All Dressed in White EPB

by Michaels, Charis

  Now he sprawled just two feet away. She could smell his soapy, woodsy smell. He tugged off his gloves and laid them beside her on the blanket. Tessa watched this but then darted her eyes away, looking everywhere but at him. She unrolled the baby’s damp collar from the chubby folds around his neck. Christian let out a long, indignant coo. If she had been alone with him, she would have scooped him up and repeated his babble, trying to make him speak again. Instead, she cleared her throat. Joseph said nothing.

  But perhaps he was uncertain and wished only to observe the baby? Or the sight of him raised the awkward question of domestic logistical matters, none of which Joseph was prepared to discuss?

  She felt herself begin to perspire. She’d foolishly put too much emphasis on getting the introduction exactly right but devoted no thought to the words she would use to make it.

  “Tessa?” Joseph said, drawing her gaze back to his face. He took off his hat. “I’m afraid I must to admit something to you.”

  Tessa’s stomach cinched into a tight knot. This was the moment he would reject everything—the baby, herself, the marriage. This was the moment he would walk away forever. “Yes?” she whispered, unable to meet his gaze.

  “I find myself at quite a loss. I’ve no idea what to . . . do, er, next.” He winced slightly. “Forgive me. But can you . . . ? That is—?”

  Tears of relief sprang to her eyes.

  Joseph cringed, watching his wife’s face crumple into tears. He cursed under his breath and reached for his handkerchief.

  “Here.” He thrust the monogrammed linen at her. “Perhaps I should have concealed my ignorance. Although it’s fairly obvious, I’m afraid.”

  Tessa shook her head, and tiny wisps of blonde flew out from her face. He blinked, enjoying the loose, relaxed beauty of her hair with no stiff bonnet. He tried and failed to think of something light and funny to say.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” she said. “I . . . I have looked so forward to this moment, and I was so afraid that you would be . . . that you would be—” She faltered.

  “Competent?” he offered.

  She laughed. “Resentful.”

  She said it lightly, but it felt like a punch to his gut. He picked up one glove and laid it down again. He settled the other glove on top of it, carefully aligning the edges, finger to finger. “Oh, Tessa,” he sighed. “Resentful? I’ve been angry—yes. But is this how I have portrayed myself to you? So callous?” He laughed without humor and plucked at the gloves, tossing them into the air. “No, don’t answer that.”

  She watched the leather fall into a heap. “You have every reason to resent us, Joseph. Few men could look at a child who was . . . not of his own flesh, yet thrust into his lifelong care, and not feel resentment. I have only the reaction of my own parents and brothers to compare. Please remember.” She looked away and added softly, “And then there was the reaction of the man who fathered Christian.”

  As ever, Joseph’s breath stopped at the mention of Tessa’s former lover. “You have spoken to this man since the baby? You have made some introduction?” He could barely grit out the words.

  Tessa shook her head wildly. “Oh, no. I shall never see him again. What I mean to say is, when I discovered my condition. I told him. He was cruelly indifferent.” She gathered herself up on her knees. “Joseph, please understand. I, alone, am to blame for the circumstances of our marriage—this I know. But I kept the details of the pregnancy concealed because I had met such resentment from the man who fathered the child.”

  “I would implore you not to transfer his resentment to me.”

  “Oh,” she said simply, chewing her bottom lip. “I suppose this is fair.”

  Was it fair? Joseph wondered. He knew himself to be justified in his outrage, his anger, his feelings of betrayal—even his bloody wounded pride. His friends understood—Cassin and Stoker claimed they would have reacted in precisely the same way. And yet—

  Was he so blameless? The night of her confession, he had heaped resentment on her. Soon after, he had fled England and scarcely looked back.

  He cast an eye around the sunny park, thinking of those angry months after the wedding. His outrage had felt wholly justifiable at the time. Even now, his pulse quickened and his head ached, thinking about how foolish she had made him feel, how hurt he’d been.

  But now? He glanced back to Tessa and her baby.

  Nothing in London was as easy to justify as it had seemed in Barbadoes.

