All Dressed in White EPB

by Michaels, Charis

  Despite her distress, it was impossible to deny that he savored the feel of her in his arms. Like the selfish blackguard he was, he’d tried to memorize the fierce strength in her small hands, the softness of her head beneath his chin, the outline of her perfect ear pressed against his chest. He’d waited so many days to touch her. He’d worried for months that he would never touch her again. But that night, she’d clawed to get closer. His heart had been perforated with piercings, prick after prick after prick.

  After the requisite day and night, Joseph had settled on a generic request: that he might spend some time in Belgravia with her and the baby and then, if possible, he might squire her around town in his phaeton.

  As added incentive, he mentioned a potential stop in the offices of the buyer for the guano haul. Tessa had seen the cargo brought to port, but he wasn’t sure if she learned how the fertilizer reached the buyers.

  The invitation he sent her was brief and general, and he was careful to make no mention of what he really intended, which was to show her his house.

  Six months before the guano scheme had been launched, Joseph had purchased a five-story, Georgian-style house in Blackheath, a borough of southeast London. He’d grown weary of his leased suite of rooms and Blackheath was not only respectable, it was convenient to the London docks and home to a growing number of shipping merchants and importers.

  The house had figured centrally in Joseph’s Plan for the Future. He would furnish it finely, staff it professionally, and live there when he was in town. A fine house was important, he knew, for entertaining political connections.

  After Tessa’s confession, Joseph assumed he would eventually give over the fourth floor to her and the baby. He’d not thought about whether she would like it, only that it would solve the question of his estranged wife and her baby.

  Now, he was consumed with what she might think. He paced the empty house, glowering at how unfit it seemed. Large and cold and mostly empty, it held only a stray collection of mismatched pieces that had caught his eye around the world. Was it fit for a gentleman’s daughter? Hardly. Would it be comfortable for a baby? Not at all. Was it too far from central London? Too cold and cavernous? Yes and yes.

  And the illustrious fourth floor, which he had assumed she would quietly and gratefully inhabit? It now seemed like a banishment reserved for a mad relative or a pet that could not be trusted.

  The whole notion of the house seemed awkward and impractical at best. At worst, gaudy, presumptive, and unfit.

  But Joseph tried very hard not to get ahead of himself. First, he would take some measure of her plans for the future. If she seemed amenable, he would casually suggest she consider the house. Make no assumptions. Let her lead the way. He could sell the house and everything in it.

  Or, he thought as he stood on her doorstep in Belgravia, he could live in it alone while she moved on, quietly go mad and lock himself on the fourth floor.

  But first, he would see her again.

  “We couldn’t be sure how much time you meant to spend with the baby,” Tessa told him as she led Joseph into the parlor.

  The brown dress, he noted, had made a reappearance. Joseph could not care less what colors she wore, but he could not help but be troubled by the way in which she wore them. She trudged along in the brown wool as if the fabric weighed a stone. The bun at the back of her head looked like a painful knot.

  “I shouldn’t like to disrupt the baby’s schedule,” he said.

  “He should go down for a nap in a half hour,” she said. “If your day permits, perhaps we can sit with him until then.”

  “I’m at your disposal,” he heard himself say. The nursemaid Perry, holding the child, leapt up from the sofa when they entered the parlor.

  “Welcome home, Mr. Chance,” the maid said brightly. “We have been waiting for you ever so long.”

  This sounded like a planned recitation, but Joseph smiled. If memory served, one tended to part company with Perry with a touch of stunned deafness. The less said to encourage the girl, the better.

  Perry went on, “Your son, especially, has waited so long to make your acquaintance.” She presented Christian to him like a platter of biscuits.

  “Thank you, Perry,” Tessa sang, sweeping past the maid to scoop up the baby. “Remember what we discussed? Mr. Chance has limited experience with infants. He may wish to learn how to comfortably hold a baby before we pitch Christian in his path.”

  “Oh, holding babies is as easy as holding a sack of potatoes,” the maid lectured sagely. “The trick is never to drop them. Babies do not take kindly to being dropped.”

  “Perry—” began Tessa, but Joseph said, “An aversion I share.”

