Tessa continued to stare. The baby cried louder, reaching for his mother.
“What is it that you feel you should have done, Joseph?” Her voice was a confused whisper. He could barely make out the words over the baby’s cries.
“I... I cannot say,” he lied. “My own father died before I was born.” He shrugged and relinquished the baby. “More.” He thought of a hundred things he could have done.Anything.
She gathered the baby close, kissed the top of his head, and then settled him, wailing, in the pram. She stepped back and dusted her hands together. “Can I trouble you to carry the basket and the blanket? He will fall asleep within minutes if I begin to push.”
Joseph tossed the blanket over his saddle and hooked the basket over the horn. He tugged the horse on a long lead behind him and fell in beside Tessa. As she predicted, the baby’s cries turned into a long, low sort of gravelly song, and then dropped off altogether.
In silence, they walked along Barrack’s Way, the spindly wheels of the pram popping over the gravel walk. After a moment, she said, “He is easier to become accustomed to when he is asleep.” Two children ran past, giggling, holding fast to the straining leash of a dog. “It was ambitious, perhaps, to have introduced you during our time at the park.”
“Is it your wish that I become accustomed to the baby?” Joseph asked. He was determined to discover what she really wanted.
Tessa glanced at him and then looked left, steering the pram toward High Row. He held his breath.
She nodded. “If you are so inclined.”
“I would like that,” he said. In his head, he thought,I would like to become accustomed to you both.
Suddenly, she stopped walking. Joseph was two steps ahead and turned around, nearly colliding with his horse. “What is it?” He peered into the pram at the sleeping baby.
“On Friday, Sabine and I have plans to visit Vauxhall Gardens. In Kensington.”
Joseph paused. “I beg your pardon?”
“Vauxhall Gardens,” she repeated. “Do you know it?”
“Yes, I know it.” Vauxhall Gardens was a centuries-old outdoor public entertainment venue with music, food stalls, dancing, and fireworks. Men and women from every class frequented the Gardens for mischief and merriment—and trysts. So, so many trysts.
Joseph worked to keep his voice level. “Have the two of you visited Vauxhall before?”
She shook her head. “’Twill be our first time. Sabine, who has been exploring the city bit by bit, has begged me accompany her for an age, but I only now feel it is safe enough to leave Christian with Perry for an evening. We are looking forward to it, to be honest.”
“Indeed,” Joseph said. She was walking again, and Joseph was grateful to follow two steps behind. His sight narrowed to the vulnerable vision of Tessa and Sabine embarking on Vauxhall Gardens alone on Friday. Or any day. Ever.
“I mention it only,” she went on, “to see if you might like to join us? Mr. Stoker, too, of course, as long as you don’t reveal to Sabine that I mentioned it. She is strenuously opposed to any machination toward Mr. Stoker.”
“We’ll be there,” Joseph said. He let out a trapped breath. The very thought of Tessa and Sabine venturing alone into Vauxhall stopped his heart. The gardens were festive and diverting, but every manner of rake, swindler, inebriate, and thief prowled the dark paths and secluded bowers. And these were the upstanding patrons. The fights and assignations that he and Stoker had enjoyed at Vauxhall through the years were too numerous to count.
But she wasnotgoing alone, he reminded himself; she had just smoothly invited him, despite his general ineptitude at anything resembling manners throughout this outing.
And of course he had no right to forbid her to go anywhere. She’d been making her way around London, including to two separate Blackwall docks, for months.
He took a deep breath. “Will you allow us to collect you? I’ve a phaeton that rides four, and if the night is not too chill—”
“Oh, no, an escorted journey would spook Sabine for certain. There are front gates, I understand. Let us simply convene there. Shall we say at six o’clock?”
Joseph bit the inside of his cheek, thinking of the rabble that loitered outside the gates of Vauxhall Gardens. “Six o’clock,” he repeated tightly. “We will be there. I shall look forward to it.”
“Lovely,” she sighed, smiling up at him. “Sabine will be irritated that we’ve included Mr. Stoker, but she will survive.”
Joseph smiled and nodded, his brain choked by the terrible vision of his wife and Vauxhall Gardens and survival.
Chapter Fifteen
Tessa and Perry had quarreled over the dress.
Tessa had prudently chosen the brown wool for the evening at Vauxhall and asked Perry to press it, but Perry had defiantly wadded that very dress into a ball and hidden it in the bottom of the mending basket. She had pressed a blue silk instead, a beautiful gown she’d found in one of Tessa’s trunks. The maid had aired the dress and carefully repaired snags to the myriad tiny, rose-colored embroidered flowers that swirled up and down the bodice.
