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“How are you feeling about the baby?” she asked tentatively. “That is, have you come to any conclusion about what you’d like to do . . . after?”

Tuppence shook her head. “Every time I try to think about it, it seems wrong in every direction.”

“I can’t imagine how difficult a decision it would be.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” the housekeeper said. “I didn’t want a baby at all. I had to raise seven brothers and sisters while Ma worked as a laundress. After Ma helped me to get a job at one of the grand houses where she laundered, I thought I was done with raising children. I was finally free to make something of myself. I was working hard and hoping I could find employment at a hotel someday or even run my own small boardinghouse. Then that spoiled, selfish monster decided to take what he wanted, no matter what pain or ruin it caused someone else—”

She broke off and picked up a teapot. After pouring the brew through a strainer set on a teacup, she handed the cup and saucer to Reina. “Forgive me, ma’am, I shouldn’t have said all that.”

“Of course you should. I didn’t ask out of politeness, I asked because I wanted to know.” Reina dropped a lump of sugar into her cup and began to stir. She was unable to resist saying, “I hope it makes you feel better to reflect that for the rest of his life, whenever he takes down his trousers, he’ll be reminded of why he’s missing a testicle.”

Caught off her guard by the comment, Tuppence met her gaze. “It does,” she said, and they both snuffled and gasped in shared amusement.

Sobering, Tuppence poured her own tea. “If not for that, he would have gone on his merry way,” she said. “People want to think I did something to tempt him or that I must have wanted it, seeing as he was a higher-up and me just a servant.”

“May I ask the name of the family?”

“Kingsley.” Tuppence inhaled and exhaled unsteadily. “He—his name is Victor. I’m a fallen woman because of him.”

“You’re not fallen. No one in this house thinks of you that way.”

In her growing distress, the housekeeper didn’t appear to have heard. “How could I be a good mum to a child who will look like—” She broke off with a quick little shake of her head, almost a vibration. “The chaplain at Millbank came to counsel me. He told me the Lord’s ways were beyond our understanding, and hardship is part of His plan. He said the baby was a gift from God. But it doesn’t feel like one.”

Reina was tempted to retort that since God had fathered a child with a woman He didn’t marry and had left her to raise the baby alone, it was no wonder He thought it was a fine plan.

Instead, she said carefully, “As I didn’t have a churchgoing childhood, I have no understanding of divine plans. All I know is, sometimes a terrible thing happens, and we have to pick up the pieces.”

“What if I don’t want to pick up the pieces?”

Reina’s lips twisted with a rueful smile. “Then someone else will. But you probably won’t like the way they do it.” She took a sip of tea so astringent it made her tongue feel like pasteboard. “What about family? Do you have anyone . . . a distant relation, even . . . who might be willing to take the child?”

“Not a soul on either side. They’re all on poor relief or ill or too old. My brothers and sisters all work in factories.”

“Shall I help you look for someone to take the baby?”

“God help me, I don’t know. Even if they’re respectable people, I’ll never be sure how they’d be treating him. I’ll never know what they’re feeding him, or how many years of schooling he’ll have, or if they’re teaching him right from wrong. I’ll always worry.” She hung her head. “But I should give the baby away. I know I should.”

Reina picked up the propelling pencil that hung from its chain around her neck and tapped it gently against her lips and nose as she thought. “Personally,” she said, “I’ve always found that notions of what we should do tend to crowd the brain. It’s better to leave a bit of room for ideas about what we could do.”

“What would you do, ma’am? If you were me.”

“Oh, my dear, that’s an impossible question. No matter how hard I try to understand and imagine, I’ll never know the sum of your experiences. There’s no window to your heart that could show me everything you feel. You’re the only one who can make this decision.” Reina hesitated. “I don’t believe a baby is a gift or a punishment. And I definitely don’t believe it’s some hardship imposed as a test of faith. He . . . or she . . . is a result of a biological process.”

Thinking deeply, Reina held a few inches’ length of the gold chain taut and let the propelling pencil slide right to left, left to right. “The moment the baby is born as the child of unwed parents, he’ll have no connection to Victor Kingsley. After that, no country in the world would recognize or accept him as Kingsley’s legal son. Or yours, for that matter. In the eyes of British law, the baby will be an orphan whose parents are still living. He’ll come into this world innocent and alone . . . needing to be loved by someone.”

“By me?”

“It doesn’t have to be you. If you can’t do that for him, it’s not your fault. But . . . let’s try to find someone who can.”

After they had finished reviewing the inventory and agreeing on what supplies needed to be ordered, Reina went upstairs to the library and found Norman leaning over the long table, carefully pasting white labels to cardstock folders with gum arabic. The dispirited feeling she’d had after talking with Tuppence faded as she saw how diligently Norman was working.

The tower of boxes in the corner had gone down by at least two-thirds, their contents tucked into folders and binders. One of the shelves near her desk was neatly arranged with wood trays and boxes, and below it, another shelf of labeled ledgers.

Norman stood straight as she entered the room. “Ma’am.”

“What a marvel you are,” Reina exclaimed. “You’ve cleared away all my rubbish and made everything so orderly. So professional.”

Obviously pleased by the praise, Norman replied, “I’ll keep it all tidy for you, ma’am.” He polished his spectacles, adjusted the side pieces over his ears, and proceeded to show her the system he had devised. There was a leather-bound index book that listed the contents and locations of each folder, as well as a letter book that contained copies of outgoing correspondence.