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“Why are his eyes puffy?” Reina asked in worry.

“Oh, that happens with newborns. It will go away in a few hours. A day at most. He’ll be a pretty baby, you’ll see.”

Reina had her doubts, but she kept her opinion to herself.

“I’ll be back with the barley water in a few minutes,” the midwife promised.

“If you wouldn’t mind, please close the door.”

“Of course.”

After the door latch had clicked in place on the strike plate, Reina lowered her head. A few coughing sobs, as short and explosive as a fit of sneezing, escaped her. She blotted her wet face with a sleeve, swallowed hard, and let out a shuddering sigh.

The baby’s eyes had opened. He looked grumpy as he lay there waiting for whatever would happen to him next.

“Poor you,” Reina told him, and sniffled. “Only a few minutes old, and you’re already off to a bad start.”

No name, family, or money. No mother. He was even more at the mercy of the world than Reina had been.

“If I don’t keep you,” she said, “it’s fairly obvious life isn’t going to go well for you. But if I do keep you . . . how is life going to go for me?”

The baby stared up at her, seeming to ponder the question.

“I have plans,” Reina told him. “A very long things-to-be-done list, and you’re not on it. You’re not even on my things-to-be-done-later list.”

One of the baby’s arms had emerged from the bundle of blankets, stretching and twitching. His hand opened like a tiny starfish, revealing a palm no bigger than a farthing. Fascinated, Reina touched it with a gentle fingertip. He clasped her finger reflexively, his grip surprisingly firm.

How could she accomplish everything she’d worked so hard for, while also holding a baby close to her heart? How could she save him without losing herself?

Someone tell me what to do.

June. She needed to ask June. No. June would say keeping him was a mistake.

But she couldn’t give this child away, knowing what was in store for him. She knew the ways people would undermine him and the names they would call him. Without her protection, he would become the moral scapegoat of hypocrites, through no fault of his own. That thought kindled anger inside her, an outrage she’d never been able to feel on her own behalf.

From birth, she’d been forced to live at the margins of a society that scorned bastards. But she had claimed that territory as her own and turned it into her stronghold. She would make room for him there.

Keeping the infant firmly in the crook of her arm, she reached for the pale hand resting on the bedspread. Tuppence’s fingers felt like a bundle of thin wax tapers. Reina gathered them in a warm grip.

The glow of anger persisted, eating up the fear. She welcomed it. It was right to be outraged at injustice and cruelty. The shame of bastardy had always been as much of a fact about her as eye color, or the size of her feet. But she had never deserved it any more than the babe in her arms did.

She couldn’t rewrite the past. But she could help this boy to write a better story for himself. Perhaps it would do her some good too.

Reina looked down at the baby through a hot blur. “You are a wild tree,” she told him, and her chin trembled. She stiffened her jaw before continuing. “But you have a home. You have me. And you’re going to sink down roots strong enough to break stone.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Tattoos

After Mad left to drive the doctor and her husband home, June had gone to the housekeeper’s room to see Tuppence one last time. She’d found Belinda in there, standing awkwardly by the bed. The girl had pressed her fingers to her own cheeks and regarded the wetness on them with bewilderment.

“Ain’t you never cried before?” June had asked, moving to stand at the other side of the bed.

“No.” Belinda had ducked her head. “I don’t like it,” came her muffled voice. “It makes me face hurt.”

“A bit of crying’s good for you,” June had told her. “Washes some of the sad out.”

“Are you gonna cry?”