  Joseph ran a hand through his hair, scrambling for a new topic. Tessa toyed idly with Christian’s fat fists, watching Joseph from the corner of her eye. She seemed as uncertain as he was. He wondered for the hundredth time how involved she wished Joseph to be with the baby. The future was uncertain, obviously, and that uncertainty included today, this very moment. Was he meant to only observe the baby? Would it be intrusive to ask about his temperament or daily routine? Would he hold the baby?

  There was a rather large chance that Tessa considered the baby to be hers alone, despite bearing Joseph’s last name and, presumably, relying on Joseph for financial support.

  The thought of this unsettled him in a way he could not really define, but he could not conceive of a way to assert himself. He wasn’t even certain how to reach out and touch the child.

  Rolling his shoulders and giving her a smile, Joseph elected to ask about the baby in terms of their newfound common ground. “When you are ready,” he said, “I should like to hear about the summer you spent learning London’s dockyards while also caring for a newborn babe. Stoker and I are still in a mild state of shock over how you managed it all.”

  She sat bolt upright. “I hope nothing is amiss?”

  He shook his head. “On the contrary. I find myself in the position of defending my contribution to our partnership. Stoker now wishes to cut me loose and deal only with you. Thank God Cassin is in Yorkshire. I should never hear the end of it. I’m meant to be the brains of the operation, although you could not tell it yesterday.”

  She laughed and began to ask questions about the warehouse and the buyers, the distribution of the guano, and the fabric they would take under sail for the return to Barbadoes.

  Joseph answered her questions but eventually their conversation drifted to London—how she enjoyed the city after a girlhood in the countryside; their friends Willow and Cassin and their unexpected love match; and the coronation of the new king, which had happened only weeks before.

  He was just about to ask her if she ever found time to play the piano, when the baby suddenly caught their attention. He’d been cooing, making loud but happy baby sounds, and now he had begun to rock to his left, to and fro, enjoying the sound of his voice undulating with the effort. Tessa smiled down at him and Joseph paused in his questions, enjoying the sight of her enjoying her son. They both happened to be staring down at the baby in the moment he rocked, rocked, rocked, and then dug his left knee into the blanket and flipped over.

  Tessa gave a gasp of delight and sat on her heels. “But did you see that? He turned himself over!”

  Joseph looked at the baby, now lying on his back, blinking up at the maple leaves and bright September sky. His small round face was like a pink full moon, his blue eyes wide with shock.

  Joseph leaned over him. “Is he . . . all right?”

  “He’s rolled over—and so early! He was on his stomach—you saw it—and now he has flipped! All of his own accord.” She scooped the baby in her arms and squeezed him, kissing all available skin. “Good boy, Dollop!” She beamed at Joseph. “Perry told me he might flip himself as early as four months, but it might take longer. Some babies go until six or seven months without turning over.”

  She seized the baby against her again, hugging him so tightly he let out an impatient squawk. She laughed and tucked him under her chin. “Perry has six younger brothers and sisters,” she explained, “and she’s been an invaluable resource for what to expect. I knew nothing of infants, Mary Boyd does not have children, and my own mo
ther is no longer a part of my life.” She held the baby at arm’s length. “Perry will be so proud, Dollop!”

  Joseph sifted through the pieces of information she’d just given him. For all practical purposes, his wife was navigating motherhood entirely alone. On his very rare encounters with the maid Perry he found her to be sweet but also young, impulsive, and silly. She was Tessa’s guide? He wondered for the hundredth time how her own family could abandon their only daughter.

  How could you? he suddenly thought, and he felt color rise to his cheeks.

  “Let us see if he will do it again,” Tessa said, replacing the baby on his stomach on the blanket. The baby cried out, opposed to being returned to the position he had so recently conquered. But within moments, he dug his foot and knee into the blanket and flipped himself again.

  Tessa clapped and laughed, smiling down. Joseph wanted to watch the infant, truly he did, but he struggled to look away from the delight on Tessa’s face. He felt another prick in his heart. Another pinhole. He felt oddly light.

