Page 141 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
Not in years had she ever been in the house by herself. The quiet screamed.
She shucked off her blankets and slid to the floor, head in hands, as if she hoped to reach her hands through her skull and sort out everything manually.
It could not be done.
Her eyes fell to the bookcase in the corner of the room where her mother had kept her journals—her midwifery records.
Adeline had never opened them, not wanting to hear her mother’s words, and long having given up on the profession. But she had searched for her mother last night in the graveyard, and in the feeling of her stale blankets. Objects did not hold the spirit of Georgia Elsing.
But perhaps her words did.
Tentatively, she crept forward and eased one of the volumes from the shelf. Most of the entries were formulated like notes. Comments on the length of labour, the size of the child, the complications, the solutions, the outcomes. Georgia had been diligent, especially early on in her career, wanting to pack as much knowledge and information as she could out of every delivery, to make things easier for the next, to anticipate problems before they arose.
There was an entry for every birth, but she also kept notes about appointments, too, conditions that occurred as a result of pregnancy rather than delivery.
Adeline’s heart swelled with a faint trace of pride as she admired the words; her mother had been very, very good at her job, and she was so much like Leonie in her intelligence.
Not every entry was methodical. Some entries read more like diary entries, particularly when it had been an emotional delivery, when babes or mothers were lost, or when a child was born after a long, painful journey. Adeline skipped those parts, but she knew what they were there for—her mother’s way of dealing with what had occured, rather than letting it fester.
Almost to the end of the first volume, Adeline’s eyes fell across a name that stopped her:
Von Mortimer.
She skipped back and read the full entry.
This morning I was out in the garden with Adeline hanging up the laundry, when I heard the sound of her talking to someone. I turned around, and found her chatting away merrily with none other than the Duchess Von Mortimer, who was sat on the ground smiling at her like they were old friends. Mortified, I tried to pull her away, but the lady insisted that she was no bother. She asked to rest a while longer, and I realised that the rumours were true; the lady was at least six months with child.
She told me she had heard some of my herbal remedies were the best for dealing with back pain and the nausea she was still experiencing, but that her husband did not approve of such provincial remedies, so she’d sought me out herself.
“By yourself?” I said, aghast.
She smiled. “I am not as delicate as everyone makes out.”
She confided in me that although it had taken some time to conceive this child, it was not down to her ill-health. I suspected that it was probably down to her husband. The Duke had had quite the reputation before he married, and yet none of his lovers had ever seemed to conceive a child.
People so rarely look at the man in such instances, but it has been my experience that it is more likely to be his seed at fault.
The Duchess and I chatted for some time. She made a daisy chain for Adeline. For that evening, all roles, all propriety seemed to have dissolved around us. We were just two mothers, enjoying a fine afternoon.
I don’t expect I’ll see her again.
Only, she did. A few months later, her name cropped up again.
The Duchess came by again today with the young lord, a babe of only six weeks old. He was the brightest, bonniest baby, and she was glowing with health.
“No one’s wanted to let me out of the grounds, but I feel so cooped up in there,” she admitted. “The air out here—it’s different.”
She commented on my now burgeoning bump. It struck me as strange that our children would likely be friends if they were both to be attending the school, but they stood no chance of being so in this world.
“Mama—baby!” said Adeline, clapping her hands as she stretched up and almost tilted over the pram.
Thankfully, the Duchess laughed, and we sat down again together. I asked after her recovery, how little Dimitri was feeding etc, gave her the advice that the male physicians who attended her wouldn’t have known of. We laughed, and spent another pleasant afternoon in each other’s company.
That ought to have been the last entry. Adeline expected it to be. For weeks and months afterwards, there was no mention of Liana in any of her mother’s entries. It was almost an entire year before she was mentioned again, but the way it was written made Adeline realise that they had interacted since, that the two women had seen each other every so often.
For years. It had gone on for years.
Today when Liana came to visit, we took the children down to the stream where they splashed about like puppies. Devoid of clothes, nothing separated them at all. Children know how the world really is better than adults sometimes, I think.
