Promises and Primroses

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Julia nodded. “I would not presume to step in if anyone else were suited. Do any of the other staff work with the dogs?” She held her breath in anticipation of the answer. She wanted to be the one to supervise the whelping, but it was important not to presume to have more right to the task than anyone else. She did not yet understand the intricacies of the household staff.

  “Not so much that we would want to be responsible at a whelping. Those dogs are Mr. Mayfield’s pride and joy, they are.”

  “Have you any suggestions on someone who might watch over the girls in my place, then? I am not sure what else to do.”

  Cook’s face softened as she tapped her spoon on the side of the pot. “I’ll see that the girls are cared for.” She moved the pan off the stove and walked toward the servants’ quarters on the other side of the kitchen. “Colleen! Miss Hollingsworth needs you to watch the children.”

  Julia did not stay long enough to hear the maid’s complaints—­Colleen had been the slowest to warm up to Julia thus far—­pausing only to take a stool from the kitchen and grab a handful of rags from the bucket beside the door.

  Likely Bumbleberry would be fine, dogs were incredibly instinctive in matters of birthing, but Julia’s father had always attended deliveries. “Nine times of ten, everything goes perfectly,” he’d told her the first time she’d been allowed to watch a whelping. “But I want to be on hand that one time it doesn’t.”

  It just so happened that the first delivery Julia had witnessed had been that one time of ten. The dam had begun seizing after the third puppy was born. Papa had tasked Julia to break the sack on the most recent pup while he attempted to deliver the others. In the end, they lost the dam and two of the pups. Julia had cried for hours but then helped her father feed the puppies until a suitable surrogate—a farmer’s dog with a two-week-old litter—was able to manage them.

  Papa had helped her come to terms with what had happened, and the next time there was a whelping, Julia had begged to attend. Her parents had argued, but in the end, Papa convinced Mother that if Julia felt capable of being there, they should not make the decision for her.

  That delivery had gone smoothly, as had half a dozen afterward. When another whelping went badly, Julia had been a calm assistant for her father, rubbing the last puppy for fifteen minutes when the mother was too exhausted to revive it herself. That was the last litter they’d had before Papa became ill. The puppy Julia had kept alive had been sold along with the rest of her father’s pack after he died, despite Julia pleading that they keep at least one.

  Bumbleberry was in the corner of her pen again when Julia returned. She let herself in and whispered encouragement as she crossed the space, watching for any sign that Bumbleberry did not want her to come closer. Bumbleberry’s tail thumped against the dirt, but she did not try to stand. Julia soothed the collie for a few minutes, then stepped out to explore the shed situated between Bumbleberry’s pen and Queenie’s. The foxhound dam was due to whelp her litter in a few more weeks.

  Inside the shed, Julia found a stack of old grain sacks and some long boards with pegged ends she thought might be the sides of a whelping box. There were small doors on either side of the shed that she assumed allowed controlled access for a dam on either side. She turned the latch and opened the door that led to Bumbleberry’s pen before assembling the whelping box, about six feet square, inside the shed.

  Though the day was not warm and no fire burned in the small iron stove in the corner, the shed was stuffy, and Julia had trickles of sweat making trails down her face and back by the time she finished laying the grain sacks along the bottom of the box. She laid the largest blanket over the sacks and then went back to the pen to encourage Bumbleberry into the shed.

  The dog did not want to move from her place in the dirt, but Julia was persistent, and finally the dog complied—after Julia crawled through the door to show Bumbleberry how it was done. She could not understand why the shed had not been readied for the dam long before now. Canine gestation following a scheduled breeding was easy to predict.

  The collie had only just collapsed inside the box when the first sack-encased puppy made its debut. “You’ve done it, Bumbleberry!” Julia said softly so as not to excite the dam.

  Bumbleberry laid her head down instead of attending to the pup, so Julia used one of the rags she’d brought from the kitchen to lift the tiny pup and move it toward the mother’s head.

