Chapter 17
The next morning, Felix awoke early out of habit and found himself wandering the halls of Carden House in search of coffee. Instead, he found Rose and Lizzie already in the morning room, a pale golden chamber with light pouring in, making them both look like a painting.
Rose was feeding Lizzie in a manner Felix had never seen before: with patience, laughter, and a steady stream of commentary on the merits of each bite.
The baby, perched upright in a highchair, greeted every spoonful with a shriek and a flail. Her cheeks were already painted in what looked like strawberry preserves.
“She likes the jam,” Rose explained, as Felix entered. “She does not like the eggs, bread, or porridge.”
“She has taste,” Felix said, pulling a chair to Rose’s left. He reached for the pot of coffee and poured a cup. “May I try?”
Rose surrendered the spoon, though not without a warning: “She bites.”
“I bite harder,” he replied, and dipped the spoon into the preserves, presenting it to Lizzie with a flourish. “Your Grace, a delicacy from the far-off colonies.”
Lizzie grabbed the spoon from him, then launched it at his chest with remarkable force. The jam splattered his shirtfront, landing with a wet splat.
For a moment, neither he nor Rose moved. Then Felix, grinning, plucked the spoon from his lap and tried again. This time, Lizzie accepted the bite with a grin so broad her gums showed, pink and obscene.
Rose laughed, and Felix felt a strange pride, as if he’d won a prize at the fair.
“She is impossible,” Rose said, shaking her head.
“So are you,” he replied.
They fed the child together, taking turns.
Felix discovered he preferred the chaos of it: the sticky fingers, the jam stains, the way Rose leaned in to wipe Lizzie’s chin and ended up with a streak of pink on her own nose.
He liked the way Rose smiled at him; her expression softened by the sunlight.
When the meal was over, Rose wiped Lizzie clean and settled her in Felix’s lap. The baby rooted for his pocket watch, found it, and promptly tried to eat it.
“She knows it’s valuable,” Felix said, watching the infant gnaw the chain. “She will be an excellent thief someday.”
“She will be a poet,” Rose corrected. “She has the soul for it.”
Felix looked at the two of them—the bright, golden light, the riot of jam and laughter and clean linen. He had not known it could be like this.
He held Lizzie with one arm and reached for Rose’s hand with the other, their fingers intertwining across the wreckage of the breakfast table.
At that moment, he knew he would love them forever.
Rose, as it turned out, had a plan for the day.
She declared it over breakfast, with all the certainty of a general marshaling troops.
“There is a new aviary at St. James’s.” She spoke as if Felix had been waiting his whole life for this particular intelligence. “They’ve imported birds from as far as Brazil. I want to take Lizzie to see them.”
“She is not yet a year old, Rose. She may be unimpressed by their diplomatic credentials.”
“Nonsense,” Rose replied, expertly scooping Lizzie up before Felix could finish his coffee. “She is already more intelligent than most of Parliament.”
He let the remark stand.
They made a production of it: the baby in a bonnet of outrageous yellow, Rose in a walking dress that looked like a cloud, and Felix himself togged out in the least offensive color in his wardrobe: midnight blue, with a white cravat so stiff it could have been carved.
The morning had scrubbed London clean. By the time they reached the park, sunlight glinted off the pond, and every shrub and tree trembled with new green.
St. James’s was alive with women in their bright silks, men in starched suits with walking canes, and children in miniature versions of their parents’ finery.
Felix kept a steady hand at Rose’s back as they strolled, not because she needed it, but because the sight of her in this element made something inside him lurch and then settle.
She held Lizzie on her hip until the child began to twist and yowl for a better view.
Felix obliged, scooping her into his arms, giving her a higher vantage.
“You look like the very picture of fatherhood,” Rose said, unable to disguise her amusement.
“I feel like an advertisement for horse liniment.” Still, he let Lizzie sway and squeal as they made their way to the aviary.
The new structure stood near the water, a marvel of glass and wrought iron, more cathedral than cage.
Inside, the air shimmered with the sounds of birds, from whistles to caws, to even the low chuckle of some unseen creature.
The crowd was thickest around the center, where a flock of parrots flapped from perch to perch.
Felix pointed, murmuring the names to Lizzie as if she would retain them for the family archives. “Hyacinth macaw,” he said. “Lesser sulfur-crested cockatoo. And that, if I’m not mistaken, is an ambassador from Siam.”
Lizzie babbled, apparently seized by the need to add her own voice to the ruckus.
When Felix lifted her higher, she gave a victorious shriek that startled several onlookers.
Rose trailed behind, stopping now and then to sketch the scene in a small notebook.
Felix watched her as she worked, the fine lines of her wrist, the curve of her neck as she bent over the page.
She looked up and caught him staring. “Are you bored already?” she asked, eyebrow arched.
“Not at all,” he replied. “I am making a study of the lesser-spotted Rose in her native habitat.”
She smirked, but he could see the pleasure it gave her.
They made a slow circuit of the aviary. Lizzie clapped whenever a bird landed close, her excitement undimmed by anything so trivial as fatigue.
