Chapter 8
Cecily gathered her skirts and moved.
Isadora was already ahead of her, the gravel loud under her shoes. The back door was closer than it had any right to be, then it was suddenly behind her as she burst into the corridor and turned toward the stairs without breaking stride.
The sound reached her before she reached the nursery. It was not the full-throated cries of a healthy, furious baby—she knew that sound by now. This was different. Thinner. The weak, effortful sound of a baby working too hard at something that should not require work at all.
Her chest tightened.
She bolted up the last flight of stairs and burst through the nursery door to find chaos.
The nurse was at the window with her hands pressed together at her mouth, her face the color of old linen. Two maids hovered near the door with the desperate looks of people who wanted to help and had nothing to offer.
The cradle had been moved to the center of the room—someone’s instinct, she supposed—and the lamp had been turned up high so the light was sharp and unsparing.
James was standing beside the cradle. The sight of him stopped her for a half beat before she made herself move again. He was still in his dinner clothes, his cravat pulled loose, and was standing with both hands gripping the edge of the cradle.
His face was… She had no word for it. She had never seen it like that.
He looked up when she came in.
“Where is the physician?” His voice was barely controlled.
“Sent for twenty minutes ago, Your Grace,” one of the maids answered.
“That is not what I asked.” He looked at her. “Where is he?”
“He—The footman only just—”
“Send another footman.” He turned back to the cradle. “Send two.”
The maid fled.
Isadora crossed the room. The baby was lying on her back in the cradle, her small chest rising and falling with rapid, shallow breaths. Her face was flushed, her eyes were half-open and unfocused, and the sound she was making seemed to require enormous effort.
“How long has she been like this?” Isadora asked, panic evident in her voice.
“The nurse found her twenty minutes ago.” James did not look up from Violet. “She was crying normally when I checked on her at eight. And then—” He stopped. “Twenty minutes.”
“Has anyone held her?”
“I…”
She could hear what he did not say. I tried, and I did not know if I was helping or making it worse.
“She became more distressed when I held her, so I put her back.”
Isadora reached into the cradle.
“Careful,” James warned sharply.
“I know.” She kept her voice even. “I have her.”
She lifted Violet slowly and cradled her against her chest, turning her slightly so she was more upright. The baby’s breathing was shallow, each inhale a struggle, and her cries were raspy and exhausted, like those of a child who had been frightened and could not stop.
“It is all right,” Isadora soothed. “I have you. You’re all right.”
She began to move. The slow, rhythmic sway that had worked before, as though the room were not in chaos and her heart was not considerably less calm than her voice suggested.
James was watching her. She could feel his eyes tracking every small shift in Violet’s breathing without looking.
“Is she—” he started.
“She’s here,” Isadora murmured. “She’s breathing. Let me work.”
He went quiet.
The nurse had moved closer, hovering at a useful distance. Cecily had come in behind Isadora and taken up a position near the door, instructing the maids to clear the space by the window.
Slowly, Violet’s cries quieted. The rigid tension in her small body loosened by a fraction, then a little more.
“There,” Isadora crooned. “There you are.”
Violet’s breathing was still too fast, still wrong, but the desperate, panicked edge of it was smoothing. Her hand had found the fabric at Isadora’s shoulder and gripped it.
Isadora exhaled and looked up.
James had not moved. He was frightened. Not alarmed by an inconvenience or unsettled by an unexpected development, but frightened, like someone who had realized that something mattered to them enormously and they did not know how to protect it.
Isadora had not fully understood until this moment, watching him stand there, unable to help. He had completely and irrevocably given himself over to the baby.
He looked up and found her watching him. He did not look away. He did not smooth his expression. He simply looked at her across the cradle and the candlelight, with everything visible on his face.
She held the baby a little closer and looked back, saying nothing, because there was nothing to say that would help.
“She needs to stay calm,” she murmured after a moment.
“She was not calm before you.”
