‘Harriet?’ Ruth touched her arm. ‘The midwife will be back soon with the fresh bedding.’
‘Are you sure, my dear? That you want to give her up?’
‘It’s her only chance of a good life. Please take her.’
Harriet began to tremble, as hope mingled with the grief and despair she’d been feeling since the midwife had taken the limp little body from between her legs. She hadn’t asked to see the baby; she’d seen so many in recent years that she’d felt she couldn’t bear it again, but now she murmured, ‘I want to see it, Ruth. To say goodbye.’
Understanding immediately, Ruth took her baby from Harriet and then fetched the other basket to her. Harriet took a deep breath and then, very gently, slowly folded back the coverlet. It had been a boy and he was much smaller than Harriet’s child, his head and body the length of her hand and his limbs matchstick-thin. But he was perfect, and he was beautiful. Her precious, sweet baby son. ‘I love you,’ she breathed softly. ‘I love you so much. Forgive me. It doesn’t mean I love you any the less, please understand that, my darling.’ She stroked the doll-like face with the tip of her finger, her tears falling on the bald little head. He was already cold.
Ruth, her face awash, murmured, ‘You’re in a better place, little baby, safe and warm in the Almighty’s arms.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Harriet looked up. ‘Really believe it?’
‘Of course. Don’t you?’
‘I did once.’ Before her heart had been ripped out by the roots, over and over again.
‘Believe it, Harriet. You’ll see him again one day.’
Harriet said nothing for a few moments, then carefully replaced the coverlet and handed the basket to Ruth. ‘Put him at the end of your bed.’
It was decided.
Theobald Wynford was not a big man, being only an inch or so taller than his wife, but what he lacked in height he made up for in presence. Broad and compact, with an olive complexion and thick, grizzled hair, he radiated energy and life. His eyes were such a dark brown as to be almost black, and his nose, a large curving protrusion, hinted at Jewish blood somewhere in his ancestry, although it would be a brave man indeed who suggested this out loud. Intolerant and opinionated, he demanded respect and subservience from those beneath him, including his wife. Having broken his right leg in two places when the ship had been driven onto the rocks, he’d drunk himself insensible to dull the pain, on reaching the inn. The nearest town that boasted a doctor was some distance away and, due to the inclement weather and the fact it was nightfall, it had been decided to wait for morning before someone was dispatched to fetch him.
It was this same doctor who was now telling Theobald that he had a daughter. ‘A beautiful child.’ The doctor smiled, his voice hearty. ‘Bit on the small side, but none the worse for it. Your good wife tells me this is the news you have been waiting for, Mr Wynford?’
Theobald nodded, his teeth gritted against the pain as the doctor strapped up his injured leg. He would have preferred a son, but beggars can’t be choosers, and his dried-up stick of a wife wouldn’t be dropping any more bairns. The damned doctors had made that plain when this last pregnancy had been confirmed.
‘It will be two weeks or so before your wife’s fit to travel, but I dare say that won’t bother you too much, in view of your good news.’ Having finished his ministrations, the doctor straightened. ‘I’m sure they will make you as comfortable as possible here – they’re good folk.’
Good folk? Theobald’s face spoke volumes. This was a wretched, grubby little inn in a wretched, grubby little village where the stink of fish permeated everything. His wife and the young girl who was also expecting a baby had been given the only spare room in the place. Where was he expected to sleep?
The doctor had no trouble discerning his patient’s thoughts, and his voice held a note of warning when he said, ‘Two weeks, Mr Wynford – unless you want to put your wife’s life and that of your daughter in jeopardy. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Quite clear.’ Jumped-up little upstart!
‘Good. Your wife has been through quite an ordeal, Mr Wynford.’
So had he! Theobald adjusted his aching leg. ‘I understand arrangements have been made to transport the remaining passengers and crew out of here later today, and I intend to avail myself of that. I shall find a hotel in the nearest town and wait there until my wife and child are able to leave.’
