Charlotte nodded. “You know him?”
“He came to this house.” Evander’s voice was sharp with recognition. “Some weeks ago. He asked to borrow a manuscriptfrom my library. A first edition of Selden’sTable Talk. He was nervous. He kept looking at the corridor. I found it odd at the time, but I had no reason to connect him to any of this.”
Charlotte rose from the settee. Her face had gone white, then flushed, and her hand gripped the arm of the seat. “William was here? In this house?”
“He was here.” Evander moved toward the door. “He gave me his address when he wrote about the manuscript. Hart Street, near Bloomsbury Square. If he has not moved, I can have him here within the hour.”
“Evander.” Charlotte’s voice shook. “Please. Please bring him.”
Evander looked at Mary. She met his eyes, and she tried to convey the deep gratitude she felt.
Evander nodded and left the parlor. The front door opened and closed, and the sound of the carriage pulling away faded into the evening.
Charlotte pressed both hands against her mouth. “He was here. He came here, Mary. He didn’t abandon me. He came to this house.”
“He came to this house,” Mary repeated.
So, this nervous young scholar, the one Evander had mentioned in passing, had not come for a manuscript. He had come to seewhere his child was. The trembling hands. The eyes cut to the corridor. The expression on the threshold that Evander had not been able to read.
A father, looking for his son.
“Come,” Mary said. She took her sister’s hand. “There is someone upstairs who has been waiting to meet you.”
“He grips everything.”
Mary stood beside the crib while Charlotte held Tommy for the first time in weeks.
Charlotte’s hands shook. Tears ran freely down her cheeks, unchecked and unashamed, and Tommy stared up at his mother with the solemn concentration of a baby meeting someone new and deciding whether they were acceptable.
“His fingers are so strong.” Charlotte laughed through her tears.
Tommy had seized her collar the way he seized everyone’s collar, and Charlotte looked at Mary with an expression of such bewildered joy that Mary’s own eyes filled.
“Mrs. Bridwell calls him the dock worker,” Mary said. “He will have your hair in a moment. He always goes for the hair.”
Charlotte lifted Tommy against her shoulder, and his hand found a loose strand immediately. Charlotte gasped, then laughed again, and the sound was wet and broken and real.
“He likes to be rocked, not bounced,” Mary said. “Small movements. If you bounce him, he gets angry. And he prefers the left arm. I never worked out why, but he fusses if you hold him on the right.”
Charlotte adjusted her hold, shifting Tommy to her left arm. He settled immediately. Charlotte stared down at him.
“My dear sister… You learned all of this?”
“Of course.” Mary smoothed Tommy’s blanket. “I have had weeks to learn him, Charlotte. Every sound, every preference, every mood. I can tell you that he takes his bottle better at room temperature than warm. He sleeps through the night if someone hums to him. That he burps with a force that will alarm you the first time, and that he has a way of looking at you, right before he falls asleep, where his eyes get very wide and very serious, and it is the closest thing to a conversation I’ve ever had with someone who cannot speak.”
Charlotte’s chin trembled. She looked at Mary over Tommy’s head, and the gratitude on her face was layered with grief. For the weeks she had missed. For the sounds, preferences, and moods, she had not been there to learn.
“You have been his mother,” Charlotte said.
Mary stilled for a second. The word landed in the center of her chest and lodged there.
“I have been his aunt,” she said quickly after. “His mother is holding him right now.”
Charlotte shook her head. “An aunt does not learn a baby the way you have learned him. An aunt does not memorize which arm he prefers.” She held Mary’s gaze. “You have been his mother, Mary. And I will never be able to repay what that means.”
Mary pressed her lips together. The tears she had been managing all evening pushed forward, and she let two of them fall before wiping them away.
“He has your nose,” Mary said. “I noticed it in the first week. And your coloring.”
