He looked at her like he disagreed with her and was deciding how much effort to apply to the disagreement. Then he looked at the baby, sleeping with the fretful, shallow breathing of a fever that had not yet decided what it was going to do.
“I’ll sit with her,” he offered. “Go to bed.”
She went not because she wanted to, but because she recognized from experience that arguing with him when he had made a decision was a project requiring more energy than she currently had.
She woke at half past two. The house was quiet. She lay in the dark for a moment, listening. Then she got up, put on her wrapper, and went down the corridor to the nursery. The door was ajar, the light inside low and warm.
She stopped in the doorway.
William was in the chair by the crib, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, watching the baby with the focused attention he brought to everything that mattered. His coat was gone, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. Cecily swallowed, her pulse doing a funny thing.
Beside him on a small table were a basin of water, a cloth, a cup of tea, and half-eaten biscuits. Isadora was in the chair by the wall, upright and pale, trying by sheer will to look capable. Letitia was in the other chair with her feet tucked under her, her head drooping toward her shoulder at the angle of someone fighting sleep and losing badly.
“Her breaths,” William was saying quietly. “Count them.”
“Forty,” Isadora croaked.
“That’s fairly the same as an hour ago.”
“Is that good?”
“It means she’s stable.” He reached forward and adjusted the blanket at the baby’s chin with the same careful hands. “If it goes above fifty, let me know immediately. If she becomes more agitated than she is now, let me know immediately. If the cloth becomes warm, refresh it.”
“I know,” Isadora said. “You’ve said.”
“I’m saying again.”
“William.” Her voice was quiet. “I know.”
He looked at her. Something passed between them—the look of two people who had sat through difficult nights before and knew the rhythm of each other’s fear.
“You should go to bed,” he urged.
“So should you.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Then neither am I,” Isadora declared.
Letitia made a sound from the other chair that was almost a word and then wasn’t, her eyes still closed.
Cecily pushed the door open and stepped inside.
All three of them looked up.
“She’s the same,” William said, before she could ask.
“I know. I can see.”
She crossed to the crib and looked at the baby, who was sleeping with her small fists loosely curled, her chest rising and falling in the shallow, quick rhythm of feverish sleep. Still hot. Still restless. But here, and breathing, and as safe as she could be made.
“Letitia,” she said.
Letitia opened one eye.
“Go to bed.”
“I’m not tired.”