  “Come on,” Julia said, anxious for Bumbleberry’s instincts to kick in. “You know what to do.”

  Bumbleberry stared at the pup lying before her a moment before leaning forward, sniffing, and then licking her firstborn. Julia smiled as the sack broke open and the puppy wriggled with life.

  Bumbleberry pulled back, then looked at Julia as though for confirmation that this normal.

  “You’re a natural,” Julia whispered.

  Bumbleberry began licking the puppy more intently. Julia stroked the mother’s ear a few moments before fetching the stool from where she’d left it outside and bringing it in the shed. She wanted to be able to keep an eye on the process without distracting Bumbleberry from the very important work ahead of her. She propped the shed door open to encourage a cross breeze, though it did not ease the increasing heat of the shed as much as Julia would have liked.

  Julia had to move the second puppy toward Bumbleberry as she had the first, but by the third puppy, the dam seemed to know her job. Puppy number six had just arrived when Julia heard running feet outside the shed mere seconds before Mr. Mayfield pulled the door open with a great whoosh of air that fluttered the hair around Julia’s ears.

  Mr. Mayfield wore no hat or coat, and his hair was tousled as he stared at Bumbleberry and the mewling newborn puppies, then turned his wide eyes to Julia, who forgot to be nervous in his company. “She’s doing very well, Mr. Mayfield.” She attempted to smooth her hair that had fallen out of her bun. What a sight she must be. “Six puppies so far.”

  “Six!” He was still breathing hard. He looked at the puppies again, and then looked at her as though still not comprehending what was happening. “Have you assisted a whelping before?”

  Julia couldn’t help but feel pride in reaction to his surprise. “Several times, Mr. Mayfield. Bumbleberry needed a bit of help in the beginning, but all is well now.”

  “If you had not been here . . .” He paused to catch his breath, his attention focused on the collie again.

  “I was here,” Julia said boldly. “There is no need to worry.”

  Mr. Mayfield finally stepped into the shed, looking around the small space which Julia had managed to set up perfectly despite the limited time she’d had. Another surge of pride rushed through her.

  “According to my charts,” Mr. Mayfield said, “she was not due until the seventeenth.”

  Bumbleberry shifted and whimpered at the sound of his voice, trying to turn to see him and ignoring the newest puppy.

  “You’re exciting her,” Julia said, raising her hand to signal him to lower his voice and steady his breathing. “Wait until you’re calm. She needs to focus on the work, not your anxiety.” She nearly choked on the last few words. She was advising him on how to care for his animal? Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. The man had barely spoken to her since she’d joined his household, and she was ordering him about?

  “Yes, right, of course.” He stepped back but remained focused on the dam.

  Julia was careful not to look at him, expecting that at any moment he would take belated offense at her cheekiness. She moved the sixth puppy closer to the dam’s head and noticed a tear in the hem of her dress. Likely it had happened when she’d crawled through the dog entrance. Thank goodness Mr. Mayfield hadn’t returned in time to witness that.

  Bumbleberry calmed, and she set to work on the newest pup. After a few minutes, Julia heard the floor creak behind her. Mr. Mayfield had moved forward, but someone els
e was outside the doorway of the shed. She stood up slowly and stepped out of the whelping box, intercepting Mr. Mayfield halfway across the floor and putting a hand on his arm. His eyes snapped to her face in surprise, and she dropped her hand.

  “Marjorie,” she whispered in explanation, then nodded over his shoulder.

  He seemed confused, but then turned to see his daughter peeking around the doorway. “Marjorie, go inside,” he snapped.

  “Sir . . .” Julia trailed off.

  Mr. Mayfield turned back to her and raised his eyebrows.

  The memories of her time with her father were so thick she couldn’t hold back her words. “Is not Bumbleberry Marjorie’s dog?” The girl must have somehow slipped away from the maid’s attention.

