Catherine took a few nibbles from an Eccles cake, spooned herself tiny bites of a delicious sweet bread and butter pudding, and munched on a fried egg toast point as she looked down at the tiny boy pulling on her breast. She smiled. Suddenly, it all seemed so natural, so perfect really. She stroked his smooth cheek with the tip of her finger as his mouth pursed and released. He had established a steady rhythm and now his cheeks were hollowing out with each tug.
“He’s taken to the task like a suitor I see,” a voice called from the doorway and Catherine looked up to see a smiling Madeline looking over at her. She smiled back and even chuckled.
“Yes, it seems he knows more about this than I do. Tell me Miss Madeline, how do I know if he’s getting anything yet?”
“He’s probably not. Not this soon. Maybe tonight. But he sure likes doin’ what he’s doin’ don’t he?” Madeline said as she shuffled into the room. “Don’t forget to switch him over, mind you.”
“Oh, yes. I’d better do that.”
Catherine had to pry him off and he was not happy about it, but she was able to quickly turn him and offer him the other breast before he voiced his displeasure.
“Thought you might want to know that the old countess just arrived in the village. Saw her carriage in the distance on my walk up the hill.”
“Oh. What does that mean? Will she take him away?”
“Oh no, no, no! The earl would never stand for that. She’s here to pay her respects to her ladyship, meet her only grandson, and help his lordship come up with a proper name for the tyke.”
“Oh, well that will be nice, to be able to call him by his name.”
“You feeling all right? The crampin’ bad?”
“Not so bad. It’s odd but I feel it more now, when he’s nursing.”
“That’s nature’s way. He’s helping to pull your womb tight again.”
“From the way the cramps are rolling through my belly now, he is certainly doing a good job of it.”
The baby fell asleep with Catherine’s nipple in his mouth and Madeline helped Catherine shift him to her shoulder to burp him. Then Maddy took him from her, walked to the nursery, and placed him in his lace-covered bassinette.
Catherine closed her gown and then picked at the food remaining on her tray as Madeline instructed Sadie and Betsy on the care of the dark stub on the baby’s navel. The midwife told them to keep it dry if possible and assured them that it would fall off on its own in a week or two.
Catherine hung on Madeline’s every word as she’d had very little experience with babies.
Below Stairs
Around the long trestle table, servants of all levels vied for the trenchers as the serving girls, Lolly and Foy, placed them along the center runner. The earl’s household ate well, and as they dined they took great delight in feasting on the lives of others. They were a most particular group. Having been trained in so lofty a manner, they felt compelled to call to task anyone who didn’t conform . . . anyone who made the slightest transgression in performing their chores . . . or anyone who stepped over the line in thinking themselves a step above.
“Well, I say she’s too pretty by half,” said Jeb, the young lad whose job it was to scrub pots.
“When did you ere see ‘er?” a footman named Tom countered as he slathered a roll with butter and slid it into his mouth.
“I saw her when Jaime carried her up the stairs. She had beautiful dingles.”
“Dingles?” asked the housekeeper. Mrs. Cockrell chuckled, always amused by what came out of young Jeb’s mouth. “What be they?”
“Her hair. It’s lovely.”
“Well it’s long I’ll give you that, and so it dangles, but I believe ringlets is the word you’re looking for.”
“Well then she has lovely dingles in her cheeks.”
“Dimples.”
“Oh. Yes, that’s right. And a vera nice smile, too.”
“She smiled at you, did she?” Mrs. Cockrell asked Jeb.
“No. She smiled at Jaime. When he set her down.”
Everyone hooted at that and Jaime turned bright red.
“So it’s to be a pretty little nursemaid for you my lad?” the doorman known as Big Tom asked of Jaime as he came into the room.
“Indeed not. You know I’ve eyes for Annie in the village.”
“Well, who do you think this young lass with the lovely dingles and dimples will appeal to?” Cook’s assistant, Cora, asked with a huge grin on her shiny white face, her meaty arms covered with flour from fingertips to elbows from making the day’s bread. “Surely you’ve already matched her up to some randy footman or stableman by now, bein’ she’s all alone in the world?”
“I say Robert,” Big Tom offered.
“Nay, he’ll not give up Josephine, and she’ll not let him pander with another,” this from Lolly.
There was a collective, “Ooooooh, no, no she won’t.”
“Randall in the village is lookin’ about these days. His Jenny is gone a year now,” said Foy.
“My money’s on George the market man, whenever he deigns to show up with my new pots,” Cook said.
“He’s a sweet talker, that one. Says what he needs for the sale, but I hear she’s not his type. Prefers a different sort, if you get my meanin’,” Calista said with a knowing nod at Mrs. Cockrell.
There was a space of silence for a moment or two; things of that nature weren’t ever mentioned in mixed company. Then Jeb piped up, “The earl,” he said in a quiet, sure voice as if a charge of precognition had just run through him.
Everyone turned to face him. “The earl?” Calista questioned, her eyes bugged wide, her mouth in an ugly sneer.