‘As you wish.’ Theobald’s voice had been curt, and the doctor’s was equally so. He glanced round the crowded room of the small inn, where folk were sitting or standing as best they could. Apart from a few broken bones and two cases of mild concussion, the only serious injuries seemed to be an elderly lady who had damaged her back and a young man who had been unconscious for hours. The innkeeper and his wife had given up their own bedroom to the old lady, and the young man was stretched out on a settle on the other side of the room, where a couple of the passengers were keeping an eye on him. It hadn’t escaped the doctor’s notice that Theobald had the best chair in the place, positioned close to the warmth of the fire, even though several ladies – one of whom had a broken ankle – had need of a seat.
Bringing his gaze back to Theobald, the doctor said shortly, ‘I shall return tomorrow to examine Mrs Wynford. Here is my card. Once you are established in the town, let me know and I’ll visit with an update on your wife, Mr Wynford. And I can check that leg while I’m about it.’
No doubt, and charge a pretty penny for his services too, Theobald thought. Damned doctors cost a fortune. Quacks and charlatans, the lot of ’em. Keeping his thoughts to himself, he merely inclined his head.
‘I presume you would like to see your daughter before you leave? I will see that she is brought to you. It would be difficult for you to negotiate the narrow stairs to your wife’s room with that leg. And now, if you will excuse me, there are other people needing my attention.’
Theobald’s gaze followed the doctor as the man made his way across the room, but his thoughts were elsewhere. A child – a daughter. So Harriet had finally managed it. He had waited long enough, damn her. He had willed her to go full-term with this one; had willed her bony, unattractive body to provide him with an heir, a son in his own image. But she hadn’t gone full-term and the child wasn’t a boy, but a girl. He raised his hand to his face, touching his nose. The Wynford appendage didn’t sit too well on the female of the species; his two sisters had been proof of that. His mother had been a pretty woman, but he and his sisters had taken after his father; the Wynford genes were strong. Still, no matter. His father had virtually bought husbands for Amanda and Susannah, providing them with dowries that had proved sufficiently enticing. He could do the same with his daughter, but in her case there would be a stipulation to the man who took her as wife: he must take her name also, and relinquish his own, if he wanted to inherit the estate. The Wynford name would carry on – nothing mattered more than that.
At this point in his thinking he checked himself. The child wasn’t yet twenty-four hours old and was small into the bargain, coming early, as it had. It might yet still go the same way as the others, if it was sickly.
And then, as if in answer to the fear that had beset him, he became aware of the buxom figure of the innkeeper’s wife at his elbow. ‘You wanted to see the baby, sir? Here she is, and a prettier little one you couldn’t wish for.’
She bent down, depositing in his lap the tightly wrapped bundle she was holding. His arms instinctively closed around the cocoon and he stared down into the tiny face, which was all that was visible. He had had no real experience of babies, but if he’d had to voice an opinion about them, it would be that to him they all looked the same – usually bald and unattractive. He had never understood the female mind that cooed and twittered about how sweet and charming infants were; and his sisters’ children had been positively ugly. But this one . . . He examined the minute features under a shock of black hair. This one was actually pretty. Amazing! He smiled to himself. Especially in view of her pa
rents. But perhaps she would take after his mother? Whether she did or didn’t, he wasn’t sorry she had escaped the Wynford nose.
The baby gave a yawn, revealing pink little gums, and then opened her eyes as she wriggled against the constrictions of the blanket. One small hand forced its way out of the folds of material and then caught hold of one of Theobald’s fingers, in a surprisingly firm grip. ‘She’s strong,’ he breathed, almost to himself.
‘Oh yes, sir, she might be small, but she’s a survivor, this one.’ The innkeeper’s wife nodded cheerily. ‘Makes all the difference if they’re a fighter, when they’re born before time.’
The baby was looking at him, and he could swear her great eyes were filled with curiosity and interest. Now that she was awake she seemed very alert, but peaceful, not squawking as his sisters’ babies seemed to do constantly. He felt a thrill of ownership shoot down his spine.
‘Shall I give your wife a message, sir?’ the woman said, bending down and picking up the baby again.