  “You think I should allow my daughter to watch this?” He sounded shocked, and slightly revolted, reminding Julia that she herself had not been protected—or, rather, prevented—from knowing the natural world the way a gentleman’s daughter would be. Most young women of quality did not know how offspring were created, let alone the way they were birthed. Julia thought that a silly thing, especially since it was female bodies that provided such miraculous matters of biology to take place, but her opinion mattered little.

  “My apologies.” Julia looked at the floor of the shed and stepped around Mr. Mayfield, embarrassed to have spoken out of turn. Though she had enjoyed every bit of her time with Bumbleberry and her precious new pups, Julia could not afford to forget that her responsibility was to the Mayfield children. “I shall take her back inside, Mr. Mayfield.”

  “Yes, that would be best.”

  Marjorie looked up pleadingly as Julia closed the door to the shed behind her and reached out her hand to the girl. Marjorie took it with a sigh and turned away from the dog yard.

  “I just wanted to see my puppies.”

  “We’ll come see Bumbleberry and the new puppies when your father allows it, but you should not have run off.”

  Marjorie frowned. “We were playing hide-and-seek.”

  “That is an unkind thing to do—slipping away during a game. When Colleen is watching you, she is taking my place and deserves your respect. You shall need to apologize to her.”

  Marjorie nodded, and Julia smiled and gave her hand a squeeze. This was the first time she’d had to be stern with either of the girls. She needed Marjorie to understand the lines she could not cross, but she did not want to create a distance with the girl. “The puppies are messy and boring right now, anyway. Tomorrow will be a better day, once Bumbleberry has made them presentable.”

  “Why are they messy?”

  “Well, never mind that.” Julia opened the gate and ushered Marjorie through before fastening it behind them.

  Colleen was frantically searching for Marjorie when they entered the kitchen. The maid narrowed her eyes and let out a breath.

  Marjorie apologized, and Colleen accepted it, but still seemed frazzled.

  “Thank you, Colleen,” Julia said.

  Colleen turned without a word. Julia made a mental note not to ask for her help again if it could be avoided.

  She left the door open between her room and the nursery while she refreshed herself, listening to Marjorie read to Leah in the other room. It was hard to focus on their lessons after the afternoon’s events, and she introduced quiet hour earlier than usual. They all needed time to relax.

  The girls played in a corner of the room with quiet toys and books while Julia set about straightening the rest of the nursery. It was incredible how two little girls could introduce chaos into a room in such a short time.

  She was pushing the benches underneath the half-high table when she saw a letter on the small table set beside the door. Julia moved to the letter and picked it up. Her entire chest prickled when she recognized her mother’s script across the front. Guilt snarled at her. She’d promised Mother she would write once she was settled, but she had talked herself out of that promised letter a dozen times. Even yesterday, Easter Sunday, when she had plenty of time and no excuses, she hadn’t taken up a pen. What a terrible daughter she had become.

  Julia looked toward the windows where the bright sunlight seemed to have dimmed along with her mood, wishing she could pretend the letter hadn’t come. But it had. She avoided reading it for a few more minutes as she finished tidying, then settled in the rocking chair by the east windows, took a breath, and unfolded the paper.

  Dearest Julia,

  I will not pretend that I was not heartbroken when I returned to find your letter, but I suppose you must make your own decisions. I hope the new position is all you wished for, but I worry a great deal for your safety. Know that you are always welcome at home. I do hope you will write to me and tell me more about the position. I am glad it is not too terribly far away. I shall include you in my prayers.

  Much love,

  Mother

  Julia breathed easier. Mother wasn’t angry. She wasn’t demanding that Julia return home. She even sounded as though she understood Julia’s reasons for leaving the way she had. Had they finally crossed the line of being mother and daughter to a place where they could both be women with their own paths in life? Julia read the letter again before moving to the writing desk to pen her response.

  Dear Mother . . .

  She smiled to herself as she wrote about her first week. Perhaps she had underestimated her mother all along. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this was the start of a better relationship between them?