“She is now. Try not to pace.”
James looked down at his feet. He had been pacing, but he had not noticed, apparently. He stopped.
He stood very still and watched Violet breathe.
“Where is he?” he asked no one in particular.
“He’ll be here,” Cecily said from the door.
“She has been breathing like this for thirty—”
“James,” Cecily cut in, her voice gentle yet firm. “She is calmer. Isadora has her. Let her work.”
James went to lean back against the wall, still watching.
Isadora kept moving, her voice low, her breathing steady. If she were calm, then Violet would settle, and if Violet settled, then her breathing would even out.
* * *
The physician arrived twenty-three minutes later.
He assessed the space in three seconds—the nurse, the hovering maids, James against the wall with his arms folded and his face carefully controlled, Isadora with the baby—and went directly to Isadora.
“How long since she settled?” he asked, already reaching into his bag.
“Perhaps fifteen minutes,” Isadora replied. “She was very distressed earlier. Breathing very fast, crying…”
“And now?”
“Her breathing is still faster than it should be, but less shallow.”
He nodded.
He examined the baby with careful thoroughness, listening and asking Isadora questions that she answered as accurately as she could while swaying gently.
James had not moved from the wall. She could feel him watching her, but she did not look at him.
“Well,” the physician said at last, straightening.
The room held its breath.
“It is a respiratory illness.” He addressed Isadora first, then turned to include James. “Not uncommon in children of this age, particularly in the summer months. ” He paused. “Her lungs are inflamed. It is not dangerous at present, provided the conditions that are aggravating it are addressed.”
“What conditions?” James asked, pushing off the wall.
The physician looked at him. “Unclean air. Distress. Instability. Changes to routine. Babies are extremely sensitive to their environment, Your Grace. When they become upset, their airways tighten. When their airways tighten, they become more upset.” He paused.
“The cycle is the problem. Breaking it requires consistency and care from familiar people who are always present.” He looked at James steadily.
“What this child needs, more than any medicine I can offer, is a household that does not change from one day to the next.”
James looked at Violet. “Will she recover?” he asked.
“In a healthy environment, yes. Fully.” The physician’s voice was level, honest. “Otherwise, if she remains in a state of constant anxiety and disruption, the illness might worsen. Babies are fragile and need all their energy to grow.” He paused.
“I do not say this to alarm you. I say it so that you understand what the household needs to prioritize.”
“Understood,” James said.
The physician gave his instructions on care, herbal preparations, and poultices to the nurse and then withdrew with the quietness with which he had arrived.
The room fell silent.
Violet was asleep.
Isadora stood very still. She looked down at the baby against her chest. At the dark lashes and the flushed cheek and the small hand that had not fully released its grip on her gown even in sleep, curled loosely against the fabric as though unwilling to let go entirely.
Care from familiar people who are always present.
She knew what it meant. She had known it before the physician said it.
Had known it on some level she had been refusing to think about because the examination led somewhere she was not ready to go.
But now, standing here with Violet asleep against her chest and the physician’s words still ringing in her head, she could not ignore it.
If she left Ashbourne now—if she returned to Blackmoor, if she put distance between her and this house and this child and the situation she had been telling herself for four days was not her responsibility—Violet would know it.
Would feel it in the absence of something that had been present and was now gone.
The nurse had settled in her chair by the door. Cecily was watching her from across the room.
James was still there, standing a few feet away, watching Violet with the same expression he had been wearing all evening. He looked up and found Isadora’s eyes. She held his gaze for a moment, then looked back down at Violet.
She thought about quiet days at Ashbourne and a man who had told her plainly he was not capable of love and then stood in a nursery against the wall for thirty minutes, unable to leave a baby he had just met because the thought of something happening to her had rendered him entirely unable to not care.
She thought about what it would mean to leave.
She looked at James.
“When the nurse has rested,” she said quietly, “I will take the morning shift.”
Something flashed across his face.