Several matrons in the vicinity tittered into their gloves, no doubt adding the spectacle of the Carden family outing to the morning’s gossip.
Felix did not mind. He had never cared for being invisible.
When they left the aviary, Rose tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, her fingers warm against his sleeve. “Thank you,” she said. “For indulging us.”
Felix squeezed her hand. “You are impossible to deny.”
She looked at him, her eyes bright and beautiful. “We should take her everywhere,” she said. “Show her the whole world.”
He considered this. “Let’s start with tea,” he said. “If I don’t get you inside soon, you’ll melt.”
She laughed, the sound bright and clear, and he thought perhaps it was not such a terrible idea. They made their way back through the park, Lizzie dozing against Felix’s chest, Rose at his side.
They did not return directly home. Instead, Rose insisted on a detour.
“A reward for Lizzie’s excellent behavior,” she claimed, though Felix suspected the true recipient was herself.
The walk to Green Park took only minutes.
Rose led them to a copse of cherry trees, where a few early blossoms had survived the night’s chill, meaning the ground beneath was littered with pale petals.
Rose spread a tartan blanket on the grass and set Lizzie down, arranging the baby’s dress to keep her above the damp.
The child blinked in the bright air, then promptly rolled herself onto her back, arms flung wide as if claiming the whole of London for her own.
He lay down beside them, folding his hands behind his head. The branches overhead formed a patchwork of sun and shadow. For a long time, none of them spoke. Lizzie burbled to herself, the sound merging with the distant calls of the birds, the faraway bells of a passing hansom.
At last, Rose broke the silence. “Do you know Tennyson?” she asked.
“Intimately,” Felix replied, knowing this to be a slight exaggeration. “The old man once lost fifty pounds to me in a card game.”
“He did not.”
“He did,” Felix insisted and relished in Rose’s laugh. “But in my defense, it was over a bet regarding the proper way to use a semicolon. I believe he’s still in arrears.”
Rose smiled, retrieving a slim book from her basket. She thumbed through the pages, then began to read aloud, her voice soft but certain: “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.”
Felix was not sentimental by nature, but the words, combined with the sunlight, the gentle breathing of the baby, and the rhythm of Rose’s voice, made his chest ache in a way he found both unsettling and thrilling.
He watched her as she read, the wind catching her hair, the flush of her cheek as she recited each line with careful attention. He reached out and brushed a petal from her sleeve. She glanced down at his hand, then up at his face, and for a moment neither of them looked away.
Lizzie, as if sensing the need for interruption, let out a squawk of protest and rolled onto her side. She immediately found a fallen petal and tried to cram it into her mouth. Rose lunged to rescue her, scooping the child up and kissing her forehead in a flurry of relief and laughter.
“She will eat us out of house and home,” Rose said.
“Let’s hope she stops at petals,” Felix replied, but the moment was already sliding into the next.
They spent the better part of an hour there: Rose reading, Felix half-listening and half-dreaming, Lizzie alternating between naps and attempts to devour the local flora. The city moved around them, but for once, Felix felt as if they had claimed a quiet bubble out of time.
When the shadows began to lengthen, Rose packed up the blanket, and they meandered up Bond Street, following the crowds to the toy shop Felix had once frequented as a child.
The shop windows were stacked with impossible wonders—wooden trains, puzzles, dolls dressed in silk, and carved animals so lifelike that Felix expected them to leap from their shelves and escape.
Inside, the clerk greeted them with a deference reserved for only the highest of the high.
“Your Grace,” he murmured, bowing to Felix, and “Your Grace,” to Rose, and “How can we serve the little one today?”
Felix was not immune to the pleasures of acquisition. He let Lizzie peer at every toy in the shop, then selected a hand-painted rocking horse that looked sturdy enough to carry her through every crisis in the nursery. Rose tried to protest.
“She is far too young for that,” she insisted.
“She will grow into it,” Felix said, already arranging for the horse to be delivered to the house by evening.
“She may not walk for months,” Rose argued, though she was smiling as she said it.
“Then we shall wheel her around until she does.”
At the counter, Felix noticed a case of jewelry—mostly lockets, gold, and silver, and some inlaid with stones. He asked the clerk to open it, and, after a moment’s inspection, selected the smallest locket they had: a plain gold oval, just large enough to hold a lock of hair or a scrap of paper.
“For Lizzie,” he explained. “To mark her first trip out on the town.”
Rose did not argue this time. She watched as he had the locket boxed, her eyes soft and distant.
They took the carriage back home as the first lamps lit the street. Felix kept a hand on Rose on the other side, Lizzie snoring gently between them.
That night, after Lizzie had been put to bed and the house had quieted, Felix sat at his desk with the locket in his palm. He opened it, considered, then noticed a small curl from Lizzie’s hair tucked inside. Certainly, that was Rose’s doing.
He thought for a moment, then took a sliver of parchment and wrote, in his neatest hand: “Forever.” He folded the scrap and placed it opposite the curl.
He snapped the locket shut and tucked it away, a small secret against his chest.
He had never quite had a family before. He intended to keep this one.