Kirsten unhooked her knee from the horn and slid down, her mare taking a sidewise step to enliven the maneuver.
“Is that why you didn’t call upon your fiancé’s escort for this outing?” Kirsten asked, running her stirrup up its leather. “You worry that someday, you’ll come up this lane and find another dead baby?”
Nita got off her horse, for once finding Kirsten’s blunt speech appropriate. “Nobody talks about it, but I delivered that child and I do fear for her siblings.” Babies died with appalling frequency, but a baby stood no chance when the mother resumed drinking shortly after her lying-in.
“I’ve always wondered how the men of this parish engage Addy’s services,” Kirsten said, passing Nita one of the two sacks they’d brought. “Many of those fellows grew up with her, saw her at services, and knew her parents. How can they undertake dealings with a woman whom they knew was once respectable, when they might instead offer her gainful employment?”
“Lady Nita!” Evan stood in the doorway, his little face wreathed in smiles, the blue scarf about his neck and the ends dangling nearly to his knees. “And Lady Kirsten! The baby’s awake, and I’m learning the letters for my name.”
“Letters are a fine thing,” Nita said, entering the cottage. Addy sat before the hearth in the rocking chair, Annie cradled in her lap. “Addy, hello.”
“My ladies.” She rose, bobbing a curtsy with the child in her arms. “Evan, close that door or we’ll all freeze. Mary, wipe your brother’s nose.”
“How is Annie,” Kirsten asked, “and how are you, Addy?”
“Annie is better, and we’re managing.” Managing did not mean the cottage offered any hospitality. Even a cup of tea was an extravagance beyond Addy’s means.
“Managing is the best many of us can do,” Nita said, peering at the baby. “Her color’s good and she’s breathing well.”
Addy kissed the child’s brow, the gesture both defensive and protective. “I’ll not lose this one. Not this one too.”
Kirsten took the sack Nita had been clutching. “Children, I’ll slice you some bread, and there’s butter and jam in these sacks somewhere. Perhaps you’ll help me find them?”
The household afforded no more privacy than it did hospitality, though Kirsten would hardly gossip and the children were absorbed with the prospect of good food.
“I do not judge you, Addy,” Nita said, taking off one glove and running a finger over the child’s cheek. “I certainly do not judge wee Annie.”
The baby rooted against her mother’s shoulder, a normal, healthy infant indication of interest in nutrition, the same interest shared by the other children.
“Come sit with me,” Addy said, moving toward the sleeping alcove.
Nita followed her behind the curtain to a pathetically tidy square of bedding, an extra blanket—one Nita had brought when she’d first learned Addy was carrying—folded at the foot of the bed.
Addy passed over the baby and loosened her jumps in anticipation of nursing her child. When her clothing had been rearranged, Addy put the baby to her breast with the detached efficiency of an experienced mother.
“I want to tell you something, my lady.”
Dread swept up from Nita’s middle, like a cold gust tearing into a cozy parlor from a window slammed open by a winter gale.
“You’re not surrendering this child to the parish,” Nita said. “I’ll not take her to the foundling hospital either.”
The baby latched on greedily, her mother wincing with afterpains. The late countess, a mother of seven herself, had said those were often as painful as the birth pangs, and yet Nita envied Addy her discomfort.
“I’ll not surrender the child to the parish,” Addy said, “though I understand why you’d think that of me. I need paper, Lady Nita, and pencil, for I’ve a letter to write. I hate to ask, when you’ve done so much for me, but I have a cousin in Shropshire who last I heard had longed for children and been unable to have them. Her husband’s a kind man, and she wrote to me even after Mary came.”
That would have been as much as ten years ago, and yet Addy still clung to hope regarding this cousin.
“You’d send the baby to her?” Nita hated that notion, for a newborn needed her mother.
“And Evan. Jacob and Esau are good, sturdy boys, but Evan needs a trade. I won’t want to, and certainly not until the baby is weaned, but I cannot—”
A combination of emotions chased across Addy’s once-pretty features. Determination, resignation, anger, and despair were all made more passionate by the mother-love nature intended every child to know from the moment of birth.