  With considerable effort, he tore his eyes away from his wife to look down at the child.

  “Oh,” sang the baby’s mother, “how hard you worked to flop over, but you aren’t quite sure what to do now that you’ve managed it. Poor Dollop.”

  I know the feeling, mate, Joseph thought, peering down. He felt his own smile form. Christian Chance had three distinguishing features: chubbiness, which gave him the look of a tiny, pink monarch; a shock of dark black hair, like down on a gosling’s back; and crystal blue eyes.

  Like his mother’s.

  Joseph said, “He is a beautiful baby.” In his experience, this was never the wrong thing to say. It was also not a lie.

  “Oh, thank you,” said Tessa. “He has been beautiful to me from the first moment.”

  Joseph wanted to ask if he looked like the man who fathered him, but could not. With effort, Joseph fought off all thoughts of the man who fathered him. Instead, he watched the baby stare up, captivated by his mother. Joseph, too, knew what it felt like to look into her blue eyes.

  He considered what to ask next. He was far more interested in the baby, and even more so in Tessa’s new role as a mother, than he had expected. It was an understatement to say he had never given much thought to fatherhood. He had not known his own father, and the Earl of Falcondale, who had brought him up in many ways, was far more like an older brother.

  Joseph wondered what, specifically, fathers did for or to newborn infants? His only thought was to provide for the child and for his mother. His mind leapt immediately to the money he’d left to sustain Tessa and Christian while he was away. Had it been enough? He wondered suddenly where the child slept. Was his crib sturdy and safe? Could there possibly be a proper nursery in the Boyds’ small Belgravia townhome?

  Christian wore a spotless white gown, but did Tessa have what she needed in the way of tiny garments for the child? What of this quilt on which they now sat? The picnic basket with leather-and-brass handles and the food inside it?

  He was overwhelmed, suddenly, with the impulse to be some part of the small family before him, but he was so very uncertain about how. Were finances an appropriate way to start? Joseph cast around for some inroad.

  “What do you enjoy most about being a mother?” he finally asked. It was one of a painfully short list of questions he’d stayed up half the night to compose.

  Tessa blew out a breath, sending the wisps of hair fluttering around her face. “Oh, there is only one good thing about being a mother.” She swept the baby off the blanket. “And that is this little dollop.” She kissed the baby on the neck and Christian let out a happy shriek. He flailed his chubby arms like he was trying to fly.

  “All the rest is quite a lot of hard work, I’m afraid,” she said. She set the baby on her lap, facing Joseph. He settled in, entitled to the spot. He chewed on his fist, considering Joseph with half-lidded eyes.

  Tessa went on, “Getting up in the night, washing and mending baby clothes, bathing him, feeding him, trying to fit my own meals and mending when he sleeps. And then of course fitting in my work at St. Katharine. I am lucky because I have Perry to help me, and she loves him like a sister. Our shared love for him drives it all.” She looked away, staring out across the park. “I love him even when he is screaming at the top of his lungs, dirty, and it is the middle of the night.”

  She shook her head, as if dislodging a memory, and returned her gaze to Joseph. “I did not expect to love him quite so much, honestly. I cannot find words to do it justice. And he doesn’t even really do much of anything—not yet. He does not speak, he does not show preferences for anything more than meals and a dry nappy and me. He is indifferent even to his toy goose, but Willow sent it, and I would love him to eventually attach himself to it. Even with all of that, he is—” She paused and kissed the top of his head. “I would endure any amount of sleepless drudgery for him. And my love for him is so . . . comprehensive, I know that I shall endure any hardship, for the rest of my life, to provide for him, even though I know nothing of the boy or man he will become.”

  She took a deep breath. “But it cannot be said enough, I have Perry to help me, and in this I am so fortunate. Thank you for the money you left for her salary, by the way.” She smiled gratefully as if the money had been remotely enough.

  The baby began to croon, a low, gurgling noise that began comical and pleasant but soon dissolved into a cranky, dispirited fuss. Tessa bobbed her leg, gently bouncing him up and down, but his fussy croon began rising to a low cry, then a wail.

