Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Andrew wasn’t entirely sure what had woken him. He lay in the darkness for a moment before the urgency in his chest compelled him to rise. He strode through his bedroom, paused at the door leading into his wife’s chambers, then moved for the door that opened into the corridor instead.
The moment he stepped out, he realized the source of his disturbance.
A baby’s cry echoing through the house.
He didn’t pause, moving through to the nursery.
A single lamp was lit by the window, and Jessamine paced, William in her arms. This was a familiar sight, but what was less familiar was the sight of his wife in her nightclothes, the thin fabric catching on her nipples and hugging the generous curves of her backside.
He blinked, forcing any inappropriate thoughts from his head. William ordinarily slept at this time. He woke several times a night for a feed, and sometimes Jessamine soothed him back to sleep, but nothing like this.
Andrew had memorized the baby’s routine. Of course, he knew it would change, but it behooved him to know everything that occurred in his household. And when it involved William, even more so.
Jessamine turned when she saw him, her eyes ringed with dark circles and her hair loose around her head. It made her look undone in a way that briefly made his loins awaken. Just as quickly, concern eclipsed any amorous feelings.
“What is it?” he asked crisply, trying not to give rise to any suspicion that he might be concerned.
“He won’t settle. And look at his face.” Jessamine tipped the babe toward him, revealing a red face and eyes that were squeezed tightly closed. “He’s too hot. I’ve done everything I can to soothe him, but he won’t settle. I think there’s something wrong.”
Panic thrashed through Andrew, but he kept his voice extremely calm. “Have you sent for a physician?”
“Not yet. What if it’s nothing?”
“If you have cause for concern, then it’s not nothing.” He reined in his temper with difficulty. None of this was her fault, not William’s illness, nor the memories it brought back. “I will send for a physician. Have you rags and cold water?”
“I sent for them some time ago, but everyone is asleep.”
“Then I will wake them,” Andrew said grimly, fastening his robe more tightly around himself.
William wore nothing except cloth around his middle, and Andrew came to press the backs of two fingers against the boy’s chest.
Too hot.
“It’s a fever,” he said.
Jessamine closed her eyes briefly. “He can’t…” Her throat bobbed and tightened with a swallow. “Nothing can happen to him, Andrew. It can’t.”
“It won’t.” His voice was grim, but she looked at him as though he were a genie from a bottle, placed before her for the sole reason of granting her wishes. “You may trust me on that.”
“I do,” she said, her voice sounding almost wondering. “God help me, I do.”
“Good. I will arrange someone to come and help.”
“Katherine is sleeping. I told her to get some rest in case the milk…”
Andrew nodded. He knew little enough about the business of producing milk, and he would do nothing to interfere with the process. “We will manage perfectly well between us.”
“Once you’ve called for the physician, you may return to bed if you would like,” Jessamine said, but he held up a hand.
“Don’t insult me, Jessamine. William is as much mine as yours, and we will care for him together.
I could hardly sleep now as it is.” He nodded at her and strode from the room, intending to wake up the entire household if need be.
They could sleep when daylight came, if by then William was well enough.
He prayed William would be well enough. If he were not, and if Andrew lost Rebecca and her son within the month, he was not fully sure how he would go on.
Jessamine sang to William in a thick voice, forcing back all her worries and anxieties as far as she could.
Everything that came to mind, she put to words and a tune.
Fragments of half-remembered songs, things her mother used to sing to her as a child, and lilting melodies from her time in Scotland.
And as William continued to scream and writhe in her arms, she moved to a prayer uttered aloud in the form of song.
“You must be all right,” she sang. “See the night through and be well by morning, my darling boy.”
Andrew returned to the room as she repeated the phrase, and although his brows drew together, he said nothing.
Several maids squeezed past with copper bowls and rags that they laid neatly out on the side. Andrew, to Jessamine’s surprise, ordered some tea, and then rolled his sleeves up.
“Place William here,” he said, indicating a blanket in the crib. He lifted the bars away so they had free access. “Let me bathe him.”
Jessamine shivered with a brief, terrible fear that if she let go of William for even a moment, something dire would happen to him.
