She pressed the money into his hand.
“I trust you to help her, if you can.”
Wanted, a child to wet nurse.
A healthy young English woman having abundance of milk,
wishes to take a child to wet nurse at her own house—every attention will
be paid to the comfort of the child, as she is living
in a quiet and healthy house... .
—PHILADELPHIAPUBLICLEDGER,1837
CHAPTER19
Charlotte and young Anne were established in Margaret –Dunweedy’s snug cottage in the village of Crawley, not far from The George Inn—a midway stop on the coach route between London and Brighton.
Margaret Dunweedy, Charlotte’s great-aunt, was a small, wiry woman with surprising vitality for one of her advanced years. Her hair was white and twisted around the crown of her head in a long plait. Her eyes were the color of cornflowers, as were many of the veins around her eyes, making her irises appear even bluer. She was rarely still. She received Charlotte and the baby with great warmth and enthusiasm, bustling about, making tea, bringing extra blankets, exclaiming over the joys of having someone sharing the old place again. Her husband had been gone twenty years, and her son, Roger, was living in Manchester and too busy with his post to visit very often.
Margaret Dunweedy’s sole fault, Charlotte soon surmised, was her inability to cease speaking. The cheerful woman seemed never to run out of things to say. For the first few weeks, this was quite a pleasant relief, for Mrs. Dunweedy felt no need to question Charlotte, happy to simply relay countless tales of her own life. But as the long months of winter wore on, Charlotte began to grow weary of the constant chatter.
Otherwise, the winter passed in relative ease and comfort. Dr. Taylor visited his daughter every fortnight or so, as his schedule and road conditions allowed. His wife was somewhat improved, he’d reported, but was still suffering.
Anne began sleeping through the night, and so did Charlotte. She was amazed at how much better she felt, how much lighter the anguish, the pressing weight of her grief. It was still there, of course, like a hooded cloak about her head and shoulders. The cloak had at first been fashioned of barbed chain mail that threatened to knock her to her knees. Over the winter months, it had become a cloak of heavy grey wool, its hood falling over her eyes and blocking out the light, encasing her in darkness, suffocating her. But as winter gave way to spring, so too the cloak lightened as if to a dense velvet or thick damask. She could still feel it with every fiber of her skin, her being, but now it let in the light and allowed her, finally, to breathe. Even so, there was not a waking hour in which she didn’t think of Edmund. And rare was the night when she did not dream of trying to find him, or of him about to fall from some dangerous precipice. How she tried to get to him, but he was always out of reach.
As soon as the weather allowed, she took to bundling up Anne and taking the baby outside with her in the untidy remains of last year’s garden and beyond, to the damp fallow field behind the cottage, parroting her mother’s wisdom about the benefits of “fresh air and exercise.” She closed her eyes and breathed in the loam, the wilted sage, the rare silence.
On one such day in March, she noticed a carriage coming to a halt on the road on the far side of the meadow. Something about the horse and rig seemed familiar, but at such a distance she could not see the driver. As the carriage sat there on the open road, Charlotte saw a glint of light, as off glass.Strange, Charlotte thought. Was someone watching her?
On the first day of April, Gareth Lamb, her brother-in-law, stared at her incredulously over his teacup. “Are you suggesting she might yet be recovered?”
Amelia Tilney nodded, taken aback by his sharp tone.
Across from Amelia, her eldest niece said between clenched teeth, “I suggest we discuss this no further.”
“Beatrice, please,” Amelia began. “I have reason to believe she’s lost the child.”
“Must we speak of it! The indecency ...”
“The babe lives,” Gareth Lamb said flatly.
“What?” Amelia asked, stunned.
“I saw them with my own eyes.”
Amelia’s heart began to beat painfully within her. “You did? When?”
“I was in Crawley for a clerical meeting Monday last. Drove by your aunt’s cottage, and there she was in the back garden, babe in arms.”
“Will my mortification never end!” Bea flopped herself down on the settee in a most unladylike manner.
Amelia realized her hand was over her heart. “I confess I am speechless ...”
Gareth gave her a knowing look. “I am sure you are.”
“Did Charlotte see you?”
