Chapter 18
“Ido not think she really wants the egg,” Julian said, while David attempted to push a piece of egg he had picked up from the plate into Clara’s face.
“No, truly, I would rather not,” she said and turned her face away. David smashed his hand on the plate again and grabbed some more egg, attempting to feed it to her with great determination.
“Do you think he is perhaps trying to eat it himself but cannot quite find his mouth yet?” Julian asked.
“I think not. I think he is making a game of it.” Clara remarked. “Though he seems a little young for such things.”
“Well, I made some enquiries with Nathaniel, and it appears that at his age, he ought to be able to crawl on his own. Shall we try it?”
“Make him crawl?” Clara asked, her eyebrows raised. “I suppose we could.”
She got up from the table, David in her arms, and together, they walked into the drawing room which had a good wide carpet. She placed him down, and for a moment he lay there flat on his stomach, apparently considering his options.
Julian walked to the other end of the room, snapping his fingers and waving while calling to him.
“Come here, David!” At the sound of his voice, the little boy turned his head. Then, to Clara’s considerable surprise, he managed to flip onto his stomach, lift himself up onto his knees and elbows, and crawl.
“Would you look at that!” she said. “He knows how to do it!” He turned back upon hearing Clara’s voice and crawled in her direction instead.
“Well, now I am morally offended,” Julian said. “It is quite plain that he prefers you over me.”
“I am the one who changes his nappies and who sits with him in the night when he cries.”
“Is that a challenge?” he asked. “For I am perfectly happy to have his crib moved into my chamber and look after him myself.”
“If you are offering,” she said, “he has been crying two or three times a night these last few nights, and I have not had very much rest.”
“You haven’t?” he asked, and he sounded genuinely surprised. “You do not look at all like someone who is terribly sleep deprived.”
“Well,” she said, “many of my friends have children, as do yours, and I have learned how to make myself look refreshed. Although most of my friends also have a governess to tend to their children in the night, should they wish it.”
“Is that a demand?” he asked.
She laughed and shook her head. “No, not at all. I am only speaking in jest. But if this were a real marriage—” she paused, “—that is something I would be demanding.” He looked at her for a moment, and she found she could not take her eyes from him.
Had she said too much by implying that she had given thought to what this might look like if it were it a real marriage?
Perhaps she had. Perhaps she had grown too comfortable in his company.
To her great relief, David solved the tension entirely by turning around and crawling swiftly back to Julian.
He reached out one hand, and Julian scooped him up. David grabbed his finger in his little fist and let out a gurgling laugh.
“Now tell me again how he likes you better than me,” Julian teased with a look of some satisfaction.
“I confess the evidence does not presently support my case,” she admitted.
“No, I suppose it does not.”
“Are you debating who the child favors?” A familiar voice came from the doorway, and she turned around.
“Helena!” She flew to her feet and embraced her friend.
“Yes, in fact, we were,” Julian admitted, rising likewise with David on his hip. “How do you do?”
“Very well indeed. I have come to bring you a few things. We have a great many clothes the children have outgrown and a few of Lavinia’s old toys.
They are so adorable. I could donate them, but I think they will look so lovely on little David.
” She set a basket down on the floor. “As for your debate, I have found that whenever Gideon and I play with the children, they favor whichever one of us called their name most recently or whoever last gave them a sweetmeat.”
“David is too young for sweetmeats,” Julian said, “so I shall simply have to call his name continuously to give myself the illusion that he prefers me over Clara.”
“He has got it into his head that I am the preferred caregiver,” Clara said. “I maintain it is because I am the one who rises in the night.”
“That is probably exactly it,” Helena replied, settling herself into a chair. “Although,” she tilted her head slightly, “I do wonder if he is confused about his name.”
“What do you mean?” Clara said.
“Well, if Arabella first spoke to him as Horatio, I am sure that must be rather bewildering for him. Especially if you call him David while Mrs. Holt continues to refer to him as Horatio.”
“What do you mean, she calls him Horatio?” Neither had told Helena his real name until now.
Helena blinked, confusion plain on her face. “I only meant that I saw Mrs. Holt outside with the little girl, and she was telling her that this evening they were going to take Horatio out for a walk.”
Alarm bells rang in Clara’s head at once. “How does she know his name is Horatio? Did you tell her?”