  Now the maid was encouraged. “You should have seen Miss Tessa the night the baby came. The doctor and Miss Sabine and I sat with her all night, it was a hard labor, really, almost twenty hours—”

  “Perry . . .” said Tessa, her voice pained.

  The maid ignored her. “We thought the little bloke would never come. He’s such a round, fat baby and Miss Tessa is ever so slight.”

  “Perry . . .” Now Tessa pleaded.

  “But then out he came, squalling to wake the dead. And the doctor cut the cord and I wiped him down and brought him to Miss Tessa to have her first look. But she was so tired from laboring so many hours—all through the night and the day before—and she said to me, ‘But Perry, I don’t know how to hold him,’ and I told her, same as I told you, ‘You hold him just like a sack of potatoes, just don’t drop him.’ And I set him in her lap, and that was that. And she hasn’t dropped him yet.”

  “Thank you, Perry, that will be enough,” said Tessa. She shot the maid a pleading look. The baby chewed on his fist and stared at his nursemaid as if he would like to hear more.

  Perry said wistfully, “He was a dear babe from the very first. Miss Sabine and Miss Tessa and I stared down at him that first night, and I said, ‘You’ve done so well, Miss Tessa. You done so very well. He’s a fine boy.’”

  Tessa opened her mouth to interrupt, but Perry carried on. “And you know what she said? I’ll never forget it. She said, ‘I wish Joseph could see him.’”

  “That will do, Perry!” Tessa said, and she took the maid by the arm and hauled her to the corner of the room, whispering harshly.

  Joseph turned away, thinking of his wife, alone with an eighteen-year-old maid, her friend, and a strange doctor. He thought of her laboring for hours, and then meeting the baby without a husband nearby. His chest constricted, like he was being pinned by a great weight.

  The baby began to cry in earnest, and Joseph took a step toward the sound. The two women continued to argue as if they did not hear him. Joseph looked at the crying infant, his son, and the sound plucked at something urgent and troubled inside him. His gut felt tied with a thread, and each sharp cry gave the thread a little jerk.

  “May I?” he said.

  Both women fell silent. Tessa looked down at the fussing baby. “He is peevish when he is ignored, I’m afraid,” she said.

  “Another shared sentiment,” Joseph said, and he crossed to her and lifted the heavy, wailing baby from her arms. Christian went rigid. His round face weighed the possibly that Joseph might be better or worse than his distracted mother.

  Joseph chuckled and turned away, bouncing the child slightly. Christian’s cries dissolved into a disgruntled sort of song, long notes interspersed with voracious fist-sucking.

  What must it have been like for Tessa to hear the baby’s cry for the first time? Without thinking, he bent his head and kissed the ebony fluff of hair on the top of Christian’s head.

  When he turned back around, both Perry and Tessa were staring at him.

  “May I offer you my gratitude, Perry?” Joseph said. “For your . . . expertise. And the tireless aid you’ve given Tessa while I was away. I realize that I’ve had no real stake in the baby’s life—this has been a great deficit—but I still feel compelled to say thank you.”

 
For once, the maid was speechless. She blushed and gathered her apron into a ball in her hands.

  They stood in silence for a moment, even Christian seemed content to suck his fist and gaze at Joseph’s profile. Joseph glanced at Tessa. She stared back with tear-bright eyes.

  After a moment, Perry said, “But would you like to help feed him?”

  Joseph face went mortifyingly red hot and he nearly dropped the baby. He glanced again at Tessa. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out.

  Reliably, Perry filled the silence. “Of course, Miss Tessa could not make milk, or not enough to keep this fat baby satisfied, so we feed him goat’s milk, right from a spoon.” She retrieved a basket near the door.

  “Could not make . . .” repeated Joseph.

  Tessa turned away and walked to the garden window. She stared out, a hand on top of her head.

  “Happens sometimes, we’ve learned,” Perry went on, speaking with authority. She brought the basket to a low table in the center of the room and neatly arranged a cloth and a carafe of what appeared to be milk. “Happened to my older sister, and that’s how we knew about the spoon. What little milk Miss Tessa had? We allowed that to dry up and—”

  “Perry, I beg you!” cried Tessa from the window. She pivoted. “I will take over from here. If you please.”

