Chapter Fifteen #2
“Very good, then,” said Miss Caddick. “Mary, I’m going to check on the babe now. Try to relax—”
There wasn’t going to be any relaxing as another contraction contorted the laboring woman’s face.
Gabe had never seen this part. Never watched as a woman sweated and heaved, her entire body seemingly torn apart.
The woman bringing the water had to kick him to get him to step aside, and he had the humbling urge to move all the way back out into the street.
This was no place for a man. And yet, not twenty minutes before, he had sworn not to leave her.
If Miss Caddick could be here, then so could he. And if he wanted to be useful, then he would set the water and towels to hand and shoo everyone else out.
He watched as Miss Caddick gabbed a towel and wet it, using it to wipe off her own hands and face. Then she whispered a prayer of some sort before setting the rag aside.
“It’s something I do,” she said at his questioning look. “Helps me leave one woman behind as I turn to the next.”
He had no response. She could jump up and down while screaming the Lord’s Prayer and he wouldn’t question her. She had the authority here. All others—including him—bowed to her directions.
What came next felt like an eternity though it was likely no more than fifteen minutes.
A child was born—a little girl—who wailed and quivered as if she’d suffered the gravest insult a body could receive.
And hadn’t she though? She’d just been squeezed through a tiny passage amid heat and sweat with her mother screaming as if she were to die.
Miss Caddick eased the child onto a rag. She tied and cut the cord, then wrapped the wailing babe, all the while declaring that the bloody, squalling child was perfect in every way.
He thought that would be the end of it, but not so. While the mother sobbed with relief, there was more to come. The afterbirth seemed less dramatic. There certainly was less screaming. Miss Caddick handled it with steady confidence, and before long all was done.
“Do you need help with nursing?” she asked the mother. “Do you know what you’re about now?”
“We’ll teach her,” said the woman who had brought towels.
Miss Caddick smiled. “Then I’ll leave her to you.
Mind she rests for at least a week.” She looked around at the impoverished surroundings but didn’t say a word.
Instead, she expressed her gratitude to the women, refused payment, then gathered her things and left.
This time he walked by her side, watching for a pickpocket among the gathered well-wishers.
There weren’t any, as all of them seemed to appreciate Midwife Betty.
The whore from the Rose Garden trailed in their wake. She was the one who shared the news with the onlookers. “The babe is a girl. Mother and child are well.” She sent a child ahead to get a hackney, and soon all three of them climbed in to travel in silence back to the Rose Garden.
He wanted to argue that Miss Caddick had no business going there. She ought to go home because he could see the exhaustion weighing upon her, but she stopped him even before he spoke.
“This is the way it is done,” she said. He heard finality in her tone the same as in the military. Every recruit was taught the Way Things were Done. And every commander reinforced it.
So he held his tongue while the hackney deposited them outside the Rose Garden. If Madame Florina was surprised by his presence, she didn’t say anything except to inquire if he needed a bath.
He did, but he would not leave off his duty to do such a thing.
Miss Caddick, however, said yes with clear gratitude.
He stood outside her door while she bathed.
He tried to ask Madame Florina or indeed any of the women who passed by for an explanation, a discussion, any detail he could glean about what he had witnessed.
They said not a word to him. Even the talkative ones, girls he could usually charm for information, shook their head and walked away.
And when he pressed Madame Florina, she too shook her head.
“This is for women. Mind your place.”
Mind his place? Never before had a woman dared say such a thing to him, not even his mother.
Especially not his mother! She had taught him that if he listened to the rules of the world, he would have no place at all.
He was a bastard, after all. Instead, he created his place with persistence and intelligence.
But apparently, that was among men, and this was for women.
“I will figure it out anyway,” he said. He would learn every detail now because this was important to Miss Caddick, which meant it was vital for him to know as well.
“And what will you do with what you learn?” Madame Florina scoffed. “You will stop us? We are like rats in the sewers. If you stop us here, another place will hop up and you will be none the wiser.”
“Why would I stop you?”
Madame didn’t answer except for a soft snort and a raised brow. That said without words that she thought men stopped what they could not control. Or at least tried to.