But Andrew’s expression was implacable, and there was no room for argument in his words. She understood their logic, and so she slowly lowered William’s tiny body to the blankets. Andrew dipped the rags into the water, squeezed, and laid them across William’s stomach.
“This will cool his body faster,” Andrew explained.
“Have you done this before?”
“Not with an infant. But if you think there was never illness in the army, you would be sorely mistaken.”
The army. She never forgot he had been in the army—how could she, with the way he strode about the house, ordering servants about like he was a general and they his army?—but she hadn’t thought of him in this role.
“I thought there were doctors in the army,” she ventured.
“There are. But when there are epidemics, they are hard-pressed to treat everyone. And minor ailments such as fever need no great medical knowledge to treat.”
“Then why did you send for a physician?”
“Because I have no experience with children,” Andrew said, and for a moment, his hands faltered.
He curled his fingers into fists, the whites of his knuckles showing. No matter his calm, she suspected that underneath, he was not calm at all.
“And because William is… precious,” he added.
Jessamine nodded. Yes, William was precious indeed.
She watched the way Andrew carefully placed the wet rags on William’s stomach, handling him with inordinate care. Then, when he turned the boy over, she asked to have a go, and wrung the wet cloths out carefully before placing them on William’s skin.
He screamed even harder, and she slid her finger into his tiny hands, letting him grasp as she murmured reassurance to him.
“It’s all right, my beautiful boy,” she told him. “Everything will be all right now, I promise you. All we have to do is get you cooler.”
Her heart hurt. This could not be happening. When she’d been attempting to get him to sleep before, she had thought perhaps this was nothing, a figment of her imagination born from a lack of sleep and such endless worry.
So many things happened to infants before they had the resilience to survive. And if something happened to William, she would never forgive herself.
The maid arrived with tea, and Andrew handed her some. “Drink,” he said curtly. “It will do you good.”
“I feel as though—”
“I will hold him,” Andrew said, picking the child up and gently placing him in his arms. “You may drink. Then when you are done, we will trade.”
Jessamine took the proffered cup and sipped, watching the stiff way Andrew held William. He was certainly not used to the feeling of such a small boy in his arms. But he held him with determined patience, pacing about the room with him.
“Speak to him,” she said. “I won’t ask you to sing.”
Andrew glanced at her. “I believe he would like that even less than the fever.”
A joke? That didn’t seem to be real, but Jessamine couldn’t deny the half-lift of his lips, as though he wanted to smile but didn’t. The expression soon left his face, however, replaced by that familiar tightness. Worry, written in his eyes like the night stars.
Soon, it was Jessamine’s turn to hold William, and she did, letting him press against her skin, letting him know that she was there, and he was safe. He would be safe.
“More cold water,” Andrew decided once he had finished his tea, and they replaced William’s rags.
Then, because Jessamine could not bear to allow William to go long without the comfort he so desperately needed, she scooped him back into his arms and held him. Sometimes she paced, sometimes she sat in the one armchair in the room while Andrew stood by the window, looking out into the night.
Hours passed. She felt delirious with exhaustion, but although Andrew looked almost as tired, he made no complaint, and neither did she.
In truth, it was comforting to have another person with her, his calmness allaying the worst of her fears, although she doubted he truly was as calm as he suggested.
She wondered what had happened to him to make him so alarmed when he had confessed to having some experience with fevers in the army. Illness, then. Or perhaps children.
The death of a child—of anyone—could blight a person’s entire life. Andrew, she presumed, was not immune to that very human of feelings.
As dawn finally cracked the sky, William’s crying settled into a murmur, and he finally drifted into sleep. Jessamine stared at Andrew in wonder, her entire body aching at having held the small child for so many hours. Her arms, her shoulders, her back. Heavens, her back.
But it was worth it. He was asleep.
Andrew approached them both, and with the back of one finger, tested William’s stomach again.
His face was taut with concentration, and Jessamine held her breath, afraid to move in case she should wake the child, and scared that after all this, they would conclude that William’s fever was worse than ever and this was the inevitable decline before he passed.
But Andrew’s face cleared, and his lips curved upwards, ever so slightly. It was the closest thing to a smile Jessamine had seen him give, and it was one of the most unexpectedly marvelous sights she had seen.