Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“YOU CANNOT TAKE her,” the woman was saying, her voice hoarse, her matted hair in her face. “I will not let you take her. I will not let you take her.”
Finally, Patience broke in. “It’s all right. No one will take your baby. I swear it to you.”
The woman looked up at her, searching her face for some truth there. Seeming to find it, she turned back to Naomi, who had fallen asleep again, head thrown back, tiny little lips open.
“What’s your name?” said Patience.
“Janet,” she said hoarsely.
“What are we doing?” said Nothshire to her.
“Well, I don’t know, improvising,” said Patience, turning on him angrily. “This was not what I thought it would be!”
Janet let out a labored breathy noise, the echo of tears. She shut her eyes and leaned her head against the side of the carriage. She looked exhausted.
“W-well,” said Patience, “do you have anywhere else to go?”
Janet opened her eyes. “Yes. I told them. I said it weeks ago, that I wished to leave and go to my sister’s house. She offered before, when she heard about what happened, but I thought then… I thought I could go through with it. But then…” Her lower lip trembled. “Feeling her in me, dancing about at night, rubbing my hand over my belly, her in there… I knew she was a girl, you know, I just knew it. I started to sing to her at night, and she would quiet. She knew my voice.” She sniffed. “My sister, she has her own three wee ones and I didn’t wish to be a burden on her, though she offered. I told them that I had written to her, that I had changed my mind, that I wished to leave. But they wouldn’t let me go, then. They said that I was denying Naomi a better life, that I was selfish and sinful and wayward. They wouldn’t let me go. I tried to go, but they wouldn’t let me go.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Patience. “It’s all appalling, and I am horrified. We should have that place torn down.”
“They had payed to feed and clothe me, you see,” said Janet. “They said that if I left, I must pay them back for it. But if I stayed, they would get money from her new parents.”
“Wait a moment,” said Patience. “Did you give them money for this baby, Nothshire? Did you buy this child?”
“You wanted it quick, my lady,” said Nothshire with a shrug.
Patience let out a horrified noise.
“I thought your name was Barnes,” said Janet, looking at Nothshire. “They let me read your letters about the house and the grounds and the dog and…” She turned to look at Patience. “You just called him something else.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Patience brightly. “Where does your sister live?”
“In Essex,” said Janet.
“All right, well, you’ll tell the carriage to go directly there, yes?” She nodded at Nothshire.
He shrugged. “That’s what you wish, my lady?”
“You’re a lady?” said Janet, looking quite confused.
Patience sighed heavily. She reached up and unclasped a necklace she was wearing. She had put it on that morning for no reason that made any sense, because she was not supposed to be a woman of means, not one who could have jewels like this. But the necklace had been easy to tuck away and hide under her fichu, which she’d worn to look modest and matronly. Something had called to her about it. Wear it, a voice inside her had whispered. Take that one.
This must have been why.
Patience held it out to Janet.
Janet looked at her, quite confused.
“Take it,” said Patience. “You’ll need it. Make sure you find someone who will give you what it’s worth. You will not be a burden to your sister with this.”
Janet blinked and accepted the necklace. She looked at, in her palm, her lips parting as she gasped. “I don’t… understand.”
“Oh, neither do I,” said Patience. “I don’t understand either.”
IT WAS A long drive to the town in Essex where Janet’s sister lived. They had brought food along, thinking that they would need to eat a mid-day meal, and so they ate that. But when they arrived, it was rather late in the day.
They did not tarry to watch Janet’s reunion with her sister, though she and the babe were greeted with a warm embrace of the older woman, who had hair the same color as Janet’s, and who touched Naomi’s head and pronounced the baby girl beautiful.
They left before anyone could think to question them or to thank them or anything of that nature.
Inside the carriage, Nothshire laid out their situation. They would be hungry soon. They would need to find something to eat. The horses had been run ragged and if they wished to travel further, they must get fresh horses. Alternately, they could stop somewhere and get rooms for the night.
Tired and wrung out, Patience thought food and a bed sounded like just the thing. She agreed to it.
