Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Andrew returned to Sinclair House long after the lamps had been lowered. The hour was late enough that the household had settled into its night silence, the kind that made every sound seem deliberate. Carter appeared at once, as Carter always did, though Andrew had given no notice of his return.
“Your Grace,” the butler said, taking his hat and gloves.
Andrew gave only a nod. “All quiet?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
It ought to have satisfied him. It did not.
Andrew moved toward the staircase, weariness sitting heavily in his shoulders.
He had spent the evening at his club and remembered almost none of it.
Men had spoken. Cards had been played. Someone had laughed too loudly near the fire.
Through it all, Andrew had been thinking of Frances standing in the drawing room, her face pale with anger, and her words cutting through every defense he had built.
Trust must be earned.
He had told himself she did not understand. He had told himself she could not understand, because understanding required knowledge he could not give. The explanation had not comforted him.
At the top of the stairs, he turned toward his own rooms, then stopped.
The nursery lay in the opposite direction.
It was an old habit already, though he disliked admitting it.
Before sleep, before undressing, before allowing the day to end, he wanted to hear for himself that the child was breathing easily.
He told himself it was responsibility. He had made a promise, and a promise required vigilance. Nothing more.
He had just turned down the nursery corridor when a figure moved from the shadows near the far end.
“Andrew.” Frances’ voice was not sharp this time.
She was frightened. He stopped at once. She came toward him quickly, with her hair partially loosened from its pins and a shawl drawn hastily around her shoulders. Whatever remained between them from the afternoon, all anger, pride, and accusation, vanished before she even reached him.
“Thank goodness you are here,” she breathed.
His blood went cold. “What is it?”
“The baby,” Frances divulged, and the words seemed to catch in her throat. “She has a fever. She will not stop crying.”
For one beat, Andrew heard nothing else. The corridor shifted. He stood in Sinclair House, beneath the soft glow of wall lamps, with his wife before him and the scent of wax and dying flowers in the air. Yet something old opened beneath his feet all the same.
A dim room, drawn curtains, a cradle too near a bed, and a weak cry that stopped too soon. He was ten again.
Then the baby cried. The sound came from the nursery, thin but furious, and it snapped him back with brutal force.
“Carter!” Andrew shouted.
The butler appeared at the far end of the hall almost immediately, as though he had already sensed trouble.
“Your Grace?”
“Send for Dr. Meredith at once,” Andrew ordered. “Now. Wake a groom, send the fastest horse. Tell him it is urgent.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And send up hot water. Clean linen. More lamps. Wake Mrs. Carter.”
Carter bowed and was gone before the last command had fully left Andrew’s mouth.
Andrew turned back to Frances. “How long?”
“I do not know precisely. She was restless after supper, then warm, and then she began crying and would not settle. The nurse thought perhaps wind, but then–”
He was already moving. Frances followed him into the nursery.
The room was too bright and not bright enough.
One maid stood near the hearth, white-faced and useless with panic.
The nurse held the baby against her shoulder, murmuring soft nonsense, but the child’s cry rose over it, broken and hoarse.
Andrew crossed the room in three strides.
“Give her to me.”
The nurse obeyed at once. The moment the child was in his arms, Andrew felt the heat of her through the blanket.
She was too warm. His hand went to her forehead.
Her skin burned beneath his fingers. The baby cried harder, with her body straining against the swaddling as though fighting some enemy none of them could see.
Andrew’s breath shortened.
“Open the window,” he said. “No, only a little. Not a draught. Move the cradle away from the fire. Where is the water? Why is there no water?”
“The footman is bringing it, Your Grace,” the maid stammered.
“Then bring it faster.”
The maid fled. Andrew shifted the baby, trying to loosen the blanket, then tightened it again, then seemed unable to decide whether she was too hot or too exposed.
His hands would not obey him properly. He knew what ought to be done.
He had read enough, asked enough, endured enough years of refusing to care and caring regardless.
A fever in an infant could mean anything… everything.
His fingers fumbled at the edge of the linen. The baby screamed. A sound went through him like a blade.
“No,” he said under his breath. “No, no, no.”
“Andrew.”
Frances was beside him. He scarcely heard her.
“Her breathing,” he murmured. “Listen to her breathing. Is it too quick? It is too quick.”
“She is crying,” Frances told him. “That will make it quick.”
“She is too hot.”
“Yes.”
“Where is the physician?”
“He has been sent for.”
“She is too small for a fever.” His voice had roughened. He hated it. He could not stop it. “She is too small.”
Frances stepped in front of him then, but not between him and the baby. She was only close enough that he had no choice but to see her.
“Andrew,” she spoke his name again, forcing him to lift his eyes to hers.
She looked frightened. Of course she did. Her face was pale, and there was a tremor in her mouth she was fighting with everything she had. But her voice remained calm.
Then she took his hands. Her fingers closed around his where they held the baby’s blanket, warm and steady. He realized then that his own hands were shaking. The knowledge struck him with shame so swift he almost pulled away. Frances did not let him.
“Look at me,” she urged tenderly.
He did.
“The blanket,” she continued quietly. “Loosen it a little, not all the way. Just enough that she is not trapped in heat.”
He obeyed, because her voice placed the world back into order, one small action at a time.
“There,” Frances murmured. “Now hold her upright, like that… yes. Let her head rest against you.”
The baby’s cries hitched, then rose again.
