“Perry—” began Tessa, but Joseph said, “An aversion I share.”
Now the maid was encouraged. “You should have seen Miss Tessa the night the baby came. The doctor and Miss Sabine and I sat with her all night, it was a hard labor, really, almost twenty hours—”
“Perry...” said Tessa, her voice pained.
The maid ignored her. “We thought the little bloke would never come. He’s such a round, fat baby and Miss Tessa is ever so slight.”
“Perry...”Now Tessa pleaded.
“But then out he came, squalling to wake the dead. And the doctor cut the cord and I wiped him down and brought him to Miss Tessa to have her first look. But she was so tired from laboring so many hours—all through the night and the day before—and she said to me, ‘But Perry, I don’t know how to hold him,’ and I told her, same as I told you, ‘You hold him just like a sack of potatoes,just don’t drop him.’ And I set him in her lap, and that was that. And she hasn’t dropped him yet.”
“Thank you, Perry, that will be enough,” said Tessa. She shot the maid a pleading look. The baby chewed on his fist and stared at his nursemaid as if he would like to hear more.
Perry said wistfully, “He was a dear babe from the very first. Miss Sabine and Miss Tessa and I stared down at him that first night, and I said, ‘You’ve done so well, Miss Tessa. You done so very well. He’s a fine boy.’”
Tessa opened her mouth to interrupt, but Perry carried on. “And you know what she said? I’ll never forget it. She said, ‘I wish Joseph could see him.’”
“That will do, Perry!” Tessa said, and she took the maid by the arm and hauled her to the corner of the room, whispering harshly.
Joseph turned away, thinking of his wife, alone with an eighteen-year-old maid, her friend, and a strange doctor. He thought of her laboring for hours, and then meeting the baby without a husband nearby. His chest constricted, like he was being pinned by a great weight.
The baby began to cry in earnest, and Joseph took a step toward the sound. The two women continued to argue as if they did not hear him. Joseph looked at the crying infant, his son, and the sound plucked at something urgent and troubled inside him. His gut felt tied with a thread, and each sharp cry gave the thread a little jerk.
“May I?” he said.
Both women fell silent. Tessa looked down at the fussing baby. “He is peevish when he is ignored, I’m afraid,” she said.
“Another shared sentiment,” Joseph said, and he crossed to her and lifted the heavy, wailing baby from her arms. Christian went rigid. His round face weighed the possibly that Joseph might be better or worse than his distracted mother.
Joseph chuckled and turned away, bouncing the child slightly. Christian’s cries dissolved into a disgruntled sort of song, long notes interspersed with voracious fist-sucking.
What must it have been like for Tessa to hear the baby’s cry for the first time? Without thinking, he bent his head and kissed the ebony fluff of hair on the top of Christian’s head.
When he turned back around, both Perry and Tessa were staring at him.
“May I offer you my gratitude, Perry?” Joseph said. “For your... expertise. And the tireless aid you’ve given Tessa while I was away. I realize that I’ve had no real stake in the baby’s life—this has been a great deficit—but I still feel compelled to say thank you.”
For once, the maid was speechless. She blushed and gathered her apron into a ball in her hands.
They stood in silence for a moment, even Christian seemed content to suck his fist and gaze at Joseph’s profile. Joseph glanced at Tessa. She stared back with tear-bright eyes.
After a moment, Perry said, “But would you like to help feed him?”
Joseph face went mortifyingly red hot and he nearly dropped the baby. He glanced again at Tessa. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out.
Reliably, Perry filled the silence. “Of course, Miss Tessa could not make milk, or not enough to keep this fat baby satisfied, so we feed him goat’s milk, right from a spoon.” She retrieved a basket near the door.
“Could not make...” repeated Joseph.
Tessa turned away and walked to the garden window. She stared out, a hand on top of her head.
“Happens sometimes, we’ve learned,” Perry went on, speaking with authority. She brought the basket to a low table in the center of the room and neatly arranged a cloth and a carafe of what appeared to be milk. “Happened to my older sister, and that’s how we knew about the spoon. What little milk Miss Tessa had? We allowed that to dry up and—”
“Perry, I beg you!” cried Tessa from the window. She pivoted. “I will take over from here. If you please.”
“But it takes two people—”
“Mr. Chance will assist me,” she said. “Go. When Joseph and I leave, you’ll be glad to have had this respite.”