“Isadora—”
“She needs consistency.” She kept her voice even. The voice of a woman making a sensible decision for sensible reasons. “I am here. She knows me. It makes sense.”
James looked at her for a long moment. Then, more quietly than she had expected, he said, “Thank you.”
She nodded once and looked back down at the baby.
“Can I speak to you for a moment?”
* * *
The corridor was dim. James was leaning against the wall opposite the door with his arms folded and his coat still off, the way he had been for the past hour, close enough to be summoned immediately and far enough not to disturb what was happening inside.
He looked up when Isadora stepped up to him. He exhaled, turning his face away as though he was not ready for whatever she had to say.
She gave him a moment.
“The physician said she’ll recover,” she began. “Under the right conditions.”
“Consistency and care,” he said flatly. “I heard him.”
“I know you did.”
He clenched his jaw.
“James.”
“She was fine an hour ago.” He looked at the nursery door.
“I checked on her at eight. She was perfectly fine. And then twenty minutes—” He stopped.
“I did not know what to do. I was standing there, and I did not know what to do. I have managed… I have handled things considerably more complicated than—” He stopped again.
“She is twelve months old, and I had absolutely nothing to offer her.”
“You stayed,” Isadora reminded him.
“That is not—”
“You stayed in the room. You did not leave her with the nurse and go back to your study.” She looked at him steadily. “You were frightened out of your mind, and you stayed anyway.” She paused. “That is not nothing, James.”
He looked at her.
“It felt like nothing,” he muttered.
“I know.” She held his gaze. “But it was not.”
Silence settled between them. Somewhere downstairs, a clock chimed the hour.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“If I say yes, do you understand what you are agreeing to?”
He frowned slightly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I am not Caroline Pembley.” She said it quietly, without an edge.
“I am not going to manage your household from a polite distance and appear when appropriate and leave you on your own the rest of the time.” His eyebrows flew up in shock, but she continued nonetheless.
“If I come into this house, I come into it properly. That means Violet is my responsibility as much as yours. That means I have a voice in how this household runs. That means you do not treat me like a convenient solution you have installed and then forgotten about.”
“I would not—”
“I want to make sure we understand each other before anything is decided.”
He looked at her for a moment. Then, with the seriousness of a man making a promise he intended to keep, he said, “You will have a say in everything. The household, the child’s upbringing—all of it.” He paused. “I will not forget about you, Isadora. That I can promise.”
She studied him, seemingly thinking about what it meant to choose this.
She took a deep breath. “The library.”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“You offered to build me a library,” she reminded him. “Larger than the one at Blackmoor. I want that in the agreement.”
Surprise and warmth softened his face. The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Done,” he said.
“I am serious.”
“So am I.” He looked at her steadily. “The library. Whatever else you need, consider it done.”
She looked at him for a long moment. James Harcliffe, the Duke of Ashbourne, standing in a dim corridor in his shirtsleeves, making promises and meaning all of them.
“That is enough.”
“Is that a yes? Will you marry me?” he asked.
She looked at the nursery door. At the thin strip of warm light beneath it. “Yes, I will marry you,” she said quietly.
James went still for a moment. Then he exhaled. “I will speak to William in the morning.”
“He is going to be furious.”
“I am aware.” A pause. “I will manage him.”
“You think so.”
“I have managed your brother for years,” he assured her.
A smile tugged at her lips, but she bit it back.
“Good night, James,” she said.
“Good night, Isadora.”
She turned to leave. She had made it perhaps four steps when he spoke again, his voice quiet.
“For what it’s worth, I am glad it is you.”
She stopped but did not turn. She stood in the corridor for a moment with her back to him, and the words sat somewhere they had no business sitting, warm and inconvenient and entirely genuine.
She did not answer.
She walked to her room, closed the door behind her, and went to her bed. She plopped down and lay back, staring at the ceiling.
Ashbourne was her home now, or would be soon enough.
She did not think about what that meant.