Chapter 18
Cecily was in the library with Isadora when the note arrived.
“Your Grace. A message from St. Clement’s.”
Cecily was on her feet before Mrs. Eldridge had finished the sentence.
The note was brief in Mrs. Peel’s handwriting, firm and without embellishment.
The infant has developed a fever. It came on this afternoon. I write as you requested. She is restless and will not feed.
Cecily read it twice. Folded it once.
“What is it?” Isadora had set down her book.
“The baby from the orphanage,” Cecily said. “She’s unwell.”
She was already moving toward the door when William appeared in the corridor. He was coming from the study, letters in hand. He looked at her face and then at the note she was holding, and she didn’t have to say anything.
“I’ll send the carriage,” he said.
They brought her at nine o’clock.
Mrs. Peel came herself, which told Cecily everything about how worried she was. The baby arrived wrapped in the best blanket the orphanage had, and was small and hot and fractious.
Mrs. Beam had the nursery ready. A fire built up properly, extra blankets aired, the small crib from the attic brought down and positioned away from the window.
The Blackmoor House nursemaid, a capable young woman named Doris who had cared for two of her younger siblings through fevers and conveyed this information with the calm authority of relevant experience, had everything prepared before the carriage reached the door.
William met Mrs. Peel in the entrance hall and spoke to her for ten minutes while Cecily took the baby upstairs herself, which she had not planned and could not have explained, except that the child had looked up at her from the blanket with an exhausted, trusting expression, and Cecily had reached out and taken her without thinking about it at all.
“You’ve done this before, Your Grace,” Doris observed, watching her settle the baby against her shoulder.
“I haven’t,” Cecily replied.
Doris looked at the way she was holding her. “You have,” she said matter-of-factly, then went to prepare the cooling cloth.
By ten o’clock, the fever had not broken but had not worsened either, which Doris said was better. The baby slept in short, restless intervals, woke, was soothed, then slept again. The room was warm and quiet, and smelled of lavender and the particular clean smell of a well-tended fire.
The maid came to tell Cecily she should change for bed. Cecily sent her away.
She sat with the baby until eleven, at which point William appeared in the doorway, looked at the situation, and said nothing for a moment.
“Go to bed,” he said finally. “Doris is here.”
“Doris has been here all evening.”
“As have you.”
“I’m fine.”
He looked at her like he disagreed with her and was deciding how much effort to apply to the disagreement. Then he looked at the baby, sleeping with the fretful, shallow breathing of a fever that had not yet decided what it was going to do.
“I’ll sit with her,” he offered. “Go to bed.”
She went not because she wanted to, but because she recognized from experience that arguing with him when he had made a decision was a project requiring more energy than she currently had.
She woke at half past two. The house was quiet. She lay in the dark for a moment, listening. Then she got up, put on her wrapper, and went down the corridor to the nursery. The door was ajar, the light inside low and warm.
She stopped in the doorway.
William was in the chair by the crib, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, watching the baby with the focused attention he brought to everything that mattered. His coat was gone, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. Cecily swallowed, her pulse doing a funny thing.
Beside him on a small table were a basin of water, a cloth, a cup of tea, and half-eaten biscuits.
Isadora was in the chair by the wall, upright and pale, trying by sheer will to look capable.
Letitia was in the other chair with her feet tucked under her, her head drooping toward her shoulder at the angle of someone fighting sleep and losing badly.
“Her breaths,” William was saying quietly. “Count them.”
“Forty,” Isadora croaked.
“That’s fairly the same as an hour ago.”
“Is that good?”
“It means she’s stable.” He reached forward and adjusted the blanket at the baby’s chin with the same careful hands. “If it goes above fifty, let me know immediately. If she becomes more agitated than she is now, let me know immediately. If the cloth becomes warm, refresh it.”
“I know,” Isadora said. “You’ve said.”
“I’m saying again.”
“William.” Her voice was quiet. “I know.”
He looked at her. Something passed between them—the look of two people who had sat through difficult nights before and knew the rhythm of each other’s fear.
“You should go to bed,” he urged.
“So should you.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Then neither am I,” Isadora declared.
Letitia made a sound from the other chair that was almost a word and then wasn’t, her eyes still closed.
