Lady of Milkweed Manor

by Julie Klassen

  “Then, I shall look forward to seeing you again as well,” Kendall said gallantly, offering another brief bow.

  When they had bid Richard Kendall farewell and were walking alone again, Charlotte asked quietly, “Why did you not tell him I was your daughter’s nurse?”

  “I did not think you would want me to. Did you?”

  “No, but he will find out for himself when he comes for dinner. Then I shall feel doubly foolish.”

  “I am not sure I follow. . . . But I am awfully sorry to have upset you.”

  “I should not have minded otherwise.”

  “Otherwise?”

  “Do you not see? He knows of the other Charlotte. Charlotte of Kent. The vicar’s daughter. The young lady you once spoke highly of . . .”

  “But I still—”

  “But I am not that person anymore,” Charlotte interrupted him.

  “And now I shall have to see your friend’s opinion of me undergo that awful transformation.” Charlotte sighed. “I shall have to fall all over again.”

  Sally could not rouse the child. She removed his blanket, tickled his bare feet, stroked his cheek. No response. She picked him up gently, hoping the movement would wake him. He lay limp, his little arms drooping down and swaying as she swayed, bouncing as she bounced. She went to the pitcher and basin on the dressing table and dipped her fingers in, rubbing the cool water on his forehead and neck. Nothing.

  Sally groaned. “And I haven’t even given you the stuff yet.” She had planned to give him one last feeding, with the laudanum, before she left, but the groggy biter couldn’t be bothered to wake up. She thought of getting dressed first, putting on the blue frock as Mary suggested, but she feared Edmund would spit up on it, or worse, that his nappy would leak and spoil it. Could she somehow get the stuff into his mouth without waking him? Then he could just go on sleeping. Shifting him into the crook of her left arm, she picked up the vial on the dressing table. She’d need both hands to uncork it. Setting the vial down, she went to return the child to his crib, then walked back to retrieve the vial. She uncorked it and peered down its narrow shaft. She pulled the silver teaspoon from her pocket—she had snatched it from the tea service on her way upstairs—and poured a bit of the liquid onto the spoon, until she reckoned it was halfway full. Should she try to get the spoon into his mouth? Small though the delicate utensil was, it seemed too large for Edmund’s little buttonhole mouth. Should she put the little vial itself into his mouth? But how, then, would she measure the amount? It would surely spill all over and she’d have to clean that up too before she could sneak out again.

  She stood there with the teaspoon in her hand, debating. The image of Davey’s bonny brown eyes flashed in her memory. Such a handsome man, Davey was. And to think, he admired her! Just do it and be done, she bolstered herself.

  But she hated the thought of letting the baby go hungry for so long. She looked at the mantel clock. She had only a half hour more before she should be on her way. She walked purposely to the cradle, spoon in hand. She looked down at the babe and was surprised to see the child’s eyes open, watching her. Charlotte’s eyes, she thought.

  Daniel watched Lizette’s reflection in the dressing table mirror as she brushed the thick dark hair that fell past her shoulders.

  “And how are you feeling tonight, my dear?”

  “Do you ask as my husband or my physician?”

  “Take your pick. Both are very happy to see you in such good health and spirits.”

  “You seem happy as well, I would say. Happier than I have seen you in some time.”

  He unfastened his collar, grinning. “Why should I not be? I have a beautiful wife I adore, a healthy daughter, a rent-free home by the sea . . .” He leaned down and kissed her cheek.

  “Do not forget the nurse.”

  “Hmm?” he asked, wrinkling his brow.

  “I mean that Annette is so well looked after . . . all through the night.” She smiled, a suggestive lift to her eyebrows. Then she stood and leaned against him. She kissed his cheek, his chin, his mouth.

  He kissed her back. He knew he should be thrilled. Physically, emotionally, he was thrilled. It had been so long. But his mind leapt to the potential consequences, the terrifying possibility of another pregnancy. Another nightmare.

  He pulled gently away and cupped her exquisite face in his hands. He looked at her, relishing, delighting in her contented, loving expression. Before him was the woman he had fallen in love with.

