She began to move. The slow, rhythmic sway that had worked before, as though the room were not in chaos and her heart was not considerably less calm than her voice suggested.
James was watching her. She could feel his eyes tracking every small shift in Violet’s breathing without looking.
“Is she—” he started.
“She’s here,” Isadora murmured. “She’s breathing. Let me work.”
He went quiet.
The nurse had moved closer, hovering at a useful distance. Cecily had come in behind Isadora and taken up a position near the door, instructing the maids to clear the space by the window.
Slowly, Violet’s cries quieted. The rigid tension in her small body loosened by a fraction, then a little more.
“There,” Isadora crooned. “There you are.”
Violet’s breathing was still too fast, still wrong, but the desperate, panicked edge of it was smoothing. Her hand had found the fabric at Isadora’s shoulder and gripped it.
Isadora exhaled and looked up.
James had not moved. He was frightened. Not alarmed by an inconvenience or unsettled by an unexpected development, butfrightened,like someone who had realized that something mattered to them enormously and they did not know how to protect it.
Isadora had not fully understood until this moment, watching him stand there, unable to help. He had completely and irrevocably given himself over to the baby.
He looked up and found her watching him. He did not look away. He did not smooth his expression. He simply looked at her across the cradle and the candlelight, with everything visible on his face.
She held the baby a little closer and looked back, saying nothing, because there was nothing to say that would help.
“She needs to stay calm,” she murmured after a moment.
“She was not calm before you.”
“She is now. Try not to pace.”
James looked down at his feet. He had been pacing, but he had not noticed, apparently. He stopped.
He stood very still and watched Violet breathe.
“Where is he?” he asked no one in particular.
“He’ll be here,” Cecily said from the door.
“She has been breathing like this for thirty?—”
“James,” Cecily cut in, her voice gentle yet firm. “She is calmer. Isadora has her. Let her work.”
James went to lean back against the wall, still watching.
Isadora kept moving, her voice low, her breathing steady. If she were calm, then Violet would settle, and if Violet settled, then her breathing would even out.
* * *
The physician arrived twenty-three minutes later.
He assessed the space in three seconds—the nurse, the hovering maids, James against the wall with his arms folded and his face carefully controlled, Isadora with the baby—and went directly to Isadora.
“How long since she settled?” he asked, already reaching into his bag.
“Perhaps fifteen minutes,” Isadora replied. “She was very distressed earlier. Breathing very fast, crying…”
