by Karen Harper
“You, leave at once!” she cried, advancing on me, keeping her voice down as I had not. “He’s been naughty. He’s in my charge.”
Her expression terrified me. Her gaze seemed askew; her features twisted, unnatural. Could she be not only cruel but demented to treat the future heir to the throne like this? And she had gotten away with it?
“Where’s Bertie?” I demanded.
“None of your business, which will soon be ended here,” she snapped and threw the brush at me. It bounced off my shoulder onto the floor. I felt sick to my stomach, for the boys, and yes, for myself.
Tears streaking down his face, behind her back, David pointed to the cabinet where we kept extra clothing and where I’d meant to put the nappies. I marched to the cabinet and pulled the door. Locked! The boy was locked in here? I grabbed the key from off the top shelf, unlocked the cabinet, and opened the door wide. Bertie was doubled up inside with his eyes screwed tight shut and his hands over his ears.
“Come on, poppet,” I said and stooped to pull him out, but he’d gone rigid as a statue. “It’s Lala, come on now.” As I lifted him into my arms, he clung hard to me. I’d made some inroads with him at least.
“You’ll be out of here now,” Mrs. Peters said, propping her hands on her hips as if to keep me from seeing David, who peered around her. “My husband wouldn’t give me babies of my own, but these are mine.”
“We’ll see about that,” I told her. “I’m taking them outside for some fresh air as you were to do, and if you make a fuss, I’ll tell Her Grace what I saw. You have lost your mind and—”
She began to make great, sucking sobs where she was standing. Her shoulders shook and heaved. “Three years . . . since he was born, not a day off . . .”
“But everyone has their time off here, so—”
“I didn’t. Couldn’t leave him, not for a moment. He wants me, not them.” Hysteria convulsed her.
“David, come here to me,” I told him, and he scrambled around her with his thin white legs sticking out the bottom of his shirt—legs with black and blue bruises. “Where are your trousers?” I asked. He pointed to the floor where they’d been thrown. “Pick them up and bring them.” He still wore his shoes, so I grabbed a tweed coat for him and one for Bertie, who was hardly dressed to go out either. I took the washcloth from the bowl, dripping wet, and grabbed a jar of salve from medicines I’d recently arranged on top of the cupboard. My arms full, and without another word, I took both boys out into the hall and closed the door.
I put Bertie down, though he pressed himself against me as I knelt next to David and gently washed his crimson pinprick cuts and blue bruises on his little, white bum. He was trembling but didn’t cry. God help me, if someone came upon us in the hall like this.
“I know this hurts, but this will make it feel better soon, I promise,” I told him and smoothed the aloe ointment on his bottom. He barely winced. Could he be used to this? I prayed he did not think I meant to treat him as she had. Why had I not realized she was pinching and bruising him each time we went to visit his parents? Why didn’t they?
“Get your trousers on, here, help me,” I told David, and he instantly obeyed, putting a hand against the wall and stepping into them though we didn’t have his drawers. “We’ll put your coats on downstairs, both of you. Come on.” I picked up Bertie again and led them through the green baize door, down the hall, past their parents’ private rooms—I heard muted voices inside—toward the front staircase. Bertie clung, and David stuck so close he almost tripped me.
“Hitchetty-hatchetty, down we go,” I said in singsong fashion on the steps, but what tormented me were lines from the nursery rhyme I had recited to Bertie just last night: When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all. I had no doubt their little world had crashed, but I was determined—if I could find a way to stay here—they would not be broken.
It was a glorious spring day. I had no coat, but I didn’t mind. Outside on the steps, I put their coats on, then we went round to the side of the house where their pram was waiting. Though David usually walked, I decided to put them both into it, Bertie between David’s legs with the pillow under his sore bottom. He was still shaking. I bent to hug him, held him a moment, then put my arms around both of them.
I needed time to think how I would handle this. Inside, Mrs. Peters might be tattling on me or might have collapsed, but I had to decide whom to tell the truth to and when. Their mother—I would have to risk telling their mother, but she was going to be delivered of a third child any day now. Could I convince her to keep me on until, hopefully, they would bring in another head nurse? If it was the last thing I did here, I must be certain Mrs. Peters was dismissed.