Theobald considered his reply. He was disappointed the child was not a boy, but, having seen the infant, he was pleased enough with the look of her and, as the innkeeper’s wife had said, she seemed a fighter. Harriet could have done worse. ‘Tell my wife I want the child named Esther, after my mother, and give her my good wishes for a speedy recovery.’
The innkeeper’s wife looked somewhat askance. ‘And the little one?’ she pressed. ‘What shall I say you think about her?’
Theobald settled back in his chair and reached for the tankard of ale at his elbow. ‘Say that she’ll do,’ he said shortly.
Chapter Three
Harriet and Ruth were to look back and see the two weeks that followed Esther’s birth as a time of bitter-sweet joy. Harriet was grieving the loss of her tiny baby son, but was filled with thankfulness at the gift Ruth had given her; and for her part, Ruth begrudged even an hour spent in sleep, because she needed to cherish every moment with her daughter, before she was taken away to her new life. The two women often talked long into the night, but although Ruth told Harriet about her family, and the pride they felt at having risen from rags to riches, after her grandparents had emigrated to America from Ireland at the height of the potato famine in 1850, she said nothing about Michael. Harriet, fearing the subject was too painful, asked no questions, but wondered much. It was clear the two young people had loved each other, and it seemed too cruel to deny them their happiness. But through their misfortune she had been given a pearl beyond price: her precious baby girl.
The weather added to the sense that the three of them were removed from the real world. Since the day of the shipwreck, wild November storms had battered the Welsh coast unmercifully, the days dark and gloomy, with unremitting rain and sleet. The wind howled like a banshee, shaking the little leaded panes of glass in the windows of the inn until the women felt sure they would shatter. But inside their room, all was snug and warm. The fire sent flickering shadows over the beamed ceiling and illuminated their faces as they tended to the baby, each of the women wishing these days could last forever. But all too soon the time came when they had to depart – Harriet bound for the north-east of England with Theobald, and Ruth back to America.
The weather had turned colder in the last day or two, and on the day of departure they awoke to a hard frost, the window so thick with ice they could not see out. Before they had finished breakfast the odd desultory snowflake was wafting in the air, but neither Ruth nor Harriet was concerned with the weather. Both women had slept fitfully, and in the middle of the night Harriet had heard Ruth trying to stifle the sobs that were shaking her body, and she had got up and gone to her. After that there had been no sleep for either of them and it had been a relief that Esther, being so small, demanded feeding every two hours.
Now they were dressed for the journey, and Harriet was giving Esther her last feed before the carriage was due to arrive. Miss Casey had been staying at a bed-and-breakfast just outside the town where Theobald had resided, and was due to arrive later in the morning.
Ruth watched Harriet, with her own breasts aching, although they had been tightly bound to dry up the milk for the last days and had stopped leaking moisture now. But the ache was in her heart.
Once she had finished feeding the baby, and without asking Ruth, Harriet placed the infant in the other woman’s arms. They had both been dreading this day, and Harriet felt wretched at Ruth’s distress.
Tears trickling down her face, Ruth touched with her lips the baby’s eyes, her mouth, her cheeks, her little hands, kissing each tiny finger and then stroking her silky black hair. ‘I love you,’ she whispered softly to her. ‘I’ll always love you – always – although I can’t be with you. Forgive me for letting you go, but it’s the only way.’ A sob caught in her throat and she looked up at Harriet, who was crying too. ‘How am I going to bear it?’ she whispered brokenly. ‘Oh, Harriet, what am I going to do?’
Harriet sat down beside her then and took Ruth in her arms, the two of them swaying in an agony of shared grief above the sleeping baby in her mother’s embrace. Harriet didn’t try to speak, for there were no words to say after all. Nothing could make this easier for Ruth.
‘Will . . . will you let her second name be Joy?’ Ruth murmured after a while. ‘That’s what I want to give her, in placing her in your care: joy.’
‘Of course.’ Harriet hugged her. ‘And I’ll make sure she knows nothing but love and happiness, Ruth. I promise.’
‘I know.’ Ruth rested her head on Harriet’s shoulder for a moment and then, as they heard footsteps on the stairs outside the room, she stiffened.
