“He is gone,” Daniel added gently.
“Give him to me,” Harris ordered tersely, and for a moment Daniel feared the man might continue with vain attempts to breathe life into his son’s small body. Daniel wrapped the child securely in a donated blanket and reverently handed him over to Charles Harris, who reached both hands out to receive the bundle.
When the weight of the infant’s body filled his hands and arms, it seemed the child became real to the man all at once. He stared down at the little face and buckled over as if struck hard. He cried out in anguish. A cry that must certainly be echoing throughout the manor. The man sank to the nearest chair and held the bundled child to his chest, face contorted, tears streaking from his eyes. A different man indeed from the smug man Daniel had sparred with only a short time before. His heart tore for the man, his loss. He could not help but imagine himself in the same situation, if his own wife or soon-to-arrive child should die during childbirth. His answering tears were for himself as well as for Charles Harris.
“Katherine will not bear it,” Harris whispered.
“Of course the loss is terrible, but in time ...”
“No, you don’t understand. Katherine feared this might happen. She insisted I should plan to have her locked away immediately should the child die. That she would go insane with grief—want to die herself. I promised her everything would be all right. Nothing would happen to our child... .” The man’s grief rendered him unable to continue.
“It is not your fault, man. You did everything you could.”
“I did nothing.”
“Your wife will want her time to say good-bye to him. We should take him back to her before—”
“No! Did you not notice her state? I have never seen her like that. I cannot bring home a ... lifeless ... child... .”
“It will be painful, yes, but in the end it will help her overcome her grief.”
“No.” He spoke the word with less vehemence, shaking his head thoughtfully, staring at nothing. Suddenly he looked up, startled, his face alight with manic purpose.
“Where is Charlotte?”
Instantly, panic, dread, and profound fear struck Daniel Taylor with full force. He could see what was coming, should have foreseen it an hour before. “Mr. Harris, whatever you are thinking, I beg you to put it from your mind.”
“What am I thinking?”
“I forbid you to approach Miss Lamb on this. You are grieving, I realize, but—”
“You cannot keep me from seeing Charlotte.”
“Actually I can. I am her physician and she is still in recovery.”
“She will want to see me.”
“Will she? Even when she discovers your purpose? I cannot believe you are thinking to ... I cannot conceive of a more cruel offer.”
“Cruel? What is cruel about offering my son—my other son—a decent life? You said it yourself, if I do nothing, he will grow up with nothing—no advantages, no opportunities, let alone the basic necessities of life.”
“I never said ...”
“How many other fatherless children could hope for such as I, aswe,could provide?”
“But your wife ...”
“Need never know!”
“You offer only because your own son is dead. Had he lived ...”
“Then you and I would not be having this conversation, I grant you. But he did not live, did he? And here I stand, not—what?—a few steps from my own flesh-and-blood living, breathing son? I say it’s providence.”
“I say it’s heartless and selfish.”
“But it does not really matter what you say. It only matters what Charlotte says, does it not?”
Daniel shook his head, arms crossed, head pounding.
