Unable to let lie the implication that he’d had a terrible childhood, Nathaniel moved closer to the fireplace and stared down at the flickering flames.
“When my mother was alive, she ruled her social set, and our household, with an iron fist in a kid glove. People listened when she spoke. Well, not my father—he never seemed to be listening to much of anything that was going on around him. But other people, people who mattered. She had influence, arguably because of how well she followed those rules you dislike so much. And she used that influence wisely.”
“Oh? In what way?”
He debated how much to say. There was no real way to talk about charitable endeavors without sounding as though he sought her approbation and approval, but there was a part of him that found he did want her to approve of his mother and her life’s work.
The work he now carried on in her stead, as best he could.
“There is a wing of the Foundling Hospital with her name on it,” he said slowly. “I insisted they name it for her when I came of age and learned more about the work she’d done with the children there.”
Bess’s voice was soft in the darkness, but she was not truly surprised. “Foundling children. That’s sweet.”
“Hm. Yes, a proper and even fashionable pursuit for a lady, taking an interest in the affairs of orphans. But my mother did much more than gather subscriptions or turn up on visiting days with a basket of goodies. Did you know that in the last century, for about a decade, the hospital opened its doors to receive any child in need?”
“That must have been a lot of children.”
“Almost fifteen thousand babies, all told, surrendered to country parishes all over England—and needing to make their way, somehow, from there to London. A booming trade cropped up, of men offering to convey the babies to the Foundling Hospital—for a fee, of course. The stories that began to be told of the abuses and cruelties of these men, to say nothing of their unreliability, reached my mother. And rather than throwing up her delicate hands or even organizing a party to raise money for a solution—she organized her friends and acquaintances instead. They commandeered their families’ coaches and drove out into the countryside, up and down the length and breadth of England, and picked up those unfortunate babes to bring them to the Foundling Hospital safely.”
“Goodness,” she breathed. “That’s not at all what I expected.”
Pride kindled in his chest. “In my mother’s letters and diaries, she chronicled how, between them and over the course of nearly ten years, the ladies my mother led rescued seven hundred and thirty-eight infants. From there they were fed, clothed, housed and taught a trade at the Foundling Hospital. Given a start in life.”
Augusta Lively, Duchess of Ashbourn, had loved children. Not in a way that involved making much of them, cuddling them close or listening to them prattle on—but she saw them as people whose young lives mattered when most of her class could barely be bothered to see their own offspring until they attained majority.
Much less could they be bothered about the fate of impoverished, unwanted children.
But Augusta, who had desperately wanted more children of her own and been disappointed so many times, could not support the notion that anyone would cast off a baby and leave it to suffer and die for want of someone to care about its existence.
So she had cared.
Bess regarded him gravely. Candlelight glinted off the sheen of moisture caught in her lashes. “It sounds a very necessary endeavor.”
“Parliament decided the hospital could not continue to take in every child who needed care; the demand was far too great and the costs astronomical. They didn’t want to pay. So the hospital was forced to implement a series of rules that regulate exactly who is allowed to surrender a child and receive aid.”
Her lips pressed together. “Let me guess. The mother must be spotlessly virtuous, aside from this one small slip of having been impregnated and then abandoned by a man. Whose virtue need not come into it at all.”
Appreciation for her quick wit and perceptiveness warmed Nathaniel’s chest. He took a sip of brandy to replace that fire with the more familiar burn of spirits.
“The reception committee must also see some sort of proof that surrendering the baby will place the mother back on the path of righteousness, never to sin again.”
“And you…disagree with these rules?”
Nathaniel disliked the skeptical tilt of her left brow.
“They seem to me both unnecessarily harsh and difficult to put into practice effectively,” he said stiffly. “How is a woman to prove future virtue? And is her child less in need of help if it is not that mother’s first slip? I have also seen families in desperate straits with too many mouths to feed turned away from the hospital because the father is still at home. But their need is as great as anyone’s.”
She finished her glass of brandy and stood to set the empty glass on the tray beside the decanter. The move brought her into touching distance of Nathaniel, close enough that he could smell the sugared almond scent of her hair.
“What I disagree with,” he concluded doggedly, “is the necessity of having these rules at all. I would far rather see Parliament take up the funding of the hospital again, and indeed expand upon its mission.”
A light came into her pretty brown eyes as she gazed up at him. “And that is what you are working on every day, in your study and at the House of Lords.”
“I’m only carrying on my mother’s work,” he said dismissively, uncomfortable with the way she looked at him. As though she saw everything he wished to keep hidden.
“I understand now why you admired your mother so,” she said softly. “There is much to admire about anyone who sees a problem and does what is necessary to solve it. It certainly seems a much better use of a wealthy lady’s time and energy than balls and dancing.”
“I know you had no wish to attend the ball tonight.”
