Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
The following days passed with an order that did not belong to Frances.
Sinclair House ran beautifully. That was the trouble.
It moved with the silent confidence of a place that had never required her in order to function.
Fires were lit before she entered rooms. Curtains were drawn before she thought to ask.
Letters appeared upon silver trays, menus were presented in neat hands, servants glided in and out with the faint rustle of black skirts and polished shoes.
Even the clocks seemed to tick with ducal authority.
Frances had imagined, foolishly perhaps, that being mistress of a great house would give one some sense of command. Instead, she felt rather like an intruder who had been handed a set of keys and dared not try them in any lock.
Mrs. Carter was respectful. She addressed Frances with every proper title, deferred to her on matters of linen, menus, and flowers, and yet Frances could not escape the sense that the housekeeper knew precisely how everything ought to be done and was patiently waiting for her new duchess to discover it.
The servants bowed. The footmen obeyed. The maids curtsied and lowered their eyes.
No one was unkind. Frances felt that unkindness might have given her something to resist. Politeness merely reminded her she had arrived too suddenly and belonged too little.
Andrew did not help. She saw him at breakfast twice, at dinner once, and in the corridor several times, always briefly.
He was courteous. He was attentive in all ways that could not be mistaken for intimacy.
He asked after her comfort, her correspondence, Mrs. Carter’s usefulness, and whether the blue drawing room was too cold in the mornings.
He did not ask whether she was lonely. She did not ask where he went. They were exquisitely civil, and it was exhausting.
So, Frances turned her attention to the nursery.
The first morning, she came to the nursery after breakfast and found Nurse Ellis seated near the window with the child held against her shoulder.
She began to rise at once. “Your Grace.”
“Please do not disturb her,” Frances said quickly, for the baby’s face was turned against the nurse’s neck, with one tiny fist pressed beneath her chin. “I only wished to see how she does this morning.”
“She does well enough.” Nurse Ellis smiled with weary affection. “She had us awake before dawn, which I am told is a lady’s privilege if she is determined to be admired.”
Frances approached more slowly than she wished to. “Does she often wake so early?”
“At present, yes. She usually stirs sometime before six, takes a little milk, protests the indignity of being changed, and then sleeps again if she is in a charitable humor.”
“Is she often charitable?”
“Not before breakfast, Your Grace.”
Frances looked down at the baby. “Then we have something in common.”
The nurse laughed softly. It encouraged Frances more than it ought.
She drew a chair nearer, then paused. “May I sit?”
Nurse Ellis blinked, as though surprised the question had been asked. “Of course, Your Grace.”
Frances sat with her hands folded carefully in her lap. She felt oddly like a pupil again, awaiting instruction in a subject she ought, by some feminine instinct, to understand without being taught.
“What is her usual routine?” she asked.
Nurse Ellis shifted the baby slightly. “Well, if she sleeps well, she wakes near dawn. Then another feed midmorning. She likes to be walked after that, though not too briskly. If one moves too quickly, she grows offended.”
“Offended?”
“Deeply.” Nurse Ellis’s eyes warmed. “She scrunches herself up as if the world has insulted her.”
Frances looked at the baby’s sleeping face and had the most foolish urge to smile.
“And after that?”
“A little sleep near noon if all goes kindly. More milk. She is wakeful in the late afternoon, often fretful. Evenings can be difficult. She does not like being left in the cradle when the fire is low, but she settles if held upright and spoken to.”
“Spoken to?” Frances repeated. “Does she care what is said?”
“Not in the least, I think. Only the sound of it.”
“That is fortunate. Many people in society would be improved by the same habit.”
Nurse Ellis smiled again, though more carefully this time, as if not certain whether duchesses intended their jokes to be acknowledged. Frances noticed and felt herself retreat a little inside.
There it was again. Rank standing between her and ordinary conversation like an overlarge piece of furniture in a narrow room.
She looked back at the baby. “How much does she eat?”
“Enough to satisfy me most days. She can be impatient with it. She takes a little, dozes, wakes cross because she has not taken more, and then blames the nearest person.”
“A sensible strategy.”
“Indeed, Your Grace.”
“What should I do if she cries?”
Nurse Ellis seemed to understand that this question mattered more than the others. Her expression softened, but not with pity. Frances was grateful for that.
“First, see whether she is hungry,” the nurse said. “Then whether she wants changing. If neither, she may be tired, or only wishing to be held. Some babies like to be rocked. Some like a song. This one likes a steady voice.”
Frances glanced toward the cradle. “I am not certain mine is always steady.”
“Begging Your Grace’s pardon, but she will not mind if it trembles.”
Frances looked up. Nurse Ellis’s face remained kind, practical, and entirely without mockery.