Calista, haughty and overblown in her pride of being the upstairs chambermaid in charge of the cleaning requirements of her ladyship’s reading, sitting, and sleeping rooms—despite there being no ladyship in residence at present—took great affront at the suggestion of this absurd match. Unreasonably possessive regarding the countesses’ things—the way her clothing, jewelry, books, and toilette items were cared for, stored, and displayed, was of great and exacting concern to her. Knowing where each and every item was, keeping everything in perfect serviceable order, was a challenge she was constantly complaining about, but one she adamantly refused to allow anyone to share in. Her domineering attitude toward the rest of the household was unwarranted, always had been, as she’d only been entrusted with the care of things, but clearly Calista was becoming selfish to the bone about all of the countesses’ personal possessions, as now it seemed that the countesses’ widower was of great concern to her, too.
Everyone had noticed the change, as overnight she was now trying to catch the earl’s eye while she carried out her chores. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that she now made a point of bending over at the exact moment he entered a room, flashing him her insubstantial bottom, or that while passing him in the upstairs hall, she stood to the side and smiled saucily while sticking out her chest—as if her meager bosom would be enough to entice an earl of his stature to tup a mere chambermaid.
But it was to no avail. Calista believed that the earl’s lack of interest stemmed from his absurd loyalty to his wife. However, to her way of thinking, the earl being suddenly widowed did indeed put him on the market . . . and available for trysting, a torrid affair, or possibly even more . . . his infant son was in need a mother now. In her warped mind, it wasn’t unheard of . . . royals sometimes fell in for governesses or housekeepers—or ladies maids. It’s what made the Cinderella story the most favored bedtime story in all of England, after all. But not for a nursemaid, surely not for that top-heavy sow the whole staff was coddling as if the entire estate depended on the performance of her breasts.
While the earl having a child so young made it important he find a proper wife as soon as was feasible, Calista knew t
hat the new nursemaid was not for the likes of so elegant and titled a man as the Earl of Sefton. She, of course was not either . . . but she didn’t see it that way. She had lofty aspirations. Her mother had always told her so.
“Jeb Spenser, you are daft if you think the earl would look twice at that cow. Whatever are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that the earl has two vera good reasons to be lookin’ at her. As he’s payin’ for those milk jugs she’s sportin’,” he used his hands to heft imaginary breasts on his chest, “I would think he’d want to make sure they’re bein’ fully appreciated, ya know? And she aren’t no cow, I think she’s luvly.”
Cook came around to his side of the table and swatted him on the head with her long wooden soup spoon.
“Ow, whadya do that for?”
“Cause you’re crude Jeb. An’ you’re wrong. Catherine is a sweet lass. She can no’ help it she lost her bairn and now has milk aplenty.”
“I don’t like that she’s in the earl’s wing. Why isn’t she upstairs in the nursery like she should be?” Calista whined.
“That was the earl’s doin’. He wants her close, in case she’s needed.”
“See?” said Jeb. “Just like I said. Gonna get his money’s worth.”
This time Calista hit him in the head with her elbow as she stood. She was clearly not happy with this turn of events.
“She’s just finished breedin’ with no bairn to show for it,” Brenda, the scullery maid, said in a hushed whisper to the women on her side of the room as everyone else filed out. “An’ his wife just havin’ died. They’re both grievin’. It’s too soon for either o’ them, but they’ll soon give their attention to new mates. It’s nature’s way.”
“I wager that it won’t be long afore her courses settle in and she’s fair game again,” Tom muttered coarsely around his fifth roll. All the women gasped at his crudeness. He shrugged his shoulders in defiance, “Why not the earl? He’s more than deservin’ of a lovely tumble, ain’t he?”
“Nah. He’s a true gentleman. He won’t plough a servant girl.”
“He has needs too, ya know,” Tom defended. “And he’s not likely to find a comin’-out miss in this godforsaken county.”
“Be that as it may, he’s a gentleman.”
The bell rang in the breakfast salon and everyone remaining at the table jumped up to get to work. Mrs. Cockrell, the last to file out, nodded at Cora. “I know he’s a gentleman, but I saw the way he looked at her last night, when he went to check on the babe. And believe me, that was no’ the look of a gentleman. That was a rogue if anything.”
“Nah!”
“If you care to wager, I’ll have an extra bob or two in my sewing tin come the St. Stephen’s Feast Day Market.”
“You’re on Mrs. Cockrell. Two bob it is.
So . . . how do you think we’ll know,” she wondered aloud.
“Oh, we’ll know. Don’t you worry ‘bout that. Can’t hide nothin’ from Calista. When her face is a storm cloud, we’ll know. Do you have everything ready for the Dowager? She’ll be due this morning.”
“Aye, been making her favorite scones all morn. She’ll be pleased.”
“See that she is, or we’ll all pay,” the housekeeper muttered as she turned and left the kitchen.
Chapter Eight
The earl was told that his son had been bathed and was finished feeding but that he had fallen asleep before he could be brought to him. He had just finished his own breakfast and was drinking his second cup of tea before venturing out on the estate to meet with his manager and head groomsman when his housekeeper came to the door.