The innkeeper’s wife poked her head round the door after knocking. ‘Your husband’s here, dear,’ she said to Harriet.
‘Tell him I’m coming in a minute.’
‘Right you are.’
Alone again, they stood up, Ruth smothering the sleeping baby in kisses and beginning to sob uncontrollably.
‘I can’t leave you like this,’ Harriet said through her own tears.
‘You can. You must.’ Ruth wrapped the baby’s blanket more securely around her tiny shape, and then thrust the little cocoon at Harriet. ‘Take her, now, while I can still do this. Please, Harriet, help me do what’s right for her.’
They embraced one last time and then Harriet walked to the door with the baby cradled in her arms, opening it and leaving the room without looking back. Ruth felt her heart being torn from her soul with a pain so intense she had to ram her fist into her mouth to stop herself from screaming, and she began to panic. She couldn’t do it – she couldn’t let her baby go. She would run away from them all, grab her baby and disappear somewhere. Michael, oh Michael, why aren’t you here? Why didn’t you follow me and find me somehow?
Choking on her tears, she paced the room, wringing her hands together, before opening the door and going onto the landing. She wouldn’t run after Harriet and her baby, she knew that, but in the last moments something had broken and torn deep inside her and it would never heal, no matter how many years she continued to live.
She couldn’t see the main room of the inn from the small square of landing, but she could hear voices, and suddenly the panic was strong again. She had to have one last glimpse of her baby; she had to see her go.
She ran back into the room and began to struggle to force the frost-rimed window open, pushing with all her might until at last the ice splintered and the window sprang wide. Peering out, she saw Harriet being helped into the waiting carriage by the coachman, and caught a glimpse of Theobald inside as he leaned forward to take the baby. And then the horses’ hooves were clattering on the cobbles and the carriage moved out of sight, and there was only the snow falling thickly now out of a laden sky . . .
Immediately she was settled in the carriage with a thick rug over her knees, Harriet reached for the baby, smoothing the blanket from her little face. She glanced at Theobald and saw that his gaze was fixed on the child in her arms. ‘She’s a bonny little thing,’
he said softly. ‘I’d forgotten how bonny.’
‘Yes, she is.’ The observation unnerved her; it was as though he was questioning the baby’s parentage, but Harriet knew it was her guilty conscience putting a hidden meaning in his voice, and this was confirmed when he said with evident pride, ‘She takes after my mother. Can you see the resemblance?’
She had never met Theobald’s parents, for they had both died some years before he had married her, but there was a large portrait of them in the hall at home, and her husband was the very image of his father. Taking a deep, steadying breath and trying to keep the tremor out of her voice, she said, ‘It was the first thing I noticed about her.’
Gratified, Theobald leaned back in his seat, his injured leg stretched out in front of him. After a moment or two he cleared his throat. ‘I meant to ask before, what did – what was her name? Mrs Flaggerty? – what did she have?’
‘Ruth Flaggerty, yes. She had a little boy.’ Harriet didn’t know if he had been told about the stillbirth, but was banking on the fact that he hadn’t bothered to ask about Ruth. Self-centred to the core, Theobald rarely concerned himself with anything that didn’t directly impinge on him, and in this instance it would work to her advantage. If he knew one of the babies had died, he might begin to wonder.
Theobald nodded. ‘Damned funny time for her to come and visit relatives in England, wasn’t it? And that companion of hers – a grim-looking woman.’
‘I understand the visit had been arranged for some time.’
‘Still damned funny, and her husband not accompanying her seems fishy to me. Did she say anything about him?’
‘Only that she loved him very much and was missing him.’
Theobald had lost interest in the conversation. Adjusting his position on the hard seat, he muttered, ‘This leg is giving me gyp. Can’t sleep for more than a couple of hours, even with the pills the quack gave me. Why we ever made the damned trip to see your sister, I don’t know. I won’t be gallivanting abroad again, I can tell you. And them Americans – damned funny ideas some of ’em have got. No, give me England every time.’
The Colours of Love Page 2