  “But it takes two people—”

  “Mr. Chance will assist me,” she said. “Go. When Joseph and I leave, you’ll be glad to have had this respite.”

  Perry sighed dramatically and took her time arranging the milk, spoons, carafe, and teacup and saucer. Tessa loomed over her, arms crossed, breathing in and out. In Joseph’s arms, Christian began to wiggle.

  He managed, “Thank you again, Perry.”

  Perry bobbed a curtsy. “You’re quite welcome, Mr. Chance. And if I might say, sir, that I always knew you would return home to London and be a gentleman about the baby and Miss Tessa and want—”

  “Good-bye, Perry,” intoned Tessa, reaching for her son.

  She settled on the sofa and positioned the baby on her lap with his back against her chest. Clearly accustomed to this position, the baby began an insistent sort of cooing whine and reached out with his thick, pink hands.

  “That’s right, Dollop,” said Tessa. “Shall we show Pap—shall we show Joseph what a very good eater you are?”

  With no warning, the words, You may refer to me as Papa, formed in Joseph’s mind, but before he could say them, Tessa asked, “Can I impose on you to help? Perry is correct, it is a two-person job, I’m afraid.” She nodded to the empty spot on the sofa beside her.

  Joseph sat immediately. Tessa smiled but did not look at him, deftly taking one spoon and holding it out for Christian to grab.

  “Does he feed himself?” Joseph asked.

  Tessa chuckled. “No, but he is more able to sit still and makes fewer swipes for my spoon when he is holding his own spoon.”

  The baby extended his arm and opened chubby fingers like a fan, taking up the heavy silver. He brought the spoon immediately to his mouth and began to diligently gum the cool metal.

  Next Tessa poured milk from the carafe into the teacup and set it on a saucer. “If you don’t mind,” she said, “you will hold the cup of milk close, so that I may dip my spoon into it without risking spills. When the cup is on the table, half the milk ends up on the floor. Or on me.”

  “Right,” said Joseph. He watched her spread a linen napkin over the baby and herself. Christian let out a long, impatient coo.

  “Dollop,” scolded Tessa gently, “can you show Joseph your very best manners?” She looked up and smiled, her blue eyes calm and clear and full of love. Joseph thought for a moment he’d forgotten how to breathe.

  “Shall we?” She nodded to the teacup. Joseph offered the cup and she pooled a spoonful of milk and brought it to Christian’s mouth. Like a baby bird, Christian opened wide and watched the spoon descend. She held it to his lips, and he slurped it up with a combination of gusty sucking and Tessa tipping the milk directly into his mouth.

  When the spoon was empty, she scooped another draught. The baby sat still and silent, his mouth dutifully open, watching some combination of his mother’s face and the spoon. His own decoy spoon was held tightly in his right fist like a scepter. At his side, his left hand curled tightly around Tessa’s pointer finger.

  Joseph felt every perforation in his heart bleed together until the organ itself was a levitating ball of light.

  “That’s right,” whispered Tessa to her son. “My hungry Dollop.” She glanced at Joseph. “It’s not the most efficient way to feed a baby, but it gets the job done.” She shook her head. “In the first days, when we could not sort out how to, er, get food to him . . .” She paused, looking thoughtful, the spoon halfway to the baby’s mouth. “He screamed unrelentingly, so very hungry, while I wept. Perry was frantic. The Boyds, I’m sure, were regretting taking in their niece’s pregnant friend. They sent for the doctor countless times, but his only advice was to keep trying. He felt the baby would sort out how to eat when he became hungry enough. If this did not happen, he told us we should seek out a wet nurse.” Tessa bit her lip and her eyes went misty.

  The baby squawked, impatient with the story. She shook her head and spooned the milk into his mouth.

  “And did you locate a wet nurse?” Joseph asked.

  Tessa shook her head. “I . . . It sounds foolish. Selfish and risky, especially since my baby needed nourishment, but the thought of another woman, someone more experienced at motherhood than I, living here with us and feeding my son in such an intimate way . . . ? I could not countenance it. I knew so very little about how to care for him, I worried that some other mother would, in a way, replace me. I’d already been through so much to have him and to have him properly. To be married, to give him a proper surname. I was determined to be his mother in every way.”

