“Nurse Witherspoon, this is Mrs. Hartwell. Your new mistress.”
The nurse bobbed again as Henrietta stepped into the room and curtsied. “I am very pleased to meet you, Nurse Witherspoon.”
“And this is Nathaniel,” said Oliver.
Henrietta came closer to the table and sank down onto her knees, making her face level with the boy’s.
“Hello, Nathaniel. My name is Henrietta, but my brothers and sisters call me Hen. You can call me Hen, too, if you like, because Henrietta is a very long name. Almost as long as Nathaniel.” Oh, goodness, she was talking too much.
The boy’s eyes were still on his father. She looked over her shoulder at Oliver and smiled. “Nathaniel looks just like his mother.”
“Yes,” he said briefly.
Henrietta turned back to Nathaniel. “Do you want me to help you get down so you can go hug your father?”
The little boy shifted his gaze to her for the first time but did not answer. Perhaps she should ask a different question. A simpler one.
“Are you playing with blocks?”
The boy did not move or nod or speak or smile or do anything she would have expected a three-year-old child to do. She quite clearly remembered her own brother Gideon when he had been three. How much he had talked and wiggled!
“May I play with you?”
The boy looked at his father once more.
Henrietta tried again. “May I play with your blocks?”
The boy looked back at her. The trace of a nod. Henrietta took that as ayesand moved a bit closer to the table and put one block on top of another.
“I’m building a castle for a king. What are you building?”
The boy reached out and touched one of his blocks. Henrietta selected a block far away from the one he had chosen and put it on her pile.
“I want to build a tall castle. Do you think you could help me?”
The boy’s hand tightened on his block, and he brought it towards him. A little shake of his head.
“It’s very hard to build a castle.” Henrietta put a fourth block on her pile, deliberately placing it off-center, making the pile precarious. “But if I make a mistake, I’ll just start again.” She put a fifth block on the pile. The top three blocks fell off the pile and hit the table with a clatter.
Nathaniel shrank back.
Had she frightened him? She must show him there was no reason for alarm. She laughed and put her hand to her mouth. “Oops. But no matter. You could teach me. Show me how you build a tall tower with your blocks.”
Just like his father, the little boy raised his dark eyebrows at her.
She put a block on top of the two blocks that were still stacked. “Oh, now I think that will stay. What do you think?”
Henrietta turned around to see if Oliver would agree with her, if he would come forward and encourage his son to play with her, but the doorway was empty. He had gone.
Eight
He could not bear to watch the beautiful child he had just married play with his own child.
She was so lovely that it hurt.
Henrietta’s ease and frolicsome nature contrasted so sharply with Nathaniel’s reticence and solemnity. And his own. Yes, these qualities—along with her sprightly curiosity—could just be part and parcel of her youth, but he didn’t think so. All the Staffords possessed these traits in varying degrees.
And observing her physical perfection was akin to torture. Her round face and the softness under her chin. Her expressive mouth and the slight upturn of her freckled nose. Her big, blue eyes that widened when she saw something she liked or when she was surprised. Her gorgeous, bright hair. Her lush bosom and hips, those decadent curves that inspired fantasies of the most impossibly wicked kind in which he worshipped her for hours at a time?—