Julian shook his head. “No. Do you think perhaps you did, when you hired her?”
Clara’s mouth opened slowly. “Hired her? I did not hire her. You did.”
“No,” he replied. “Why would you think that?”
“Because Nell told me that you had arranged for a wet nurse the morning I woke here.”
He shook his head, his face more grave than she had ever seen it. A sense of foreboding settled over her shoulders. “You did not hire her.”
“No,” he said. “I assumed that somehow you had arranged it.”
“Goodness gracious,” Helena said quietly.
“Something is not right,” Clara said. She crossed to the bell and rang it. A moment later, a footman appeared, and she asked him to summon her maid.
The time between her calling for Nell and the maid’s actual appearance seemed to warp entirely, for she knew it could not have taken more than five minutes, and yet it felt like a small eternity.
“My Lady,” Nell said as she entered. “Your Grace. Your Grace.” She curtsied deeply and then clasped her hands in front of her. Clara noticed at once how tightly she was curling them—the white showing at her knuckles—and how genuinely unsettled she looked.
“There is no need to fret,” Clara said. “I have only one question. Do you remember the morning after I first arrived when you told me that a wet nurse had already been arranged for David?”
“I do, My Lady.”
“You implied that it was my husband who had arranged it.”
“Why, yes,” Nell said. “He did.”
She glanced at Julian, who shook his head.
“I did not,” he said. “Who told you that I had done so?”
Nell hesitated for a moment. “Mrs. Holt. She arrived that very morning—it was still dark outside; it must have been five in the morning. She said that she had been summoned here by you.”
“That is not correct.” Richmond’s voice came from the doorway, and he stepped inside.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace. I do not mean to intrude, but I overheard the conversation and felt it my duty to clarify. It was not His Grace who summoned her. I should know, for I was the one who answered the door. Mrs. Holt quite clearly told me herself that the child’s mother had sent for her.
” He paused. “I believe by the time word had passed amongst the servants, there was some misunderstanding, and the assumption was made that it was His Grace who had arranged it, but Mrs. Holt was quite specific with me. It was the child’s mother who summoned her. That is what she said.”
“When she said the child’s mother,” Clara said, a thought turning over slowly in her mind, “did she say specifically that it was me?”
“She said the child’s mother, My Lady, yes.” Richmond looked mildly uncertain. “Is something the matter?”
“Nothing is the matter at all, Richmond. You have both been most helpful. You may go.”
For a moment, both the butler and the maid lingered before dipping out into the hallway and disappearing.
When they were gone, Helena closed the door.
“Something is decidedly not right,” she said. “It sounds very much as though Mrs. Holt has been telling rather tall tales.”
“But to what end?” Clara asked. “And how would she even have known that we were in need of a wet nurse? If neither of us sent for her, how on earth did she know to come here?”
Julian sat down, looking steadier than Clara felt though she could see by the set of his jaw that he was thinking hard. Helena marched across the room and took David from his arms, holding him firmly. At once, the little boy began to cry.
“He does not take well to strangers,” Clara said and lifted him from her.
Julian looked up. “And yet, every time Mrs. Holt holds him or is near him, he does not cry. In fact, he gurgles.”
“As though she is not a stranger to him at all,” Clara finished.
“I think,” Helena said, straightening and folding her hands before her with the air of a woman who had reached a conclusion and intended to state it plainly, “that it is high time we called the young woman in and questioned her, for she clearly knows a great deal more than any of us assumed.” She paused, glancing between them.
“I think we are all in agreement? We are all thinking the same thing?”
She looked at them both.
“That Mrs. Holt is somehow connected to Arabella,” Clara said.
“Or,” Julian said quietly, “to the man.”
Clara felt the blood drain from her face. “Good gracious. Do you remember when I said that I did not believe there had ever been a husband?” Julian nodded. “What if the man who is David’s father is also the father of Mrs. Holt’s child?”
“That,” Helena said briskly, “is either a conspiracy we must put swiftly to bed or a truth we must get to the bottom of without delay. Either way—” she glanced towards the window, “—where is Mrs. Holt now?”
“She was walking in the garden,” Julian observed, “a little while ago.”
Clara straightened. “Then it is time she gave us some answers.”