CHAPTER18
In the London townhouse of Lady Katherine and Mr. Harris, Sally sat in a rocking chair in the third-floor nursery, holding the small boy in her arms, enjoying the warm weight of his compact body against her bosom. Holding him both comforted and pricked her heart. She missed her own dear boy, a few miles away with her sister. She had only seen him once since coming here the previous month.’Tis for you I’m doin’ this,she thought.I’m savin’ every shilling. We’ll have us a better life, Dickie. You see if we don’t.
The lady of the house entered without knocking, and Sally sat up straighter in the rocking chair, quickly making sure her frock was properly done up.
“Good evening, m’lady,” Sally said quickly.
“And how is my son this evening?” Lady Katherine asked, eyes only for her boy.
“His belly is full and his dreams sweet.”
Lady Katherine slanted a wry glance at Sally. “And how would you know the content of his dreams?”
“Oh, just look at him, m’lady. He’s got the look of peace about him. He sleeps the sleep of one with no worries. No twitchin’, no moanin’.”
“Well, let us hope he is this quiet during the churching tomorrow.”
Sally lifted the boy gently from her lap, offering him up to his mother. “Would you like to hold him?”
“Not tonight, I fear. We’re off to a small dinner party and I haven’t time to clean spittle—or worse—from my gown. You understand.”
“O’ course.”
Katherine turned and stepped back to the door, then paused.
“Just listen to that wind. It will ruin my hair. Do find Edmund an extra blanket for the night. This house is so drafty when the wind blows.”
“Yes, m’lady.”
The townhousewasdrafty, especially up on the higher floors. It was tall and narrow, like those adjoining it. Sally guessed their interiors were similar too, though she had little to base this on, as she had barely been out of the house since hiring on as Edmund’s nurse.
The warmest room in the house was the kitchen below stairs. Its high windows looked out onto a small herb garden, ruined this late in autumn. The dining room was on the main level, with large windows facing the street. On the first floor up were the drawing room, sitting room, and library; and on the second, the master and mistress’s bedchambers and dressing rooms. Above that were the nursery and two other bedrooms, and on the top level, the servant’s quarters. It had taken Sally weeks to get used to all the climbing of stairs. Her appetite since coming here had grown, and she’d overheard the cook grumbling more than once about how much she ate. ’Tisn’t my fault, Sally thought,what with the milk I must give and all this added exercise.
Sally laid the sleeping child in his cradle and went searching for another blanket as her mistress had bid. This child already had more belongings than Sally herself had owned in her entire life. She dug through the wardrobe, then lifted the cover of the cedar chest behind the settee. She soon discovered a thick wool tartan and a small satin quilt. She ran her hands over each for the sheer pleasure of feeling the fine materials and textures. The silky ivory quilt felt cool to her touch, the wool scratchy but substantial. Surely the poor thing would sweat under either of those.
She dug farther. Near the bottom, she found a small blanket rolled up like a sausage. Curious, she pulled it from beneath the layers and unrolled it. The material was coarse—ordinary unbleached cotton. Just like the material the girls at Milkweed Manor used to stitch up blankets and nappies. She was surprised to see such a homely article in this chest of treasures. Had some poor relative given it as a gift, only for the thing to be stuffed to the bottom of the heap, with no hope of touching Edmund Harris’s delicate skin? She felt embarrassed for the foolish pauper, whoever she was.
But then the lamplight fell on the corner of the blanket and Sally’s fingers flew to trace the unusual stitching. She lifted the corner and inspected it closely. Why, she recognized this embroidery, this flower and pod. This was Charlotte’s work, surely. Wasn’t that the faintest hint of her initial C in the leaf of the flower? But how had Charlotte’s blanket ... the one she had stitched for her very own child ... ended up here, at the bottom of Lady Katherine’s cedar chest?
The door creaked open and Sally jerked awake. She had fallen asleep rocking Edmund. Lady Katherine and Mr. Harris stepped into the nursery, no doubt to check on their son after their evening out.
“What is that?” Censure obvious in her tone, Katherine stood beside the chair, looking down her nose at Sally.
“What?” Sally looked down at herself, then at Edmund, asleep in her arms.
“That filthy thing you’ve wrapped him in?”
“’Tisn’t filthy, m’lady. Only plain.”
“Wherever did it come from?”
Mr. Harris stepped closer, quickly looking from the blanket, to Sally, to his wife, and then back to Sally. His face was somber.
“Perhaps Nurse brought it with her,” he suggested.
“No, sir, I found it in the chest.”
The father shrugged. “It might be from the hospital. It was cold that night, and I believe the physician might have sent Edmund home bundled up in an extra blanket or two.”