They didn’t talk much as they drove off in search of an inn. She asked if the people from the place they’d come from would come after them, and he said they didn’t even know their real names, which was true. She asked if they’d come after Janet and Naomi, and he said that sounded like far too much effort for them to put forth. Besides, they had the money he’d sent them already.
“Oh,” she said. “You are probably cross about that expenditure.”
“It wasn’t really that much,” he muttered.
“Oh?” she said, shocked. “What is the going rate for a human child?”
He only sighed.
When they arrived at the inn, she told him to instruct the staff to bring food to her room when he was getting their lodging. She intended to ensconce herself in solitude for the rest of the night and attempt to calm her nerves and make sense of whatever had just happened.
Oddly, she was somewhat relieved she wasn’t bringing home an infant.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want a child, she mused, later, in her room, having managed to undress herself without the help of a maid, which really was harder than it had any right to be, she thought. Some buttons were frustratingly difficult to get to oneself.
It was only that she needed more time to adjust to the idea, really.
A bottle of port had been sent along with her dinner, an entire bottle. She would never drink that much, she thought, but as she ate and mused, she found herself filling up her glass again and again.
Her thoughts were tired and frayed, and they began to take on a drunken sort of nonsense. But they didn’t seem like nonsense. It seemed to her that she was thinking real sense for the first time in a very long time.
If a woman was with child, she had nine long months to become accustomed to the idea. Whatever had happened to poor Janet, she’d obviously not been prepared to be a mother at the beginning of that nine months, but then she’d become ready in the course of it.
And perhaps something happened to a woman while a child was growing in her body, something that altered her in some fundamental way. It would make sense if that happened, would it not? Would not nature ready a mother to be a mother before the birth of a child?
Maybe the reason she—right now—did not actually feel quite ready to be a mother was because she had not had a child growing in her body.
Of course, she couldn’t have her own babe, not without a husband.
Of course, Janet didn’t have a husband, did she? That was entirely the problem with Janet’s situation. Janet had only her sister to turn to, her sister who was already overburdened.
But Patience had resources.
No, no, no, what was she thinking? She could not have a child without a husband. It would destroy her. She might keep all her property and her wealth, but she would be shunned. Her brother would never speak to her again. She’d be barred from all society.
Yes, but what if no one knew it was her own child?
Could she not retreat to the north, back to her dowager house, claim to have come down with some awful illness? Perhaps consumption, yes, that might work. She would only allow Charlotte to see her, and she would stay hidden in her room for months, and then…
Well, giving birth might be noticeable.
She poured more wine, letting out a little giggle. “Yes, just a bit noticeable,” she said aloud and giggled again.
She settled back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. Well, all right, maybe she’d simply dismiss all the servants and she and Charlotte could manage the house themselves. It wouldn’t have to be for the entire pregnancy, but just for the final few months, when she was showing. Then, they could hire a whole new raft of servants and tell them the child was a foundling.
No one would ever have to know.
Of course, she’d need a man to put a babe in her belly in the first place.
And she had found the act that led to that rather distasteful and uncomfortable.
It happened, however, that she was rather numb with the port at the moment. And Nothshire was thrilling in an odd way, wasn’t he? He was in a room just across the hall, right now, very handy.
She got to her feet and let out another giggle.
It turned into a snort.
“Well, no, it must be now!” she announced to the room. She picked up her glass of port and toasted the air. “To courage,” she said to no one in particular. She drank down the rest of the port, set down the glass, and then charged out of the room.
She knocked on Nothshire’s door, but he didn’t answer.
Feeling bold and silly, another giggle bubbling out of her throat, she tried the latch.
The door opened.
It was dark inside.
She blinked for several moments until her eyes adjusted. He’d already laid down for the night. Was it late? She tried to gauge the time from the light outside the window, but it was just dark out there. She had no notion.
It didn’t matter.
She made her way inside and carefully shut the door behind her. “Nothshire?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”
Nothing.
But she could see the outline of his body on the bed. She moved forward, all the way forward until she was standing right beside the bed. She probed him with one finger. He stirred.
She bit down on her lip and then, unsteady from the port, she lurched forward and fell into the bed with him.