Andrew swallowed hard. “She is still crying.”
“I know.”
“She will not stop.”
Frances’ hands tightened once over his. “Just hold her.”
The simplicity of it was almost unbearable. He was the one standing with the baby in his arms. He was the one who had commanded the house into motion. He was the one with the title, the authority, the promise. And Frances was the one holding him steady.
He opened his eyes.
“What next?” he asked.
The question came low, almost hoarse.
Something softened in her face, but she did not make the mistake of pitying him. “We wait for the water. Then we cool her gently. The physician will come.”
He nodded once. The maid returned with a basin, followed by another carrying linen.
Mrs. Carter arrived moments later, tying her cap beneath her chin with brisk efficiency.
Andrew began issuing instructions again, but now Frances remained beside him, translating his urgency into order before it frightened the servants senseless.
“Not cold water,” she said when one maid reached uncertainly for the basin. “Just cool. Wring the cloth first.”
Andrew looked down at the baby. Her cries had changed. They were still pained and insistent, but not quite as sharp. She turned her flushed face against his coat, her tiny fingers scraping uselessly at the fabric. He shifted her closer without thought.
“There now,” he murmured. “There now. You are not to frighten us like this.”
Frances glanced at him. He did not look back.
The minutes stretched cruelly. Every sound in the room seemed too loud.
Every breath the baby took seemed both relief and warning.
Andrew walked with her because standing still was impossible.
Frances moved with him, not speaking, only present at his side whenever his breathing began to shorten again.
At last, the sound of wheels came from below. Andrew looked toward the door before anyone announced it. Dr. Meredith entered in a flurry of cold air and professional calm, with his medical bag in one hand.
“Your Grace. Your Grace.” He bowed first to Andrew, then to Frances. “Let us see the little patient.”
Andrew did not want to release the baby. The instinct was so strong it startled him. His arms tightened fractionally.
Frances touched his sleeve. “Andrew.”
He looked at her.
“She needs him to examine her.”
He forced himself to nod and handed the child over.
The physician worked with maddening composure.
He checked her temperature, listened to her breathing, examined her throat, her chest, her ears.
He asked questions of the nurse, then of Frances, then of Andrew, though Andrew found his own answers brief and uneven.
How long? Had she fed? Had she coughed? Had there been any change in her breathing?
The baby cried through much of it. Andrew stood rigid near the foot of the cradle, with one hand braced against the carved rail. Frances was beside him, close enough that her sleeve brushed his.
Finally, Dr. Meredith straightened.
Andrew spoke first. “Well?”
The physician’s expression was reassuringly grave, which Andrew immediately despised.
“It is a cold, Your Grace.”
“A cold,” Andrew repeated.
“Yes. A feverish one, but not uncommon. Her lungs are clear. Her breathing is strong. She is distressed, certainly, but I see no sign of immediate danger.”
Immediate danger.
Andrew seized on the word he disliked most. “But there may be danger later.”
“There may always be complications with infants,” Dr. Meredith informed him carefully.
“But I do not expect them here if she is watched closely. Keep her warm, but not overheated. Encourage feeding. Use the drops I shall leave if the fever rises again, and send for me if her breathing changes, if she refuses nourishment entirely, or if the fever does not ease by tomorrow.”
Andrew stared at him, trying to force the words into meaning.
No immediate danger, only a cold.
Beside him, Frances exhaled. It was so quiet he might have missed it had he not felt the movement of her shoulder near his arm.
“She will be well?” she asked.
Dr. Meredith’s face softened. “I believe so, Your Grace. She has given you a fright, that is all.”
A fright.
Andrew almost laughed at the inadequacy of it.
The physician left the medicine and repeated his instructions twice, once to Mrs. Carter and once to Frances, who listened with fierce attention.
Andrew heard the words, but distantly. He watched the baby instead.
She lay in the nurse’s arms now, exhausted from crying, with her face still flushed but quieter. Her mouth trembled in sleep.
When Dr. Meredith at last departed, the room eased by degrees. The maids moved more softly. Mrs. Carter took control of the basin and linen. The nurse settled into the chair with the baby tucked securely against her.
Andrew remained standing. He could not quite convince himself to leave.
Frances stood beside him for a long moment.
Neither of them spoke. The quarrel from earlier seemed to belong to another life, another house, another pair of people who had not stood together listening for the shape of a child’s breathing.
Frances looked at him then. Her face was tired, and her hair was slipping further from its pins. Her eyes were shadowed with fear and relief. She looked nothing like the composed duchess who had faced Lady Ashford across a tea tray. She looked like a woman who had been frightened for a child.
Andrew’s throat tightened.
“I lost my head,” he said, the confession rough and unwilling.
Frances’ gaze dropped briefly to his hands. They were steady now.
“No,” she corrected. “You were afraid.”
He looked toward the cradle. The baby gave a faint, congested sigh and slept on. Andrew said nothing. Frances did not ask him to explain. Perhaps she understood that there were moments when questions, however deserved, would only break what little steadiness remained.
Instead, she whispered. “Come. Sit down for a moment before you fall down.”
It was such a practical remark, so entirely Frances, that something inside him almost gave way.
He obeyed, and as he sank into the chair near the hearth, with the nursery dim around them and the child breathing softly nearby, Andrew realized Frances had not taken his secret from him that night.
She had taken his shaking hands and made them useful again.
That frightened him almost as much.