“You cannot what, Addy?” Nita asked. Beyond the curtain, the cottage had grown quiet as the older children consumed the bounty of bread, jam, and butter.
“I cannot continue as I’ve been doing. I can’t go back to it, Lady Nita. You might think I’ve grown accustomed to the shame, to the men, but I haven’t. I want better for my Annie, and for Mary too.”
Did anybody ever grow accustomed to shame? To guilt? “What about their fathers? Might they at least help the children?” Did they feel any shame?
“The only one I know for sure is Mary’s father, and he’s gone. His family won’t help, and Mary’s growing too pretty.”
Nicholas might allow Mary to join the kitchen staff at Belle Maison, but then what of the younger children?
“Mr. St. Michael asked me to give this to you,” Nita said, drawing the ten pounds from her cloak. “It won’t solve any greater problems, but it will give you time to heal from Annie’s birth, to write to your cousin, and consider your options.”
Addy used one finger to break the suction between the infant and the nipple, and switched the child to the second breast.
“That’s from Mr. St. Michael?” Addy asked, looking anywhere but at the money.
“He will not expect anything in return. He and I are to be married, and he once lived as a poor lad would, Addy. This is for the children.”
Nita tucked the money under the single thin pillow at the head of the bed. The pillowcase still had a border of fine white work, suggesting it was a relic of Addy’s trousseau.
“We’ll miss you here, Lady Nita, but he’s a good sort, your Mr. St. Michael.”
Beyond the curtain, Evan quietly asked for more bread and jam. His siblings remained silent in the face of that bold request, but Kirsten must have obliged, for soon a chorus of, “Please, Lady Kirsten, me too!” followed.
“You needn’t miss me,” Nita said. “Mr. St. Michael has said he’ll find us a property in the neighborhood.”
The idea was satisfying, like fresh bread, butter, and jam for a lady’s soul. In that single magnanimous gesture, Tremaine had assured Nita that she could still contribute to her community, still uphold the tradition passed down to her by her own mother.
“I don’t attend services, my lady. Vicar made it clear I was not welcome.”
“I didn’t mean you’d see me only at—”
The baby made a noise suggesting her nappies were in immediate need of attention.
“One end fed, the other end clean,” Addy said with good-humored patience. She passed Nita the baby, did up her bodice, and took Annie back. “I didn’t kill my babies, Lady Nita.”
The stink one small baby could create was prodigious. “I would never accuse you of that.”
“Because you’re too kind. When I know I’m carrying, I try to stay away from the gin and have only the small pints most women drink from time to time. Spirits are dear, and my children need to eat. I drink so I can earn money.”
So Addy could tolerate the attentions of her customers in other words. Nita rose from the bed.
“You needn’t explain this to me, Addy. Many other women would have put their children on the parish and gone to London by now.” Though the parish might not accept these children, notwithstanding that they’d lived their entire lives in Haddondale.
“Nothing but disease awaits me in London, I know that,” Addy sa
id, laying the child in the middle of the bed. “I also know many would rather I leave, but I can’t do that to my children. I try not to drink, and when the babies come, as long as I can, I stay with them.”
“But they must eat, so you resume your activities in the village.”
Addy drew the curtain back, revealing the four older children gathered around the hearth, all eagerly demonstrating their letters for Kirsten.
“And to do that, I drink. I also drink when one of my babies dies, though God knows, heaven must be an improvement over what I can offer them here.”
That sentiment was so miserable, so honest, Nita could not accept it.
“Look at your children,” she said. “They’re warm enough, they have food in their bellies. You have more means to care for them now than you’ve had for months, Addy Chalmers. You will write to your cousin; I will speak to Nicholas. Surely Belle Maison can use a scullery maid or a shepherd boy.”
On the bed behind them, the baby fussed, waving small fists in the air.
“You should burp her,” Nita said, “when her nappy has been tended to.”
