexively, realized it wasn’t milk, and let out a pained cry. Quick as she could, she dipped the cloth again, returned it to his lips. Over and over and over.

  It was a messy business. Within minutes the baby was wet, Wick was wet, and Miss Damson’s dress was splashed with water. But Jonas kept swallowing, and soon he was crying only between sucks.

  “Do you know if he has had normal bowel movements?” Miss Damson asked.

  Wick blinked. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  She turned to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Apple, could you perhaps help with my question?”

  “Lily’s the one you want,” Mrs. Apple said. With a nod, she dispatched a footman to fetch the appropriate maid.

  “You can’t mean that the baby merely needs water,” Wick said. “One of the nursemaids who was here last week said he had sciatic gout.”

  “Gout? Most unlikely. I think it’s colic,” Miss Damson said. “Surely a doctor has seen the child?”

  “Yes, but he didn’t hold out much hope. He said Jonas was too ill for colic. First, he thought the baby had an intestine stone, then he suggested a quartan ague. Yesterday, he tried an emetic to clean out his guts, but it made Jonas vomit, and after that the princess ordered the doctor out of the castle.”

  “She was absolutely right,” Miss Damson observed. “The child needs more fluids, not less.”

  “I sent off to Manchester for other doctors. Someone must have some medicine they can give him. The doctor planned to try Dalby Carmel next, something like that.”

  “Dalby’s carminative,” Miss Damson said with obvious disdain. “And I suppose castor oil as well.”

  “His mother would be able to say more precisely. I believe he also suggested opium, but Her Highness disagreed.”

  “No medicine will work,” she announced, dipping the cloth back in the pot once more.

  There was a collective gasp from the kitchen staff. “No medicine,” Wick repeated, his heart speeding up. “But you said—”

  “It’s simple colic,” Miss Damson said. “I’ve seen it before. There’s something about his stomach that doesn’t like milk at the moment. But he won’t die of it, not unless he goes without water or milk too long.”

  At that moment, the door to the kitchen burst open and a wild-eyed apparition surged through. “How could you, Wick?” Kate cried, running to Jonas.

  Miss Damson plucked Jonas from Wick’s arms and turned to the princess, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She put the baby straight into his mother’s arms. “Your son is going to be all right. You see? He’s not crying.”

  Kate’s mouth was a tight line, and she glared as if this interloper were part of an invading army. “Just who are you?” she snapped.

  “She’s your new nursemaid,” Wick intervened. He had already decided that Miss Damson’s calm command of the situation was just what they needed. “She gave Jonas water, Kate. And he drank it all up. I think he looks better already.”

  “He’s wet,” Kate cried, horrified. “Now he’ll catch a cold. He’ll—he’ll—” Clutching her baby, she darted from the room without another word.

  Miss Damson looked unsurprised. Rather than running after her new mistress, she turned to Madame Troisgros and, in French, thanked her for her help. Then she switched to English and thanked everyone else in the kitchen. And, finally, she had a detailed discussion with Lily, the maid in charge of the nursery, about exactly what sort of deposits Jonas had been making in his nappies.

  “Are they green?” she was asking. “And how do they smell?”

  She didn’t sound like someone
who seemed barely old enough to have her first position. Wick couldn’t stop looking at her, though: at the rose color of her lips and the way her gown, where it was wet, clung to her bosom. It was a very nice bosom.

  Very nice.

  Wick glanced around the room and discovered that the footmen—not to mention the gaping knife boy—had noticed the same fact. With a jerk of his head, he sent them scurrying out of the kitchen.

  Miss Damson, meanwhile, was giving Lily instructions about taking boiled water to the nursery three times a day. She didn’t sound like any nursemaid Wick had ever seen, not that he’d seen many.

  Maybe that was what housekeepers sounded like when they were young. But that idea didn’t fit either.

  She was a lady, Wick thought suddenly. Quality. He was amazed he hadn’t seen it immediately, but he knew why: because he wasn’t English. He’d bet everything he owned that she had a lady’s voice except that he wasn’t quite good enough with the language to tell the difference.

  But then he listened closely and he realized he could tell the difference. After all, he and Gabriel had gone to Oxford back when they were striplings, before Gabriel took over this castle. Wick recognized the sound of her voice, the way it sounded at once sweet and a little sassy . . . that was a lady’s voice, not a nursemaid’s voice.

  He had a cuckoo in his kitchen.

  In her agitated state, Kate hadn’t noticed anything untoward, obviously. And Madame Troisgros had been far too glad to find someone who spoke French to consider the nursemaid’s origins. With Lily dismissed, the cook was now regaling Miss Damson with tales of the execrable vegetables she was forced to cook with, monstrous tubers fit only for pigs, or cochons. And Miss Damson was nodding and sympathizing . . .

  Like a lady. A lady who spoke French, who had undoubtedly been brought up to a good marriage.

  Wick became aware that water was running down the inside of his calf into his shoes. There was something about Miss Damson that made even a man with wet breeches hungry. Lustful. Those emotions that good servants could have only for each other—and never, ever, for the ladies they attended. Wick certainly never allowed himself that sort of inconvenient desire.