  “Come.” He sat on the bed and took her hand, slowly pulling her to lie next to him. He wrapped one arm around her, holding her tight to his side. With his free hand, he brushed the long dark hair from her face. When her hand began to caress his chest and then move lower, he clasped his hand over hers, stilling its path. He knew from painful experience that speaking of her condition directly would only stir up in his wife a cauldron of defensiveness, denial, and anger.

  “I just want to hold you,” he murmured, bending his neck to kiss the top of her head.

  The truth was much more complicated.

  The practice of dosing young infants with proprietary

  medicines, usually containing opiates,

  increased during the nineteenth century. . . .

  —VALERIE FILDES, W ET N URSING : A H ISTORY

  FROM A NTIQUITY TO THE P RESENT

  CHAPTER 24

  Sally picked up little Edmund, his eyes now open, his drooling little mouth working, showing his pink gums, his soft fair cheeks plump with health. Going a few extra hours without a nursing wouldn’t harm a stout boy like him. She took him to the dressing table and changed him into a dry nappy. Back in her arms, his pleasant expression wrinkled in restlessness as he began rooting against her. Put a bit in his mouth, Mary had said, something like it anyway. Then follow with his feeding. He was definitely ready to nurse now.

  Her thought should have been, finally the little biter’s awake. Now I can give him the stuff, nurse him, and be off for a night o’ fun with Davey. But it wasn’t. Instead she thought of her own Dickie. Had her sister ever done the likes to keep him quiet? She supposed it was possible, but she believed her sister had genuine feeling for the boy. They were relation after all. This boy was no relation to her, so why did she feel such a strong urge to protect him? She thought again of the embroidered blanket she’d stubbornly refused to toss on the rubbish heap. She knew why.

  Sally sighed.

  Still, she hated the thought of disappointing Davey. She longed to see him again. Perhaps if she hurried she could still catch Mary.

  Sally ran down the lane as fast as she could, pressing her arm over her heavy bosom to protect herself from the jarring pace. Mary would be put out with her indeed, for she was a quarter hour late. Ahead, she saw her friend’s shape in the shadows of the moonlit hornbeam tree.

  Mary must have heard her approaching and no wonder, she must sound like a big mule thundering down the hard packed road, eager to win some race.

  “I’d about given up on you,” Mary called. “I was just now heading in without you.”

  “Sorry, Mary.” Sally panted, hands on her knees to catch her breath.

  “I thought I told you to wear the blue,” she said peevishly. “You’re still in that same soiled dress?”

  “I’m not goin’.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not goin’. Here.” She thrust the vial into Mary’s hand, making her take it.

  “Whyever not?”

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  Mary expelled a loud humph, clearly vexed. “But I told you how.”

  “I know.” Sally shook her head, already backing away. “Please tell Davey I am sorry and maybe we can meet up another time.”

  “I shall tell him no such thing. If you don’t come with me right now, Sally, all bets are off. A man like that doesn’t stay unattached for long, and I’ll be hanged if I don’t take a try at him myself.”

  Sally paused, then nodded sadly. “Good-bye then, Mary.�
� She turned and began trotting back toward the house.

  “You’re a bigger fool than I thought,” Mary called after her.

  “Giving up your own chance at happiness to wet-nurse the brat of some stranger what don’t give a farthing about you.”

  The words burned at her ears and heart like stove irons. I am a fool, Sally thought. But still she ran up the lane, as fast as her large feet would carry her, as though wild dogs were on her heels.

  In the morning, Sally awoke to fierce pounding on the nursery door. She’d already given Edmund his early feeding and had fallen back to sleep, his warm form still beside her. The little biter had woken up three times in the night, fussing and crying. She’d barely gotten two hours of sleep put together. She’d nearly come to regret not giving him the sleeping stuff. When the child had seemed to stare at her, eyes wide, she’d murmured, “Oh, don’t pay me any mind. I just gets cranky when I don’t gets me sleep.” And clearly, she thought wryly, she also forgot how to speak properly when she was overtired.