“Maybe I can help,” he said, though he had no earthly idea what he would do.
“Then you should have donned a cloth instead of a sword.”
He shook his head. “I was never one for the clergy.” Even if they would have a bastard like him, which was not at all certain.
Madame Florina frowned at him, then looked past his shoulder to where Miss Caddick bathed. “She will not be stopped. Not by you nor any man.”
So he had guessed. “What she does is dangerous. Once she is married…”
His voice trailed away because Madame Florina was done listening to him.
She waved a hand airily at him as she walked away.
Apparently, what he thought was of no account.
Especially since, as she said, if he put a stop to Miss Caddick’s activities one way, then she would find another, and he would be none the wiser.
Before long, the maid from before knocked on the door. She was Miss Caddick’s servant, the one who had screeched at him less than a week ago. Miss Caddick told her to enter, and she did without giving him a look or a word. It was as if he wasn’t there.
A few minutes later, she and Miss Caddick exited looking for all the world like a woman and her maid out for a walk.
He could hardly believe his eyes. Gone was stoop-shouldered Betty, and in her place stood Miss Caddick with a lifted chin and freshly scrubbed hair and face.
Madame Florina returned as well carrying Miss Caddick’s bag.
“Everything is cleaned for you.”
“Thank you, Florina,” she said as she dropped coins into the madame’s hands. Then she paused, one last coin held suspended. “Where is the apothecary you use? I should like to discuss his elixirs.”
The madame nodded her head. “My Lady’s Apothecary, one block east. But you’ll not get in to see her. She’s special.” The woman’s voice dropped. “She’s Chinese and sorely pressed these days. She won’t talk to any soul without a reference.”
“You’ll arrange for me to meet her then?” Janelle pulled out another coin.
Florina held up her hand to stop Janelle. “It’s not for me to decide who talks to her and who doesn’t. But I’ll ask, and you’ll hear if it’s agreed.”
“Thank you,” Janelle answered as she gave Florina all the coins.
Finally, Gabriel understood the Rose Garden’s place in all this. A secret paid for, as his mother would say. And given that Miss Caddick was a simple baron’s daughter and debutante, one that could be easily kept. Of course, that would change the moment she became a countess.
And while he was sorting through the logistics of everything, they headed out the back and climbed into a waiting hackney. Miss Caddick tried to waive him off.
“I’m heading home, Major. And Faye is here for the proprieties. There is no need—”
“Where you go, I go.” He settled on the squab opposite her then thumped upon the roof. “Besides,” he added wryly, “until I see you inside the door, I will not believe that you actually mean to go there.”
Her lips curved as she acknowledged the humor in his statement, but her expression quickly fell. They were only halfway to her home before she crumpled completely.
He had been looking out the carriage window, still marveling at the extent of her network. He heard the stifled gasp. And when he turned, he saw the way her face was averted.
“There, there,” soothed the maid as she wrapped an arm around her mistress. “It were a bad one then?”
Miss Caddick said nothing. She was still working hard to stifle her sobs. So the maid looked to him.
“How bad?” she mouthed to him.
He thought back to the evening, to Mary and Winnie, to the night’s work and how raw he felt. “Very bad,” he answered.
“No,” Miss Caddick said as she fought to gather her composure. “One lost, and one gained.”
“An even trade then,” said the woman. “And you to help with it all.”
Miss Caddick said nothing, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Instead, she curled her face into her maid’s shoulders and let the tears flow. It was a release, he realized. A way to let go of the stress and emotions of the night.
“Does this happen often?” he asked.
“Oh aye,” the woman replied. “It’s all the feeling,” she said. “It needs to come out somehow before she has to tuck it all away. Won’t do, you know, for the baron to see her acting emotional. He’d ask questions then, wouldn’t he?”
Wouldn’t he indeed? So Miss Caddick held it all in while treating the women. She exuded confidence and steely-eyed command when they were at their most vulnerable. Then she hid everything she was doing, lest her father look too deeply into her life.
But in a life of deception, when could she be wholly herself?
Right here in the carriage. For the few minutes between the Rose Garden and her home. Here, she was allowed to feel everything in a rush of too much. And so she cried, and his arms ached to comfort her.