Cecily pushed the door open and stepped inside.
All three of them looked up.
“She’s the same,” William said, before she could ask.
“I know. I can see.”
She crossed to the crib and looked at the baby, who was sleeping with her small fists loosely curled, her chest rising and falling in the shallow, quick rhythm of feverish sleep. Still hot. Still restless. But here, and breathing, and as safe as she could be made.
“Letitia,” she said.
Letitia opened one eye.
“Go to bed.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You’re asleep.”
“I’m resting my eyes.”
“In a chair, at half past two, for the past…” Cecily looked at William.
“Hour and a half,” he supplied.
“Hour and a half,” she echoed. “Go to bed. I’ll send word the moment anything changes.”
Letitia opened both eyes, an internal struggle visible on her face. Then she looked at William.
“Go,” he urged.
She went, pausing in the doorway to look back at the crib with an expression she would have denied having if anyone mentioned it. Then she left, her footsteps quiet down the corridor.
Cecily looked at Isadora.
“Don’t,” Isadora huffed.
“You’ve been here for hours.”
“So has William.”
“William is–” Cecily stopped.
“What?” Isadora prompted, with a pointed look.
Impossible to move. Built differently from the rest of us. Built specifically to remain upright in rooms like this one.
“William is insufferable about sleep,” Cecily said instead, “and he knows it, so you’re in good company.
But you have lessons at nine, and I am here now.
” She let out a long breath. “She’s stable.
Doris will be back at four. I will be here the whole time, and I will send for you if anything changes. You have my word.”
Isadora looked at the baby, then at her brother.
William said nothing.
Isadora rose from the chair, went to the crib, and stood there for a moment, just looking at the baby with fear in her eyes. Then she straightened.
“You’ll send for me.” Not a question.
“The moment anything changes,” Cecily promised.
Isadora nodded once and left.
The room settled.
The fire shifted occasionally. The baby breathed faintly. Cecily stood beside the crib and looked at the baby.
She did not look at William. She was aware, with the particular acuity of a room that had just lost two people, of exactly how much of the remaining space he occupied.
“You should be asleep,” he murmured.
“I was asleep.”
“Then you should still be asleep.”
“I woke up.” She reached down and checked the cloth on the baby’s forehead. Warm. She lifted it, moved to the basin, and submerged it. “I couldn’t not come.”
He said nothing to that.
She wrung the cloth and turned back to the crib, only to find him watching her with an expression she didn’t have time to read before he looked back at the baby.
“Sit down,” he ordered. “There’s nothing to be gained from standing over her.”
She sat in the chair Isadora had vacated. It was still warm. She tucked her feet beneath her and looked at the baby, and did not think about the fact that she and William were alone in a quiet room at half past two in the morning, with nothing between them but the soft sound of a sleeping infant.
“Has she fed?” she asked.
“Once. An hour ago. But I do not think she fed well.”
“At least it’s something.”
“Indeed,” he agreed.
She looked at the baby’s small face. The faint flush of fever across her cheeks, her dark lashes, the way her whole tiny body rose and fell with the effort of each breath.
“She’s stronger than she looks,” Cecily remarked.
“She’d have to be,” William said, “given where she started.”
She was aware of him the way she had become aware of everything in this room—the charged quiet between them, the fire doing its slow work, the inch of air between her chair and his that was not quite touching and was not quite nothing.
She was aware of his hands resting on his knees, his rolled sleeves, the way the firelight moved across them.
She was aware that if she turned her head, she would find him closer than the room required, because the room was not large and the chairs were not far apart, and neither of them had moved to create more distance, which said something she was choosing not to examine.
She looked at the baby instead. Her breathing had deepened slightly. The flush in her cheeks was fractionally less vivid than it had been an hour ago, or perhaps she was only hoping.
“Her color is better,” she noted.
“A little.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and studied the baby’s small face.
The cloth had warmed again. She reached for it at the same moment he did.
Their hands met over the baby. Neither of them moved.
It was nothing, something that had happened by accident and would be over in a second. It was nothing. She knew it was nothing.
He did not pull away.
She was aware of his hand beneath hers with a clarity that had no business being as sharp as it was—the warmth of it against her fingers, the slight stillness in him that she recognized from other moments.
She lifted her eyes.