“I’m not goin’.”
“What?”
“I’m not goin’. Here.” She thrust the vial into Mary’s hand, making her take it.
“Whyever not?”
“I couldn’t do it.”
Mary expelled a loud humph, clearly vexed. “But I told you how.”
“I know.” Sally shook her head, already backing away. “Please tell Davey I am sorry and maybe we can meet up another time.”
“I shall tell him no such thing. If you don’t come with me right now, Sally, all bets are off. A man like that doesn’t stay unattached for long, and I’ll be hanged if I don’t take a try at him myself.”
Sally paused, then nodded sadly. “Good-bye then, Mary.” She turned and began trotting back toward the house.
“You’re a bigger fool than I thought,” Mary called after her.
“Giving up your own chance at happiness to wet-nurse the brat of some stranger what don’t give a farthing about you.”
The words burned at her ears and heart like stove irons.I am a fool, Sally thought. But still she ran up the lane, as fast as her large feet would carry her, as though wild dogs were on her heels.
In the morning, Sally awoke to fierce pounding on the nursery door. She’d already given Edmund his early feeding and had fallen back to sleep, his warm form still beside her. The little biter had woken up three times in the night, fussing and crying. She’d barely gotten two hours of sleep put together. She’d nearly come to regret not giving him the sleeping stuff. When the child had seemed to stare at her, eyes wide, she’d murmured, “Oh, don’t pay me any mind. I just gets cranky when I don’t gets me sleep.” And clearly, she thought wryly, she also forgot how to speak properly when she was overtired.
“Hang on—I’m coming,” she called now, quickly pulling her dressing gown around her. But the door banged open before she could get to it. She jerked the tie into a rushed knot and stared, shocked as first the missus and then the master rushed into the room and to Edmund’s cradle.
“Where is he?” he asked.
“What have you done with him?” she accused.
“Edmund’s right here. In my bed.” She pointed to where Edmund lay propped between a pillow and a rolled-up blanket.
“Is he all right?” the lady asked, breathless.
“Seems to be,” her husband said, bent over to peer at him.
“Oh, thank God,” Lady Katherine exclaimed and picked him up, cuddling him close. She gave Sally a sharp look. “Why isn’t he in his cradle? You might have suffocated him!”
“I fell asleep after his last feedin’. The little thing kept me up half the night.”
“Did he indeed?” she asked pointedly.
“Yes, m’lady.”
Lady Katherine lifted her chin toward the open door. “Search the room,” she ordered.
“What is it?” Sally asked as men from the place—the butler, the groom, the manservant—strode into the room. “What’s happening?”
“As if you don’t know!” Katherine snapped.
“I don’t.”
“The Whitemans’ baby was found dead early this morning,” Mr. Harris said. “The nurse was apprehended, clearly intoxicated, with laudanum on her person. It is assumed that she drugged the infant.”
“It is more than assumed—she killed him!”
“My dear, allow me,” he soothed, and then turned a hard gaze on Sally. “You are familiar with this nurse, this ... What was her name?” he asked the groom searching through her drawers.