  “Hang on—I’m coming,” she called now, quickly pulling her dressing gown around her. But the door banged open before she could get to it. She jerked the tie into a rushed knot and stared, shocked as first the missus and then the master rushed into the room and to Edmund’s cradle.

  “Where is he?” he asked.

  “What have you done with him?” she accused.

  “Edmund’s right here. In my bed.” She pointed to where Edmund lay propped between a pillow and a rolled-up blanket.

  “Is he all right?” the lady asked, breathless.

  “Seems to be,” her husband said, bent over to peer at him.

  “Oh, thank God,” Lady Katherine exclaimed and picked him up, cuddling him close. She gave Sally a sharp look. “Why isn’t he in his cradle? You might have suffocated him!”

  “I fell asleep after his last feedin’. The little thing kept me up half the night.”

  “Did he indeed?” she asked pointedly.

  “Yes, m’lady.”

  Lady Katherine lifted her chin toward the open door. “Search the room,” she ordered.

  “What is it?” Sally asked as men from the place—the butler, the groom, the manservant—strode into the room. “What’s happening?”

  “As if you don’t know!” Katherine snapped.

  “I don’t.”

  “The Whitemans’ baby was found dead early this morning,” Mr. Harris said. “The nurse was apprehended, clearly intoxicated, with laudanum on her person. It is assumed that she drugged the infant.”

  “It is more than assumed—she killed him!”

  “My dear, allow me,” he soothed, and then turned a hard gaze on Sally. “You are familiar with this nurse, this . . . What was her name?” he asked the groom searching through her drawers.

  “A Mary Poole, I believe, sir.”

  He turned back to Sally.

  “Yes, I know ’er.” Sally swallowed. “A little.”

  “Did you not, in fact, see her yesterday?” he demanded.

  “Only for a moment . . . I’m sure she did not mean for it to happen. She told me it was quite harmless.”

  “Did she? She claims the laudanum found on her person belongs to you.”

  “’Tisn’t true!”

  “Was it not in your possession?”

  “Well, she did give it to me, but I gave it right back.”

  “Did you bring it into this house?” Lady Katherine interjected.

  She swallowed again, dread filling her, and nodded.

  “Into the nursery?”

  Sally nodded again, eyes downcast. “She told me it wouldn’t hurt him. Surgeons use it, you know. Well, I believed her.”

  “I shall give you one chance to answer this question truthfully,” Mr. Harris said. “Did you or did you not give any to Edmund?”

  She looked at him then, meeting his eyes directly. “No, sir, I did not. Not one drop.”

  “How can we believe her?” his wife asked. “She had it with her. In this very room.”

  “Aye, but then I ran down to the road and gave it back.”

  Katherine turned toward the butler. “Call for the physician. He must come at once and examine poor Edmund.”

  “Why did you?” Harris asked Sally.

  “I don’t know. It’s a hard life sometimes, never getting an hour to yourself, never seeing people your own age . . .”

  “I meant, why did you not give it to him? You certainly intended to. You no doubt had plans to meet up with this Mary, to go to the inn with her, as she clearly had from the state of her, I gather. You brought it up here with the intention of drugging my child so you could have this ‘hour to yourself.’ But you want me to believe you didn’t follow through with it. And if you expect me to believe you, to not have the police come and haul you off straightaway, I need to know why.”

  She looked at the man, the child’s father, obviously shaken and angry, yet trying so hard to control his emotions. Oddly, she thought fleetingly of other occasions when he had shown some kindness to her, and understood what a certain young lady had once seen in him.

  She stared directly at him and said quietly, “For the sake of his mother.”

  As dusk fell, Charlotte sat on a bench overlooking the sea. She held Anne on her lap, for the two had fled the cottage and the frenzy of preparations for company and Lizette Taylor’s shrill orders. Charlotte was sure Daniel’s wife did not mean to be demanding nor difficult. But it was clear she was tense and determined that everything about the place and the meal should be perfect. Anne’s fussing had only added strain to the woman’s agitated nerves, and Charlotte had been relieved when asked to “take the child away somewhere.”