“We’re going for a nice ride,” I told the boys, who hadn’t said a word. “And later we’re going to talk to your mama about Mrs. Peters taking a long rest away from here. David, you may have to help me explain that Mrs. Peters hurts you.”
“I can’t, Lala,” he said. “Then she will hurt me again.”
“We’ll just see about that. But right now we are going to have some time just to be together.”
With a helpless feeling—exactly what these little ones must have felt with that woman—I pushed the pram out toward the gardens, where I nearly ran down Chad Reaver, whom I had not laid eyes on since the day he’d brought me here. I’d thought of him, though, especially when I’d heard the drumming of the ruffed grouse’s wings at night, calling for his “lady friend,” as he had put it.
“Oh, Mr. Reaver! I didn’t think to see you here!”
He had papers in his hands. He doffed his tweed cap and shot me a smile that didn’t calm me down but stoked my emotions even more.
“Hello, Miss Charlotte Bill, and my favorite young men! And, ask for Mr. Reaver and you’ll get my father, so call me Chad, eh, but never Chadwick, which my sire named me.” He rolled his eyes and bent down to make a funny face at the boys.
Then he straightened and said to me, “The duke asked me to bring a reckoning of pheasants and grouse, but Mrs. Wentworth said to come back later. You see, she just told me, what you must already know.” He turned away from the boys and began to whisper. “About keeping the lads away today, because the duchess has gone into labor.”
“Oh, I didn’t know . . . yet.”
“What’s labor?” David piped up, the first time I’d heard him so much as ask a question, despite the sharp mind I was sure was buried in there somewhere. He’d been so scared to move or speak that his father thought him quite the ninny.
Before I could think how to explain childbirth to the lad, Chad told him, “It’s hard work for something that’s good, something important, like I’m going to go hitch a horse to a wagon and instead of you lads riding in that perambulator, we’re all going for a ride round the pond, down to the church and back.”
“Is that all right with Mrs. Peters?” David asked me, which nearly broke my heart.
“It’s all right with me,” I declared, figuring I might be gone tomorrow anyway.
Bertie almost cheered, “Lala says yes! Lala says yes. Get a horsie.”
“Righto, my lads. If Lala says yes, that’s it then,” Chad said with a laugh and wink at me.
As he started away toward the stables, he ruffled David’s hair. It might have been the first time a man had touched him playfully. The corners of his mouth lifted in a hint of a smile.
I vowed I wouldn’t go without a fight. New baby or not, these beaten and beaten-down boys were never going back to Mrs. Peters. And for an hour or so, I was going to love them and be with Chad, even if it was the last day I ever spent at Sandringham.
Chapter 4
I’d best get back in case they need me,” I told Chad as we rode on our second loop toward York Cottage. Bertie was on my lap, and David held on to me, standing. I knew why. All the times I’d seen Mrs. Peters pat or rub his bum—was it a reminder of a previous beating, of her warped “love” and power over him? I dared
not think it could be more, that she had abused him in other ways.
Despite Chad’s banter with the boys and the sunshine on my face, my stomach was still in knots from what I’d seen and done today—and what must be next to come. Would I be sacked before I even saw the new infant, one who was to be in my care and I’d been so excited about tending?
“So, Master David and Master Bertie,” Chad was saying, “are you hoping you will be blessed with a brother or a sister?”
“We don’t have a sister,” David whispered, as if that were some sort of secret. “I say a sister, so she won’t ride my rocking horse. Bertie wants to, but he’s too small unless Lala holds him.”
“Unless Lala holds him,” Chad echoed and shot a smile my way. “Sounds worth the rocking ride to me.”
He was flirting with me and didn’t know his timing was terrible. Could he not tell I was distraught? Besides, one of the rules for women in service was no followers at the door, taking one’s mind off one’s duties. I only assumed Chad Reaver wasn’t wed or at least betrothed. If I were a village girl, I would set my cap for him.
