Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the thin gray light before dawn, the chambermaid stole into Henrietta’s room with a summons.
“James said to fetch ye, miss. The babe’s arrived,” she whispered.
“Lady Mama?” Henrietta tossed the covers aside.
“Nay, miss, it’s a good two months to ’er time yet, an ’er ladyship’s in ’er bed. Whose babe does ’e mean, then?”
“My German habit, Hazel, and a fresh chemise. I must go, quickly.”
“That duke’s mort and ’er by-blow,” James reported when Henrietta arrived in the kitchen.
He crouched near the door to the scullery, glaring at the cook, who glared back, her wooden spoon raised in warning.
“I ’ad a lad keepin’ his peepers on the place.
The midwife left in the wee hours, a babe with her. ”
Henrietta’s sleepiness fell away in a rush. “Where did she go?”
“Owm I to know?” James demanded.
Henrietta’s heart rose in her throat as she steered her phaeton through the waking streets, around carts, wagons, carters hauling refuse, and housemaids throwing night soil into the street. Celeste had birthed her baby and sent it away. But where?
At Highcastle House, James slipped into the mews, winning the argument that the daughter of Sir Jasper Wardley-Hines could not be seen at the servant’s door.
Henrietta muttered to herself as she trotted her chestnuts around Portman Square.
As the daughter of a tradesman, she had free range of the Rossendale Fells along with the family villa at Salford, and she and the girls of Miss Gregoire’s ran tame through Bath.
But as the daughter of a knight, she exchanged status for freedom.
Any gossip about her would go straight to the ears of Aunt Althea and the Daughters of Minerva.
Only the highest-born could behave with utter disregard for propriety, and sooner or later, even they achieved censure—the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Celeste herself were proof of that.
That wasn’t at all the world she wanted to be in. Why was she trying?
James emerged shaking his head. “Peery scrape, the whole of it. The mort said to spirit it off and not mouse to anyone, an’ that’s all. Sounds a bit like me own mum, don’t that?” He spat in the street, then leapt to his perch in the phaeton, as light as a cat.
“Oh, James.” Henrietta tasted acid, though her mouth was dry. “Do you think she sent it to the Foundling Hospital? Where should we start searching?”
“The workhouses, and the alleys, and the baby farms,” James said with a grim face, and Henrietta shivered.
“I pray not.” There would be little chance of finding it if the child were sent out of the city.
The children of workhouses, when they survived, were sold to apprenticeships as soon as could be.
She had seen plenty of children sent to work in the mills, where their small bodies could dart beneath the heavy machines.
They were fed and housed, and in parishes like hers attended Sunday school, but not all mill owners shared Jasper’s concern that children should not be overworked or endangered.
Oh, why hadn’t she begged Lady Celeste to see Darien’s solicitor? If she couldn’t locate the babe and some ill befell it, she would never be able to forgive herself.
The day passed in a blur. The midwife, when they called at her lodgings, was attending another childbed.
Henrietta left her card. Though she knew most of the charitable institutions in town, without James she would have become hopelessly lost in London.
Narrow passageways twisted between buildings that had been split to accommodate more tenants, then split again.
There was no order or plan whatsoever, just rickety structures that leaned atop one another, shoddy and hastily made.
Her wheels flattened refuse left in the middle of the street, and the smells of the markets made her gag.
How she missed Salford and their sweet Mersey River, which provided fresh water at one end of town and collected its refuse at the other.
Here in London, which was girdled by the Thames, one drew from the river what another had just put into it.
The constant noise was astonishing, worse than the relentless grind of the machines at a mill.
Over everything hung the smoky haze of burning coal, the fuel for the noisy, tireless engines of industry.
She stopped at a tavern, chafing at the lost time, when James informed her that if she didn’t fill his breadbasket, he would chew off her stumps.
Leaning against the rough piece of lumber that served as the counter for the small shop, she ate a pasty filled with some chewy meat she didn’t care to identify and wiped greasy fingers on her habit.
James used his uniform for the same office and finished her untouched pint of ale, and they returned to the phaeton for more fruitless searching.
Finally, as the coal smoke blended with approaching dusk, Henrietta called a halt from sheer exhaustion.
She wanted to cry from frustration and fear.
She was rubbish at rescues. She’d earned Pinochle’s enmity by helping his maid escape.
She’d not been able to save Elijah. And what could she say to Darien, as it was her fault the child had disappeared?
For solace she stopped by the Sisters of Benevolence Hospital to see the one girl whose life she had at least managed to improve. In a pool of warm, quiet light, Mary Ann sat rocking in the matron’s sitting room, a newborn at her breast.