  The walk and the cool evening air had quickly calmed Anne, and now the two sat in peaceful silence, listening to the tumbling of the sea and the call of gulls.

  She was surprised when Richard Kendall walked briskly up the slope from the sea path. She had not expected to see him—nor anyone—on this side of the cottage and felt disquieted to meet him again. She rose to greet him.

  “Miss Charlotte Lamb,” he called. “How pleased I am to see you again.”

  “And I you, Dr. Kendall.” The two bowed politely to one another.

  “And this is Taylor’s daughter, I take it? I’d recognize that bit of strawberry hair anywhere.”

  Charlotte smiled. “You have a keen eye, Dr. Kendall. Yes, this is Anne Taylor.”

  “Hello, little lady. Let’s hope your father’s hair is all you’ve inherited.” He put his face close to the child’s and wrinkled up his nose. The baby smiled, releasing a stream of drool down her cheek. “That’s very like her father as well,” he joked. Then he smiled warmly at Charlotte. “Nice of you to look after her. Mrs. Taylor busy overseeing preparations, I suppose?”

  “Well, yes, and well, you see . . .”

  “Does Mrs. Taylor care for the baby herself or do they have a nurse for her?”

  “They have a nurse. In fact, I—”

  “Kendall!” Dr. Taylor called out from the back stoop. “You found us! Do come and meet Mrs. Taylor.”

  “On my way, old boy.”

  Daniel waved and stepped back inside.

  Kendall turned back to Charlotte. “You’re coming in as well, I hope.”

  “No . . .”

  “Joining us for dinner later, then?”

  “No, I’m going to watch over Anne here. You go on ahead.”

  “Better let the nurse do that. It’s what she’s paid for, isn’t it?” He began to walk toward the cottage, smiling at her over his shoulder.

  “I am the nurse, Dr. Kendall.”

  “What?” He paused, turning back to face her.

  “I am Anne’s nurse. It is why I am here.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “Your friend Dr. Taylor was a great help to me when my own child . . . was lost to me. And since Mrs. Taylor . . . needed someone, well, here I am.”

  “I see.”

  “I am
sorry for the deception the other day.”

  “No need to apologize.” He nodded thoughtfully, then cleared his throat. “Well. I best be getting in.”

  Yes, yes, hurry away. “Please do.”

  Daniel led Kendall into the parlor, where Lizette waited.

  “My dear, allow me to present my old friend Richard Kendall. Kendall, this is my wife. Madame Lizette Taylor.”

  Kendall’s eyes widened at the sight of Lizette, resplendent in her ivory gown, her hair piled high on her head, her black eyes shining. It was a reaction Daniel was used to, even enjoyed. He still sometimes found it difficult to believe he had such a lovely wife.

  “Enchantée,” Lizette said, smiling coyly before dipping her head.

  “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Taylor.” Kendall bowed. “You are even more beautiful than your husband described.”

  “You are very kind, Dr. Kendall. Now, please come and sit down. Dinner will soon be served.”

  Both men instinctively offered their arms. She laughed, her smile brilliant, and she crooked her arm first through Kendall’s, then Daniel’s. The three walked slowly together to the dining room, arm in arm.

  After dinner, the two men sipped their port in Daniel’s study.

  “Why did you not tell me?” Kendall asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “About Miss Lamb. Your nurse?”

  “Oh. How did you . . .?”

  “She told me herself. Outside, before I came in.”

  “Well, I saw no need to humiliate her—you are a stranger to her. I was not thinking ahead.”

  “You might have sent a note and saved us both the embarrassment.”

  “I am sorry. She berated me as well for not telling you. I only meant to spare her feelings.”

  Kendall looked at him closely. “Were you and she . . .?”

  “What?”

  “She mentioned a child.”

  “Heavens no. I had not seen her in several years when I came upon her in hospital, quite far along in her lying-in.”

  “I must say I find this situation highly unusual.”

  Daniel shrugged. “My daughter needed a nurse. Miss Lamb needed a post.”