Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
“May I see her?” Emma suddenly inquired.
Frances looked up from the tea tray. For a moment, the question seemed too simple to have produced the sudden tightening in her chest.
Emma stood near the window, with the pale afternoon light softening the line of her profile.
She had removed her gloves some minutes ago, as though she had no intention of being a guest merely passing through.
Her bonnet lay upon the chair beside her, and there was something in her expression that made Frances think of childhood sickrooms and whispered confidences beneath bedcovers.
“Her?” Frances asked, though she knew perfectly well whom Emma meant.
Emma’s mouth curved faintly. “The baby, Frances.”
Frances returned the tongs to the tray with unnecessary care. “She is resting.”
“All the more reason to see her quietly.”
“You have already seen babies before,” Frances said, reaching for the teapot. “You possess one yourself.”
“Yes,” Emma replied, coming nearer. “That is why I asked.”
Frances glanced toward her. There was no pressure in Emma’s tone, no bright curiosity of the sort society would have worn while pretending tenderness. There was only gentleness, and Frances found that far more difficult to resist.
“She… is very small,” Frances said.
“Most babies are.”
“This one is particularly small.”
“Then I shall be particularly careful.”
Frances looked down at the tea she had poured and realized she had forgotten to place a cup beneath the stream. Tea spread in a dark, shining pool across the tray.
“Oh, bother.”
Emma did not laugh. She only took a napkin and began to help her without remarking upon it, which was somehow worse. Frances could have endured teasing. Teasing gave one something to strike back against. Tenderness left one defenseless.
“She is in the nursery,” Frances revealed. “Or what passes for a nursery, since His Grace has decided an entire suite must be rearranged because one infant has entered the house.”
“That sounds very like him.”
Frances arched a brow. “You speak as though you know a great deal about his domestic tyranny.”
“I know that men who pretend to be calm are often the most ridiculous when frightened.”
Frances almost smiled. “Then you know His Grace very well indeed.”
They left the sitting room together and made their way down the passage.
The house was quieter than it had been that morning, after the commotion of Emma and Philip’s arrival had settled into something almost ordinary.
Servants moved with careful steps, doors opened and closed softly, and somewhere below stairs Philip’s low voice could be heard speaking to Andrew.
The nursery door stood ajar. Frances slowed before it, though she did not mean to. From within came no crying, only the faint little sounds that had, in the space of days, become more familiar to her than the ticking of any clock.
The nurse rose from her chair when they entered.
“My lady,” she greeted softly.
Frances was still not accustomed to that. The words belonged to someone composed, elegant, and trained for such things. Not to a woman who had once declared marriage to be little more than a velvet-lined prison and had then walked into it with a duke at her side and a scandal at her back.
The baby lay in her cradle, wrapped in pale muslin. Her lashes rested like fine shadows upon her cheeks. One hand had escaped its covering and lay curled near her chin, impossibly small.
Emma came to stand beside Frances.
“She is beautiful,” Emma murmured.
Frances looked at her quickly, suspicious of sentiment.
Emma smiled down at the cradle. “Do not look at me so. I mean it.”
“She looks like a wrinkled plum when she is displeased.”
“Most of us do.”
“And when she cries, she sounds like an outraged kitten.”
“Then she has spirit.”
Frances looked back at the baby. “She has lungs, certainly.”
Emma’s smile deepened, but she did not press. That was one of Emma’s gifts. She knew when to let Frances hide behind sharpness and when to gently take it away.
“May I?” Emma asked.
Frances hesitated. It was absurd. Emma was a mother.
Emma had held her own child through fevers, tears, sleepless nights and all the strange terrors of infancy.
She had more right to confidence than Frances, who still sometimes feared she might hold the child at the wrong angle and undo her entirely.
Yet when the nurse bent to lift the baby, Frances stepped forward first.
“I shall do it.”
The words came too quickly. Emma noticed. Frances saw that she did. But her sister said nothing.