“I smell a stinky,” Evan chirped from the hearth.
“I’ll change her,” Mary said, springing up and snatching a clean cloth from a stack on the table.
“They’re good children,” Nita said, “and you’re right to want something better for them. I will be back, Addy, with pencil and paper, at least.”
Jacob, Esau, and Evan were apparently smitten with Lady Kirsten, for when she rose, their little faces fell.
“Time to go?” Kirsten asked a bit too cheerfully.
“If you’re done with your scholars,” Nita replied.
Addy rolled her eyes, but she was smiling too.
Nita mentally added some simple books to the list of provisions she’d bring when next she visited, and soon she and Kirsten were back in their respective saddles, though they rode into the wind on their homeward journey.
“How do you stand it?” Kirsten asked before they’d reached the end of the lane.
“Stand the smell?”
“The smell, the dirt, the hopelessness. Addy isn’t much older than you, and she’ll likely die soon of the pox, cold, starvation, or sheer melancholia. I don’t want to go back there, Nita. I should be kinder, I should be braver, but I don’t want to go back there. Addy is fallen, and those children are doomed.”
Atlas plodded along, head down. The weather seemed to have subdued even Kirsten’s mare.
“I don’t want to go back either.” Nita never wanted to go back, not to a home where babies had died, not to see that infection would soon take a man’s life if he were unwilling to part with his foot, not to offer useless tisanes to an aching old woman who longed for heaven.
“Then why do you do it?” Kirsten wailed, swiping at her cheek with the back of her glove. “Why do you make yourself stare at that mean, smelly cottage, those pinched faces, that dear little baby?”
Kirsten had barely glanced at the baby.
“I thought Addy’s drinking was what had taken the last child from her,” Nita said. “I couldn’t bear for that to happen to wee Annie.”
Kirsten sniffed. “Everybody knows Addy’s drinking cost that child her life.”
“Everybody’s wrong,” Nita said. “I was wrong too. The child’s death sent Addy back to the gin. Babies sometimes die for no reason, and this was apparently one of those times. I want Annie to live. Her mother wants that too.” Like any normal mother would want her child to live, thrive, and have a chance in life.
“While her father wanted to dip his wick,” Kirsten spat, “and then likely stand up with you or me at the assembly. I accompanied you to that household because I was curious, Nita, not because I’m prone to Christian charity. I wanted to see how low Addy Chalmers had fallen, wanted to see what became of a woman without virtue. I’m sorry.”
Nita steered her horse around a frozen puddle rather than observe that Kirsten had seen all of that on her first visit to the cottage.
“Frightening, isn’t it?” Nita said. Frightening and exhausting. “I’ve committed the same lapses in judgment Addy has, and so apparently has Suze. Suze and I suffer no consequences, while Addy has lost all.”
“Not all. She has those children, and—like half the ailing people in this shire—she has you.”
Nita urged Atlas to a trot, anxious to return to her intended. Kirsten was right though. The ailing people in the shire did have Nita, so rather than ride straight for home, first she’d pay brief calls on Alton Horst and Mary Eckhardt.
Fourteen
Tremaine liked Nita very much; he did not like having a fiancée. Old feelings, of hope and anxiety, pleasure and resentment, came with being engaged.
Also a little madness: What if Nita changed her mind? What if she went to the Chalmers cottage and never came back? What if she rode away, fluttering her handkerchief in farewell, and he never saw her again?
Fortunately, after Tremaine had spent a morning staring at correspondence, Lady Nita came striding across the snowy garden, Lady Kirsten beside her. The noon meal featured servings of good cheer along with the ham and mashed potatoes.
At table, Lady Nita had shown to excellent advantage in a gown of green velvet with a lavender fichu and matching shawl. The smiles she’d aimed at Tremaine had been soft and precious.
The hand she’d stroked over his thigh beneath the table had been pure devilment.
