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He stood at the embankment wall for a long time.

“Theodosia,” he said aloud, once.

She had been eight years old when she fell out of the apple tree in the orchard and broke her wrist, and had refused to cry because he was watching. She had been twelve when she tried to run away to sea and got as far as the stables.

He remembered every version of her, and he could not seem to put them together into a person who was dead.

Not yet, he told himself again. When it is finished. I swear it. I shall do it properly then. I shall do all of it.

CHAPTER 19

“You cannot go on being ‘the baby,’” Phillipa informed him gravely. “I mean, what sort of a name is that? Surely, you are half a year old now, and there must a name that should be given to you. Yes?”

The baby picked up a block, and threw it at the fender.

“That is an opinion,” said Phillipa. “I rest my case.”

He babbled at her in reply.

“Yes, quite. I agree. Something with dignity. Not George, there are far too many Georges.”

“Ba.”

“Barnabas?” She wrinkled her nose. “I think not. You may be a Barnabas in private, if you wish.”

A name, she thought. He needs a name. I wonder if Gregory has one in mind.

The door opened and she turned with a smile already on her face, but it died as soon she saw what was in front of her.

Gregory stood in the doorway, and he looked like hell. Bloodshot eyes, and hair disheveled. She had never seen him quite like this before.

Phillipa was on her feet at once, the baby caught up against her hip. “Gregory. What has happened?”

He did not answer her but crossed the room in a few long strides, and poured a full glass of whiskey with shaking hands. He drank it in one swallow.

“Gregory? You’re worrying me. What has happened?”

He set the glass down and turned. The pain on his face was apparent, and Phillipa knew that whatever that was bothering him was no ordinary thing.

“I failed her.”

Without asking for more, she crossed the room to him and put her arm around him, the baby crushed comfortably between them, and after a moment, he wrapped both arms around her and held on.

She felt his whole body shaking, his face was pressed into her shoulder. Worried, she stroked his back and wanted, very badly, to cry, without in the least understanding why, and she blinked hard until the feeling passed.

Whatever it is, she thought. Whatever it is, we shall do it together.

At last he drew back. His eyes fell, slowly, almost fearfully, to the child in her arm.

“May I?” he said.

Her heart turned over. “Of course.”

She held the baby out to him, and Gregory took him at arm’s length at first, stiffly, and then, as the baby went perfectly quiet and stared up at him with wide eyes, he drew him in, awkwardly, against his chest. He had a hand under the small bottom and another spread across the tiny back, and both of them were shaking.

It was only then that she understood.

In all these weeks, he had stood over the cradle but had never once lifted the child in his arms and carried him.