  Julia

  When can I see the puppies?” Marjorie asked as she slid beneath the covers that night. Julia was as eager as Marjorie but careful not to show it.

  “I hope we shall see the puppies tomorrow,” Julia said, brushing the hair off the girl’s forehead. Her mother must have had these same melted-chocolate-colored eyes since Mr. Mayfield’s eyes were green, like Leah’s. Julia looked to the other side of the bed the girls shared and smiled. Leah had fallen asleep before the first story had finished. All but one candle had been put out so that all Julia could see was the girls and the bed.

  “When tomorrow?” Marjorie pressed.

  “Perhaps after breakfast. Maybe we can get an extra sausage from Cook to give Bumbleberry as a celebration.” She would need to ask Mr. Mayfield when they could visit the dogs, and the idea made her nervous. He was an imposing man, and then today she’d been so bold in directing him during the whelping. Yet he’d been so obedient and helpful. It was a strange interaction to have had, and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. Should she apologize for being bossy? Or pretend that none of it had happened?

  “Why would Papa not let me see them today?”

  “Bumbleberry needed to focus on birthing her puppies. Pretty little girls who ask too many questions could distract her from such an important job.” Julia tapped her on the nose.

  Marjorie did not smile, and she had that thoughtful expression that so often creased her brow. “How did the puppies get into Bumbleberry’s belly?”

  Julia bit back a smile, remembering her own confusion when she was a girl. It seemed no one wondered until they were part of a birth, then the questions came faster than answers. When Julia had asked that question, however, Papa had told her. It wasn’t until Mother found out that Julia realized it was something she should be embarrassed to know and never talk about.

  “That is a question your father must answer, when he thinks you are ready. For now, just marvel at the miracle Bumbleberry has facilitated today.”

  Unappeased, but willing to let it go, Marjorie relaxed into the pillow.

  Julia planted a kiss on the girl’s forehead, then stood and turned, startling when she saw Mr. Mayfield leaning against the doorframe. Julia’s hand flew to her chest, and she fell back a step as her cheeks instantly caught fire. He was backlit by the light from the hall, and his arms were folded across his chest, making his shoulders seem broader than she
remembered—though she remembered them to be quite broad. The shoulders of a working man.

  His eyes moved from her face to his daughters’ bed as he strode forward, nodding at Julia as he passed her. She continued out of the room, glancing back long enough to see him kneel beside the bed. Her heart hitched a beat in her chest as she remembered Papa coming to tuck her in at night. Today had been filled with such sharp memories of her father. Bittersweet.

  Julia took the servants’ staircase to the servants’ quarters on the first level where Cook always left her a plate of dinner. She’d suppered with the girls at five o’clock, but the meal had been light. She wanted to check on Bumbleberry more than she wanted food but felt as though she had overstepped her bounds too much today already.

  The servants’ hall consisted of a large room off the kitchen. One end included a collection of chairs set round a fireplace, while the other side of the room had a rough-hewn table with benches. A few staff members sat by the fire, talking, reading, or sewing. Some of them smiled or nodded at her as she passed. Colleen stood up from the group, sewing basket in hand, and walked away as though to make a point. Everyone watched her, then looked to Julia, making it clear that Colleen’s dislike of the new governess was no secret. Julia tried to ignore the embarrassment she felt at the maid’s abrupt reaction.

  At the dining table, she removed the cloth that covered her meal, which consisted of a slice of ham, mashed turnips, and a quarter loaf of bread that she knew would not be as good as her mother’s.

  Julia had made her way through half of the meal when Mrs. Allen bustled around the corner from the main hall. She paused a moment, saw Julia, and came toward her. “Oh, good, I did not have to go searching for you, Miss Hollingsworth.”

  Mrs. Allen was still dressed in her charcoal-colored dress—a version of which she wore every day—with her gray hair twisted at the base of her neck.

  Julia dabbed at her mouth with the serviette and stood as Mrs. Allen reached the head of the table.