Dinner had been more of the same, the time spent with the ladies afterward even worse, until Tremaine had pled the beginnings of a genuine headache. He’d undressed, washed, and then repaired to bed with a treatise on foot rot that did nothing to soothe his tattered nerves.
When somebody tapped on his door, he snarled his response. “Come in.”
“Tremaine?” Nita slipped around the door, her hair in that single golden braid over her shoulder, her attire again a blue dressing gown and gray wool stockings.
He rose off the bed. “I was expecting a footman with a bucket of coal.” Or perhaps George Haddonfield come to flirt.
Nita locked the door, a definitive little snick of metal on metal that might have been a pistol shot, so loudly did Tremaine hear it.
“I’ve missed you, Tremaine St. Michael.”
She tossed that admission at his figurative, betrothed feet, a challenge and a concession all in one. The demented part of Tremaine that waited for her to abandon him was reassured by her words. The male part of him nearly pounced on her in reply.
“We shared two congenial meals today,” he said, prowling closer, “and sang a recognizable duet after dinner.” He stopped immediately before her. “You can’t possibly be missing me.”
Nita went up on her toes to kiss him, bringing Tremaine a whiff of lavender, lemons, and a different sort of madness altogether. With one hand, she cupped his jaw.
With the other, she gently squeezed his cock. “Tell me you missed me too, Tremaine. We’re engaged. Sentimental talk between us is permitted.”
This woman was not bent on talk. “You should not be here, my dear.” Stay. Please stay.
Another squeeze, marvelously firm. “I agree. I should not be here. You should have come to my room. The corridors are chilly, and my feet are cold.”
As Tremaine’s mouth descended over Nita’s, his instincts tossed out a theory: Nita was also plagued by the fear that their vows would never be spoken, that Tremaine would abandon her to putrid sore throats and cursing Quakers, never to have babies or a family of her own.
When he might have plundered, his kiss instead cherished. “Will you allow us to be married by special license, my lady?”
“Stop negotiating, Tremaine. Nicholas told me he acceded to your terms, now you will accede to mine.”
Nita’s list of terms began with another prodigiously thorough kiss and a few sanity-robbing squeezes.
“That,” she said against his mouth, “is for spending the afternoon with your correspondence.”
Tremaine kis
sed her back, then scooped her off her cold feet and deposited her on the bed.
“That is for imperiling my limited skill with dinner conversation, Lady Nita. When we’re married, we will sit at opposite ends of a proper table.”
She hauled him closer by virtue of two fists snatching him by the lapels of his night robe. “Not at breakfast we won’t. Not when we’re dining in private. Not when we’re picnicking by the river.”
Tremaine loved her. Loved her courage and boldness, loved her compassion for those less fortunate, loved her ferocious desire for him.
“You will marry me by special license,” Tremaine said, untying the sash of her night robe, “or you will take pity on a poor, defenseless fiancé and leave my bed.”
The sad, lonely, disappointed part of him still expected her to do just that—to tease him to within an inch of his sanity, then flounce off into the night. The rest of him was glad she’d had the presence of mind to lock the door five minutes ago.
“Make love with me, Tremaine. I told Nicholas I’m insisting on a special license so as not to overshadow Della’s come-out this spring.”
Tremaine paused between untying bow number 884 and yanking open bow number 885.
“Do you have another reason for a special license, my lady?”
Nita ran her hand over his hair, the tenor of her caress shifting their discussion from the verbal battledore of mating adults to an exchange between lovers.
“I’m afraid when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll find that I dreamed you,” she said. “You never visited Belle Maison, or if you did, you rode on your way, having bargained Nicholas’s sheep away from him. I’m nobody’s fiancée, I’ll be nobody’s wife. I’m plain, dependable Lady Nita, and always will be.”
Tremaine curled down to press his cheek against Nita’s, and when he should have confided in her about a small boy with a huge heartache, his orphaned courage dodged behind the prudence of a self-sufficient adult male.
“I’m here, Nita. I’m real, and I’m your fiancé. We will marry whenever you please. The license should be delivered on Monday.”
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