The baby stirred then, her mouth moving in a small, searching motion. Nurse Ellis lowered her into the crook of her arm and murmured something soft. Frances watched carefully.
“Would Your Grace care to hold her?” Nurse Ellis asked.
Frances’s fingers tightened in her lap.
It was absurd. She had held the child once already. Successfully, even. The baby had quieted against her. Everyone had looked at her as though she had performed some gentle miracle. But miracles were unreliable foundations for habit.
“What if I wake her?” Frances asked.
“Then she will wake.”
“And cry?”
“Very likely.”
Frances considered the matter. “You are not making a persuasive case.”
“No, Your Grace. Only an honest one.”
That won Frances before flattery could have done. She stood. Nurse Ellis rose with the baby, and Frances arranged her arms as she remembered. Still, when the warm, delicate weight was transferred to her, her breath caught. The baby was so small.
“There,” Nurse Ellis said. “Support the head. Yes, just so.”
Frances looked down. The baby opened her eyes. They were dark and unfocused, solemn with that peculiar infant gravity which made her seem not ignorant of the world, but profoundly disappointed in it.
“Oh,” Frances whispered. “Good morning.”
The baby stared.
“I am afraid I do not yet know how to entertain you.”
A tiny fist flexed against the blanket.
“No? You are wise not to expect much. I have been told my conversation is improving, but only by myself.”
Nurse Ellis made a small sound that might have been a laugh disguised as a cough. Frances shifted her hold very slightly. The baby’s face puckered. Panic shot through her.
“She is going to cry.”
“Not necessarily.”
“She looks as though she is considering it.”
“She often does.”
“What should I do?”
“Keep talking.”
Frances looked back down. “Very well. You must not cry, because if you do, I shall be exposed as a fraud before breakfast, and that would be an excessively poor start to the day.”
The baby blinked. Frances took this as encouragement.
“Besides, we are allies, you and I. Neither of us understands our role in this house, and yet everyone expects us to behave as if we were born to it.”
The baby yawned. Frances felt something in her chest loosen.
“There,” Nurse Ellis murmured. “She likes you.”
Frances did not look up. “She has poor judgment, then.”
“She has excellent judgment, Your Grace. Babies often do.”
Frances wished, suddenly and painfully, that she believed it.
The routine began in small ways after that, lacking in confidence, for confidence belonged to women who lifted infants as though they were extensions of their own bodies, who knew from the pitch of a cry whether it meant hunger or temper, who could secure a blanket with one hand and pour tea with the other.
Frances possessed none of those talents, but she possessed effort.
She came to the nursery after breakfast and listened while Nurse Ellis explained the morning.
She learned that the baby preferred being held against the left shoulder rather than the right.
She learned that too much rocking made her fretful, but a slow walk near the window pleased her.
She learned that she disliked cold hands, sudden noises, and one particular cap trimmed with yellow ribbon, though Nurse Ellis insisted that last was coincidence.
Frances doubted it.
“The child has taste,” she said.
“She has lungs,” Nurse Ellis replied. “That is what I know for certain.”
Frances learned how to test whether the milk was too warm by touching it to the inside of her wrist. She learned where the clean cloths were kept, which drawer held the tiny gowns, which shawl was softest, and how to tuck the blanket around the baby without making her look like a parcel wrapped for posting.
The first time Frances attempted it herself, the blanket came loose almost immediately. The baby kicked one foot free, looking triumphant.
Frances sighed. “You see? She has defeated me.”
“She is very determined,” Nurse Ellis chuckled.
“So am I.”
The second attempt held… for nearly three minutes. Frances counted that as progress.
In the afternoons, when the household receded into its own rhythms and Andrew vanished into whatever duties occupied men who did not explain themselves, Frances often found herself in the nursery again.
Sometimes she did no more than sit beside the cradle while the baby slept.
She brought correspondence once, then found herself reading the same line five times because the baby’s tiny expressions kept changing in sleep: one brow twitching, mouth pursing, lashes fluttering against her cheeks.
“Do all babies look so busy when sleeping?” Frances asked.
Nurse Ellis, mending by the fire, looked up. “Busy, Your Grace?”
“As though they are conducting important business in dreams.”
“I could not say.”
“I suspect she is judging us.”
“That I could believe,” the woman laughed amusedly.
Frances smiled down at the cradle. “Quite severely.”
Still, for all these visits, the feeling of unbelonging did not leave her.
It followed her everywhere. Into the breakfast room, where she sat opposite Andrew and counted the pauses between polite remarks.
Into the blue drawing room, where she sorted letters addressed to the Duchess of Sinclair and felt like a fraud opening them.
Into Mrs. Carter’s little sitting room, where menus and household lists were discussed while Frances tried very hard not to reveal when she did not know what ought to be obvious.
She learned, she asked, she listened… yet, she still did not belong.