“Carriage coming from behind,” he said before he even looked back on the road. “Lady Dugdale’s been sent for to attend the duchess, and the regular house driver’s gone to fetch her. I heard her train come in. Next time we’ll ride to watch the trains come in, eh, lads? Meanwhile, you, Miss Charlotte Bill, were honored to have me and a coal wagon when you arrived.”
“Lady Dugdale interviewed me in London and hired me for the duchess, and I liked her very much. Chad, will he let her off at the front door? I need a quick word with her.”
“Probably not the best of times, but I hope not the worst. Righto, we can draw up there when she does.”
I’d been agonizing over whom to go through to tell the Yorks that Mrs. Peters was abusing the boys. I’d considered Mrs. Wentworth or my friend Rose, though I didn’t feel it was fair to put them in the middle of this. I dared not try to face the duke, but I wasn’t giving these boys back into that horrid woman’s care. And I wanted to keep my post here.
Chad pulled us round near the front steps as a fine-looking landau with its top thrown back arrived. Lady Dugdale and a woman who must be her lady’s maid sat inside. Despite wearing a brimmed bonnet, her ladyship held a parasol against the late April sun. And here I was in a nurse’s plain gray linen day dress and white apron with no coat or bonnet since I’d grabbed the boys and come out so quickly.
Still, I knew this was my best chance to have an ally, an influential one with the duchess, one who had once recommended me. It seemed she was a gift from heaven.
“Boys, you sit here with Chad and be very good,” I told them but my voice wavered as Chad gave me a hand down. On shaky legs I walked to the carriage and curtsied.
Eva Dugdale was petite and pretty but, I’d heard, a formidable force in the Duchess of York’s life with the title lady-in-waiting, however much she came and went. I’d been told by the maid at the London home where I had been sent for an interview that her ladyship was the only daughter of the 4th Earl of Warwick and had been reared in a castle, no less. She was wed to a great friend of the duke’s, but she and the duchess had known each other for years. Their mothers were good friends, and they had played together as girls. She had seemed kind to me when she had hired me for the York household, and I silently prayed she could help me now.
“Why, it’s Miss Bill with the boys,” she said as she was helped down from the carriage by a York Cottage footman. “Good to get them out with all that’s going on inside. I hope I’m in time. Any news yet?”
“Not when I brought David and Bertie out, milady. I know you are sent for but, please, just a quick word with you.”
“Aren’t things going well? You look distressed.”
“Milady, have the duke and duchess told you how David bursts into tears when taken to them at teatime? How Bertie’s always jumpy and scared . . . and hungry?”
“Something about the boys? Come over here,” she said and led me a few steps away from her maid and the pile of her luggage the driver and footman were unloading under the watchful eye of the house butler. She squinted toward the wagon. “They’re not ill?”
“Milady, their head nurse, Mrs. Peters, is not well . . . in her mind. She’s been mistreating them, tormenting David and ignoring Bertie, even not feeding him regular, I fear. She kept me at arm’s length and tried to browbeat me, but she did beat David. I saw it today, and she seemed quite demented. He’s black and blue, has bruises I’d seen before, but she told me he fell. Please, can you help me protect the lads from her? I brought them outside in a rush but—”
She reached out to squeeze my clasped hands with her gloved one. “Oh, no. I found her for them too, and they’ve had such trouble with nurses. They . . . surely, they must not know about this.”
I shook my head, thinking Surely, they should know but I said only, “Mrs. Peters had the boys scared to death and the staff afraid to make a peep.”
“But you, brave girl, have done so. The timing’s dreadful, but I know how they are,” she said with a quick sideways glance at York Cottage. “Busy, wrapped up in duties, even each other. But this must be kept quiet at all costs. You may have to explain it to them when the happy news of the baby is over. For now, I’ll take care of this, and you take care of the lads. I must go in now. Stay out a few minutes more, give me time to clear things for you to watch them and get Peters away. I must go in now,” she repeated.