“You asked to see me, sir?”
“Yes, I’d like to meet the nursemaid. Does anyone know her name yet?”
“Her name is Mrs. Catherine Cottingham. You wish to see her now?”
“Yes. Can you ask her to come down?”
“That would not be wise sir, she just gave birth.”
He looked up from his paper and gave her a questioning look.
“She shouldn’t go up or down stairs yet, sir.” The housekeeper informed him.
“Oh, yes, quite right. Wasn’t thinking. I’ll go up. I can see her in the upstairs salon then?”
“Of course sir, I’ll let her know. Fifteen minutes?”
He looked at his watch, “Make it twenty, see if that works for her.”
“Yes, sir.” She turned and left to go upstairs.
The housekeeper came to the door and told Catherine that the earl wished to speak with her and that he was waiting in the upstairs salon.
“The earl wishes to see me?”
“Yes. He’s requested your presence in the upstairs salon in . . .” she looked at the silver watch dangling from a pin on her ruffled collar . . .“eighteen minutes. Will that be all right?”
“Yes, of course, I’ll be right there. I’m just trying to get this stain off my skirt. I was wearing it when my waters broke. Unfortunately it’s the only one I have.”
The housekeeper walked over and stared at the material Catherine was abrading with a diligent hand. “That’s not going to come out dear, at least not without a thorough soaking. I’ll get you something else to wear.” She walked over to the bell pull and gave it a sharp tug. After a few moments, a maid could be heard scurrying down the hall.
“Yes’m?” she asked, ducking her head inside the door, then standing to full attention in the doorway as soon as she saw it was the housekeeper and not the nursemaid who had summoned her.
“We need a dress, rather small in size, from the left and found closet. And hurry, we have less than fifteen minutes to get it on her.”
As soon as the young woman turned and could be heard running down the long hallway, Catherine turned back to the housekeeper. “Left and found?”
“People visit and leave things. We save them and use them as needed. The dress may not be in a color or style you like, but you can be assured, it will be first quality and clean.”
“People leave dresses?” The look she gave was incredulous.
“You’d be surprised. They leave coats, shoes, jewelry . . . anything they’re too lazy to fetch back from wherever it was they left it. I suspect their ladies maids are inept, as these items should really have been accounted for when they were packing to leave. In either case, we have ended up with a whole closetful of unclaimed items for times such as these.” They heard the woman returning, walking at a brisk pace. She entered the room carrying a beautiful olive-toned day dress. It was finer than anything Catherine had ever imagined wearing.
“Come, let’s get you dressed so you can meet the earl.”
“Am I to be interviewed for the position?”
The housekeeper laughed heartily. “Trust me, if he doesn’t hire you, he’ll have a mutiny on his hands. You’ve got the position, as certainly, none of us can manage it,” she tittered at her little joke then continued, “I’m sure he just wants to talk with you about things concerning the wee bairn.”
After the dress was lowered over her head and the bodice buttoned up tight, Catherine checked her unruly halo of hair in the dresser mirror. Tsking at its condition and wishing she had braided it, she pushed her fingers through the light tresses to tame it, gathered it all together and tossed it over her shoulder before following the housekeeper down the hall. She had to step lively to keep up.
“Do you have everything you need, Miss Catherine?”
“Oh yes. Everyone has been wonderful. I feel very special indeed.”
“You are very special. You are the reason we will all be able to go about our duties during the day and sleep at night, and for that I thank you!” She turned back and gave Catherine a huge grin. “You are quite welcome here, indeed. And if you should need anything more for your courses, you be sure to let Betsy know. None of
us has ever borne a child, so we really don’t know what you’ll be needing.”
“I have everything I need and I thank you ever so much for your thoughtfulness.”
“It’s ol’ Mad who is the thoughtful one.”
“Mad?”
“Madeline . . . Maddy, the midwife. She left us plenty of instructions. Cook is even redoing her menu to suit.”
“Oh yes, Madeline . . . she is quite something.”
“Yes, both her and her sister, quite a pair those two, but I don’t know what we’d do without them. The babe would surely have been lost without Marguerite.” With a slight stumble she realized what she had just said, “Oh Catherine, I am so sorry. I wasn’t thinking when I said that.”
“It’s all right. I saw my son. The sisters told me he had died in the womb and it appeared that was so; no amount of midwifery would have brought him into the world alive.”
“Still . . . it must be so unbearably sad for you.”
“Yes. ‘Tis.”
The ache was like a tender wound surrounding her heart, one she didn’t like to prod as it tended to make it swell until it was so cumbersome it took over all thought. If she had not had the benefit of looking forward to taking care of the earl’s babe to ease her grief, she didn’t think she would have wanted to go on. What was the point? She’d lost her parents, whom she’d adored; her husband, whom she sorely missed; and now, her son had died as well. Life was cruel. It was filled with dark quagmires, one beyond the next for her to come upon and fall into, and each one deeper, harder to climb out of, and more bitter than the last.
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