Carefully, Frances reached into the cradle and slid one hand beneath the baby’s head, and the other beneath her small, warm weight. The child stirred, her mouth moving faintly as if she objected on principle to being disturbed. Frances lifted her against her shoulder.
“There now,” she whispered before she could think better of it. “None of that. You were asked to behave for company.”
Emma watched her.
Frances cleared her throat. “She is not always reasonable.”
“Babies rarely are.”
“She has no regard for schedules.”
“She will learn one, in time.”
Frances glanced toward her. “Will she?”
“Oh yes.” Emma reached out and touched one finger lightly to the baby’s blanket. “Not perfectly, of course. Babies are not clocks. But a little routine helps. Feeding, resting, quiet when she is tired. The same comforts at the same times. It teaches her the world is steady.”
Frances looked down at the child’s face. The baby had opened her eyes, dark and unfocused, and was staring at nothing in particular with grave suspicion.
“I have been told not to pick her up each time she fusses,” she admitted, keeping her tone deliberately detached. “Apparently it encourages tyranny.”
Emma’s brows rose. “Who told you that?”
“Mrs. Carter.”
“Mrs. Carter has raised seven children and terrifies all of them.”
“That does lend weight to her authority.”
“It lends weight to her voice.” Emma’s expression turned fond but firm. “You cannot spoil a baby by giving comfort, Frances. If she cries, she needs something. Warmth, food, rest, changing, or simply to know someone is there.”
Frances looked down again. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
“I appreciate your honesty.”
“It is exhausting,” Emma continued. “And frightening at times. And quite often dull in the most relentless way. But it becomes easier when you stop believing you must do everything alone.”
Frances gave a soft laugh. “That sounds like advice intended for a duchess.”
“It is advice intended for my sister.”
Frances said nothing. Gently, she passed the baby into Emma’s arms, though the motion cost her more than it ought.
Emma took the child with the practiced ease of a mother, lowering her into the crook of her elbow and swaying once, instinctively.
The baby fussed, and a tiny crease formed between her brows.
Frances stepped closer at once.
“She does that when the light is too bright,” she said. “Turn a little away from the window.”
Emma obeyed.
“And she prefers the blanket tucked near her left side.”
Emma tucked the blanket.
“And if she begins making that little sound… there, that one, she is either hungry or deciding whether to be offended.”
Emma looked up at her. “You have observed her very closely.”
Frances folded her hands before her. “There is very little else to do in this house besides avoid scandal sheets and argue with my husband.”
The word emerged before she could stop it.
My husband.
Emma’s gaze lifted fully to hers. “And how is your husband?”
Frances looked away. “Impossibly ducal.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is an accurate description.”
“Frances.”
She sighed and moved toward the window, though not far. She did not like being too far from the baby. That was another fact she refused to examine.
“What would you have me say?” she asked. “The marriage is an arrangement. You know that already.”
“I know what everyone says. I am asking what you say.”
Frances kept her eyes on the garden beyond the glass.
Andrew’s grounds were beautifully kept even now, in that tender uncertainty before spring fully claimed the earth.
Gravel paths curved in disciplined lines.
Trees stood bare but promising. Everything about Sinclair House spoke of control, order, and permanence.
She disliked how reassuring she found it.
“I say it is temporary in every way that matters,” Frances replied. “Once the baby’s situation is solved, His Grace and I shall go our separate ways.”
The baby made another faint sound behind her. Frances turned at once.
Emma lowered her gaze to the child, whose fist had found the edge of her own blanket. “You seem sad about it.”
“I do not.” Frances’ throat tightened, and she hated it. “I was… looking at the baby.”
“Yes,” Emma said quietly. “That is precisely why.”
Frances wanted to make some sharp reply. She wanted to say something clever enough to close the subject and remind Emma that she was still Frances Norton beneath the borrowed title, still sensible and immune to the soft traps of domestic feeling.
But the baby was looking at her again, or seemed to be.