Worry lines etched her face. Tears gilded her eyes. She still held my hand, which she squeezed again before moving away. She stopped at Chad’s wagon and reached up to pat both of the boys’ hands that gripped the wooden sides. They had twisted around as if to not let me out of their sight.
“David, dear, how are you?” her voice floated to me as I followed her over. “Do you like Miss Bill?” she asked with a nod my way.
“We call her Lala,” he told her solemnly in his thin, high voice. “She won’t let anyone hurt me, ever again.”
“Lala she nice,” Bertie chimed in. “I hungry.”
“And I shall see that you have some good food sent to the nursery in a few moments,” she told them. “Lala can eat with you, and I don’t think Mrs. Peters will be back. Would that be quite all right?”
Bertie nodded so hard I thought he’d hurt his neck. David, bless him, told her, “When Mama is better, I want to tell her Mrs. Peters is naughty, not me.”
Lady Dugdale looked back at me, nodded, then marched up the steps and in the front door the butler was holding open.
LESS THAN AN hour later, I sat with David and Bertie in the day nursery eating our generous tea of biscuits, jam, porridge, milk—tea for me—and, to the delight of the boys, rice pudding. We halted our chatter at a knock on the door.
“Please come in!” I called out, not wanting to copy Nurse Peters’s brusque “Enter!”
Mrs. Wentworth popped her head in. “Lady Dugdale said to tell you and the lads that they have a baby sister named Mary. All is well. And the duke himself may drop by. Busy now, all of us,” she said and was gone.
“See, you both have been blessed with the sister you wanted,” I told them with a little pat on both their heads. David had scooted his chair so close to me I kept bumping him with my elbow. He was sitting on a down pillow and seemed taller than usual. Bertie had not stopped eating, so what I had sadly surmised must have been true: the child had been ill fed, and maybe some days not at all, because Mrs. Peters had been so possessive and obsessed with David.
I couldn’t fathom the duke might make an appearance here, but I rose to fold and put away my clothes that had been delivered while Mrs. Peters’s goods had been hastily taken out. I shoved my half-empty box under the bed I would now sleep in until a new head nurse was hired. I had hopes I was to stay and tend to baby Mary.
I sang the boys nursery rhymes I’d learned at Dr. Lockwood’s house, to tunes I made up on my own, but I carefully avoided “Rock-a-bye Baby” this time.
When there came a sharp rap, rap, rap on the door, I bounced up and both lads came to attention as if they recognized the knock, David standing, Bertie stopping after three muffins, which I should not have permitted, but I felt so for what he’d been through. Time enough to establish my own timetable and rules for them, until another head nurse arrived.
In case it was the duke, I hurried to the door, for no shout to enter would do.
Indeed I opened the door on him and dropped a curtsy. “We are honored to have your father here, boys. Bid him a good evening.”
David parroted, “Good evening,” and Bertie, his mouth still full, managed “Good.”
Despite the momentous news of the new baby, the duke still stood stiff and stern. He took only one step inside. “You two have a sister now, and I’ll expect you to help your new nurse to take good care of her.”
“Yes, Papa,” David said. “I wanted a sister—Bertie too, because we don’t have one.”
The duke almost smiled at that. “Well, there’s some news. Mrs. Lala,” he said, turning to me, “I hear we’ve had some rough seas, but you acted decisively, as you should.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Well, you’ll need help keeping things shipshape here with the new baby and the boys. But a new undernurse, two nursemaids, and a nursery footman will help. You will help, too, won’t you, lads?”
David managed a proper “Yes, sir,” and Bertie, with his jam-smeared mouth that I should have wiped, nodded.
“I’m pleased to have peace and quiet here,” the duke said and started out.
I could hardly find my voice. He’d called me Mrs. Lala! Good gracious, he must have meant I was to be the head nurse for all three children. I felt tongue-tied at the mere thought.
“Ah,” he said, turning back in the hallway. “Lady Dugdale mentioned your father captains a launch on the Thames, Mrs. Lala.”
