She wrung the cloth and turned back to the crib, only to find him watching her with an expression she didn’t have time to read before he looked back at the baby.
“Sit down,” he ordered. “There’s nothing to be gained from standing over her.”
She sat in the chair Isadora had vacated. It was still warm. She tucked her feet beneath her and looked at the baby, and did not think about the fact that she and William were alone in a quiet room at half past two in the morning, with nothing between them but the soft sound of a sleeping infant.
“Has she fed?” she asked.
“Once. An hour ago. But I do not think she fed well.”
“At least it’s something.”
“Indeed,” he agreed.
She looked at the baby’s small face. The faint flush of fever across her cheeks, her dark lashes, the way her whole tiny body rose and fell with the effort of each breath.
“She’s stronger than she looks,” Cecily remarked.
“She’d have to be,” William said, “given where she started.”
She was aware of him the way she had become aware of everything in this room—the charged quiet between them, the fire doing its slow work, the inch of air between her chair and his that was not quite touching and was not quite nothing.
She was aware of his hands resting on his knees, his rolled sleeves, the way the firelight moved across them. She was aware that if she turned her head, she would find him closer than the room required, because the room was not large and the chairs were not far apart, and neither of them had moved to create more distance, which said something she was choosing not to examine.
She looked at the baby instead. Her breathing had deepened slightly. The flush in her cheeks was fractionally less vivid than it had been an hour ago, or perhaps she was only hoping.
“Her color is better,” she noted.
“A little.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and studied the baby’s small face.
The cloth had warmed again. She reached for it at the same moment he did.
Their hands met over the baby. Neither of them moved.
It was nothing, something that had happened by accident and would be over in a second. It was nothing. She knew it was nothing.
He did not pull away.
She was aware of his hand beneath hers with a clarity that had no business being as sharp as it was—the warmth of it against her fingers, the slight stillness in him that she recognized from other moments.
She lifted her eyes.
He was looking at her. Not at the basin, not at the baby. But at her, in the low, warm light of the nursery at half past two, with his sleeves rolled up and the fire behind him.
Up close, at this hour, with his guard as far down as she had ever seen it and the firelight doing what it did and no audience anywhere in the world, he was devastating in a way that had nothing to do with charm. It was simpler than that and worse.
He was simply a man who had sat through this night beside her, who had rolled up his sleeves and watched the breathing of a sick baby, and was now looking at her the way she had been terrified he would look at her—with full, undeflected attention.
She could feel the slight tension in him, the same tension she could feel in herself—a pull that had been accumulating.
Her pulse was loud in her ears. She felt the warmth move from her hand up her arm and into her chest.
This is the thing I was afraid of.
Not him. Never him. But this.
She lifted the cloth from the basin. William let her take it. She wrung it carefully, turned back to the crib, and laid it against the baby’s forehead. She smoothed it into place with both hands, and when she straightened, he had moved the basin back to the table and was looking at the baby again with the composed, watchful expression he had on earlier.
He had moved his chair slightly back, which was a thing she noticed and did not remark on, because he had done it for both of them, and she understood that.