Frances knew infants did not truly focus as adults did.
She knew this because she had asked the physician with an air of detached inquiry, as though curiosity were her only motive.
Still, when those dark, uncertain eyes turned in her direction, it felt horribly like being chosen.
“You are not the same woman who once told me marriage was the worst fate that could befall a woman,” she heard Emma saying.
Frances stiffened. “I never said the worst.”
“You said it with great conviction while eating the last of the lemon cakes and declaring that any woman who entered marriage willingly had surrendered her reason.”
Frances narrowed her eyes. “You remember that far too well.”
“I was being courted by Philip at the time. Your speeches were difficult to forget.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“You loved him.”
Emma smiled faintly. “Well, not at first.”
Frances had no answer for that.
The baby fussed more insistently then, her face scrunching with the first warning of tears. Frances moved before she thought, crossing the room and reaching out.
“Here,” she said. “She is tired.”
Emma surrendered the child without protest. Frances took her back, settling her carefully against her shoulder. The baby’s small cry broke, softened, then faded as Frances began to move in the slow, uneven rhythm she had learned by accident over several sleepless nights.
“There,” Frances murmured. “You see? There is no need to make a tragedy of everything.”
Emma’s eyes gleamed. “Is that advice for the baby or for yourself?”
“For the baby, naturally.”
“Naturally.” Emma’s expression warmed. “You know, you can ask for help when you need it, Frances.”
“I do.”
“No,” Emma corrected. “You permit assistance when it is already in the room and impossible to reject. That is not the same thing.”
Frances smiled. “You came here to see the baby, not to catalogue my flaws.”
“I can do both,” her sister teased. “I am talented.”
Frances’ mouth twitched. The baby had settled again, her face turned into Frances’ shoulder.
One tiny hand was resting against the bodice of her gown.
Frances should put her down. She knew that.
Emma had just spoken of routine and rest, and Frances believed in both on principle.
Still, she held the child a little longer.
Emma’s voice softened. “What will happen when the situation is solved?”
Frances did not pretend not to understand. “I told you. His Grace and I will go our separate ways.”
“And the baby?”
The question pierced more cleanly than Frances expected. She looked down. The child slept now, with her breath warm and faint against Frances’ neck.
“The baby will be safe,” Frances assured her.
“That is not what I asked.”
Frances closed her eyes briefly. When had Emma become so relentless? Or had she always been so, and Frances had only mistaken kindness for softness?
“I do not know,” she admitted.
The confession was nearly a whisper. Emma did not move. Frances opened her eyes again.
“I do not know what will happen to her. His Grace says he will protect her, and he means it. I believe that. But she cannot remain a secret forever. Someone will have to claim her, or place her, or…” She stopped, because the remaining possibilities felt too cold to speak while holding the child.
“Or love her,” Emma supplied.
Frances swallowed. “That is not always as simple as people pretend.”
“No,” Emma replied. “It is not simple at all.”
The baby sighed in her sleep. Frances felt the small movement of it through her whole body.
“I cannot wait,” Frances told her, and her voice came out steadier than she felt, “for all of this to be settled. I cannot wait for His Grace and me to go our separate ways and resume whatever lives we were meant to have before this madness began.”
Emma was silent.
Frances kept her gaze on the child. “Truly.”
The word sounded too small once spoken. It was not false, exactly, but fragile, as though it had been placed upon the floor and might crack if anyone stepped too near.
Emma did not challenge it directly. That would have been easier. Instead, she reached out and touched Frances’ arm.
“Then I hope,” Emma said softly, “when that day comes, you are very certain it is what you want.”
Frances looked at her then, ready with denial, irritation, some bright and polished piece of wit. But the baby shifted in her arms, and Frances lowered her eyes once more. She had no answer.
So, she only bent her head and pressed the lightest kiss to the child’s cap, so quickly it might have been mistaken for a mere adjustment of linen.
Emma saw it. Of course she did.
Frances pretended otherwise.