  “Ah, are you tired, Dollop?” she asked, kissing him on the cheek. She smiled up at Joseph. “If I push him home in the pram, he will fall asleep. Will you—?” She paused and turned the baby over her shoulder, patting his back. “Do you have time to walk us home?”

  “Of course,” he said, shoving up.

  “Oh, lovely, thank you,” she said, sounding surprised and happy. He wondered if it was the only correct thing he’d said all afternoon.

  “Will you hold him while I pack up the basket?”

  “I—ah . . .”

  Before Joseph could qualify his hesitation, Tessa thrust the fussing baby at him, and he was given little choice but to receive him. He wrapped his hands around his thick middle and held him out like a muddy dog. The baby’s wail paused, mid-crescendo, and Joseph Chance stared at the boy, blue eyes to blue eyes. The baby blinked. He crinkled his nose and formed his mouth into a little O. He opened his wet eyes very wide. His expression seemed to say, Who the devil are you?

  “Who, indeed, mate?” Joseph said lowly, and he felt something break off inside of his chest and fall into the pit of his stomach.

  Tessa chuckled. “Tuck him into your arm,” she said. “Here. Like this.”

  She came beside Joseph and spun the baby in his hands to pull Christian to the crook of his arm. “There you are. Now support him under his bum.”

  Joseph allowed her to guide him while Christian resumed his wail in honor of Joseph’s obvious incompetence. Tessa ignored the infant’s outrage, and Joseph felt himself relax. He watched her situate the baby in his arms, straighten his gown, and pat him on his head.

  She’d not touched Joseph since he’d returned, not really, and now she eased him around with gentle pats and tugs. He could smell her soft, floral scent. His body pulsed at every point of contact. He fought the urge to step closer. The baby reached out to her, and he had the ridiculous urge to reach out for her, too.

  She moved away, seemingly unaffected, to pack the basket. The baby’s temper fit rose, but Joseph was transfixed by the sight of Tessa’s fluid, unhurried ministrations. She crawled on her hands and knees, offering an eye-blinking view of her bottom as she tossed crockery into the basket. The quilt was not precisely folded so much as loosely halved and quartered. She held it to her nose to breathe deeply before she piled it beside the picnic basket.

  “Sabine made this quilt for us,” Tessa told him. “Isn’t it lovely? I thought it wa
s too pretty to spread on the ground, but she insisted that we use it. Now it’s taken on the smell of summer grass and soft earth, and I love it even more.”

  She held a half-eaten cake between her lips while she repacked sundry picnic items. Every few minutes she paused to take a bite, closing her eyes in simple pleasure.

  “I’ve offered you nothing,” she laughed, popping the last bite into her mouth. “How very rude of me. The Boyds’ cook packed a full tea.”

  “I came to meet the baby,” he said.

  Tessa laughed again, climbing to a stand and reaching for her son. “Well, you’ve met him. Come here, Dollop. You’ve shouted quite enough at your papa—” She froze, her blue eyes huge on Joseph’s face. “I’m sorry. I . . . That is, Perry and I have been referring to you as Papa when we talk to the baby.”

  “I’ve done so very little to earn that title, I’m afraid,” he said. The words were out before he thought about them. A relief. The truth.

  Tessa continued to stare. The baby cried louder, reaching for his mother.

  “What is it that you feel you should have done, Joseph?” Her voice was a confused whisper. He could barely make out the words over the baby’s cries.

  “I . . . I cannot say,” he lied. “My own father died before I was born.” He shrugged and relinquished the baby. “More.” He thought of a hundred things he could have done. Anything.

  She gathered the baby close, kissed the top of his head, and then settled him, wailing, in the pram. She stepped back and dusted her hands together. “Can I trouble you to carry the basket and the blanket? He will fall asleep within minutes if I begin to push.”

  Joseph tossed the blanket over his saddle and hooked the basket over the horn. He tugged the horse on a long lead behind him and fell in beside Tessa. As she predicted, the baby’s cries turned into a long, low sort of gravelly song, and then dropped off altogether.