  Joseph considered this, considered what she had been through. Her family was lost to her, certainly. And her life as a carefree young belle was over. But did she also mean she’d had to give up Joseph?

  He asked, “Who devised the spoon?”

  “Perry’s mother,” she laughed. “Can you believe it? All the way back in Surrey.” She shook her head wistfully as if the story had happened to someone else.

  “It is safe to say that I cannot believe it,” Joseph said in a strangled voice. How had he not thought of her, struggling alone in London while he bemoaned his broken heart in Barbadoes?

  Tessa went on. “Sabine set out for home on horseback. Don’t worry, we sent her with two of the Boyds’ grooms. She is an excellent rider and we felt she could make Surrey in a day.”

  “I’ve no doubt, but why seek help from so far away?”

  Tessa shrugged. “Of course there were midwives throughout London who might advise us, but we didn’t know who we could trust. God help us, we were so adrift, but Perry kept assuring us that her mam would know exactly what to do. It’s one of those frantic moments where the most familiar way seems the best, even if it is more complicated.”

  Tessa sighed and sat back. “Perry’s mother, thank heavens, sent Sabine back with instructions for exactly what to do. She described how her daughter’s infants had been fed, first by sucking a cloth dipped in milk and then, when they can hold up their heads, with a spoon.” She smiled down at Christian. “And that’s what we did, isn’t it, Dollop?”

  The baby held open his tiny bird mouth for the next spoonful.

  Joseph said nothing, making mental notes of all the people he would now compensate. A larger payment to the Boyds for the disruption of a newborn, some significant compensation to Perry’s mother in Surrey, money to the doctor. Stoker provided for Sabine and would not tolerate payment to her, but Joseph would make some gesture.

  “Equal to the idea of the spoon,” Tessa continued, “was Perry’s mother’s suggestion that we try goat’s milk. Apparently, cow’s milk can upset a newborn. She was correct, as you can see, he loves it. So
I’ve actually splurged and bought a female goat.”

  Joseph blinked at her and she laughed.

  “It’s true. She lives in the mews with the Boyds’ horses. Perry milks her every day. Or I do.”

  Joseph closed his eyes at the thought of his beautiful wife on a stool milking a goat to feed her baby. “I’m sorry, Tessa,” he whispered. The words sounded insufficient, so woefully insufficient.

  Tessa opened her mouth to speak but then closed it. She looked down at her son and then up at Joseph. She nodded. “I appreciate that, Joseph. Thank you for saying so.” She took a deep breath and returned her attention to the baby. “We managed, didn’t we, Dollop? The gift of a name and legitimacy is no small thing. Oh, and the money, of course.”

  Not nearly enough, Joseph thought. He opened his mouth to tell her this, but Christian suddenly let out an imperious squawk and turned his head to the side, refusing the next spoonful.

  “And it seems luncheon has come to its rightful end,” sighed Tessa. “All full up, are you, Dollop?” She dropped her spoon into the teacup with a smile and turned the baby onto her shoulder to pat his back. Within seconds, he released a healthy belch.

  “Lovely, darling,” Tessa encouraged.

  Joseph chuckled, enjoying the sight of her with the fat, round baby on her shoulder. Suddenly, he felt an insistent urge to hold the baby.

  “May I?” He set the cup aside.

  Tessa could not hide her surprise, but she said nothing. She leaned forward to arrange the linen napkin on Joseph’s shoulder and followed it with the drowsy baby.

  “Give him a pat or two.” She modeled how to burp him.

  “What is his schedule after he eats?”

  “Oh, Perry will put him down for a nap. And we may go, if you still—”

  “May I?” Joseph asked.

  “May you . . . ?”

  “Put him down for his nap?”

  Tessa blinked several times, almost as if she hadn’t understood. “If you like.” A little laugh. She leaned forward, and for a thrilling second, he thought she meant to kiss him. But she dropped a kiss on the baby’s cheek. She was so close, Joseph could smell her familiar, soft floral scent. Joseph forced himself to sit perfectly still, if he moved—moved at all—the floodgates of self-control would snap, and he would tip forward and nuzzle her cheek.