Henrietta’s heart skipped several beats.
“Came at the crack of dawn, poor wee one,” Mary Ann said. “Mother said I might feed her.”
Henrietta swallowed the ash in her throat. “Was there a note?”
Mary Ann drew a small card from her apron, one engraved with the name and direction of the home. On the back was a crooked scrawl. You asked for the brat, so take her. Tell Daring to rot in hell.
“What’s it say?” Mary Ann asked innocently.
“It says the mother has surrendered all claim. A girl, is it?” Henrietta sank to the small stool by the fire. The child was here, safe. She might sob with relief. “Are you— Is she feeding?”
“Like a farmhand,” Mary Ann whispered. “And I’ve milk enough, mum, more’s the wonder. I tole you they were plumping me up.”
The matron entered with a pile of swaddling fresh from the laundry. “Ye’ve met our new one, Miss Hetty? The midwife said she’s sound, so that’s a blessing, but my word, that’s the fifth this week.”
“D’ye want to hold her? Mind ye keep her upright and get the bubble out.” Mary Ann pulled up her bodice with one hand and held out the infant with calm expertise.
Henrietta stared at the tiny creature. She had fed, changed, and burped each of her younger half-sisters, and this felt oddly the same, as if the child belonged to her somehow.
Thick black hair mossed the baby’s head, and dark strands traced her brows and the lids of her eyes.
A web of tiny red veins spread over her round cheeks and chin, with dark pink patches on her eyelids and one in the center of her forehead, an angel’s kiss.
This might be Darien’s child. Henrietta took the baby as if she were made of glass and rubbed the swaddled back.
“Five, Mother? All newborns?”
“And seven last week, one for each blessed day.” The matron handed a pile of cloths to Mary Ann to help fold. “I can’t think where we’re to put them all. We’ll be stacked to the rafters soon.”
“Are there enough nurses?” The wee mite pressed one fist to the side of her face, her lips still sucking in the rhythm she had just learned. Henrietta’s lungs closed at the thought of any harm coming to her.
“Aye, nurses enough, all too many.” The matron sighed. “It’s a needful care we provide, Miss Hetty, and I don’t begrudge a one of them. But the Good Lord keeps giving, at least unto us.”
The words emerged before the thought had finished forming. “I’ll take her,” Henrietta said. “Home with me. And Mary Ann too, if you can spare her.”
The matron paused and raised her eyebrows. Henrietta had never been able to guess her age, nor did she know her hair color, but the matron’s eyebrows were a thick and startling black.
Mary Ann’s eyes grew equally wide, and Henrietta hurried on. “Will you come with me and be the baby’s nurse? We can offer you room and board and a salary, and everyone is quite kind in my father’s house. You can stay till the babe is weaned, if not longer.”
Mary Ann looked like she had been handed the moon.
She was a young woman, not sixteen, a mother who had already lost a babe.
At sixteen, Henrietta had been concluding her studies at Miss Gregoire’s and writing Lady Mama instructions on how Jasper liked his household to run. She had never held a child of her own.
Until now.
“Will Lady Clarinda have it?” the matron asked.
“I hope she will.” Henrietta looked at the baby’s face, where a small bubble of milk blew and popped on the tiny Cupid’s bow mouth.
She was not doing this for Darien. She was obeying the surprising voice in her head that said “Mine.” She felt the same inward sigh of happiness, of belonging, as when she met Clarinda and knew she had a mother again.
All the same, she felt like a thief when she emerged from the hospital holding the baby, with Mary Ann carrying a small bundle of clothes. James clucked at them.
“’Ey now, it’s been ’ere all along? Right where ye wanted it! Whyn’t leave it ’ere, then?”
“Drive us home, James,” Henrietta said, handing the baby up to Mary Ann.
“A gentry throw!” James exclaimed. “And you want the squeaker in your nursery? What’s ’er ladyship goin’ to say?”
“You know she is mad about babies.” Henrietta squeezed herself into the small seat beside the girl.
“Aye, but ’er own ones,” James noted as he guided the Titans into the street.
Her family and friends wouldn’t understand, even when she explained that she was relieving the strain on the Sisters of Benevolence to take the babe. And Darien would be furious. Henrietta hugged the baby tightly to her chest as the knowledge pierced her heart.
Whatever fragile rapport had sprung up between them would be at an end now thanks to this supreme bit of meddling. She would miss him. He would never comprehend why she needed this.
She had not been able to save Fanny, or Elijah, or so many of the weak and deprived babes she saw in her charitable work. But this one, she could save.