Page 43 of Tremaine's True Love
“Is Horton capable?” Tremaine asked as the horses shuffled away from the square.
“In some matters,” Lady Nita conceded. “He insists on bleeding a woman when she’s expecting, though if you talk to women who’ve carried a number of times or to midwives, they’ll tell you they don’t favor it. Many physicians on the Continent refuse to bleed a pregnant woman, saying it weakens her when she’s most in need of her strength. The diet Horton prescribes for an expectant mother wouldn’t sustain a rambunctious elf.”
In this, Lady Nita’s sentiments echoed Grandpapa’s, who’d favored hearty fare for children and expectant mothers, contrary to prevailing English medical wisdom.
About which Tremaine did not particularly care.
Though Lady Nita had spared a thought for Tremaine’s sheep, about whom hedidcare, because healthy sheep were profitable sheep.
Tremaine also cared about the Chalmers family— inconvenient though the sentiment was—as evidenced by his relief that a plume of smoke rose from the chimney, and the wood piled on the porch remained abundant.
“I can stay with the horses,” he said when he’d assisted Lady Nita to dismount. Her hem, formerly damp, was now frozen stiff, and yet Tremaine could not recall a puddle into which she might have stepped.
“Nonsense. The horses will stand obediently enough.” She handed Tremaine the sacks she’d brought from the inn. “The children will want to see you.”
Tremaine did not want to see them. “We ought not to stay for long, lest your brother worry.”
Lady Nita turned toward the cottage, shoulders square. “Nicholas has greater concerns than whether I tarry for five minutes on my way home from a social call.”
Like whether to consign his sister Susannah to a lifetime in a household where women fell down steps. On that rankling notion, Tremaine followed Lady Nita up the rickety porch stairs and wondered what fool had implied he’d be willing to accompany her ladyship on this outing.
She rapped on the door and waited, while Tremaine stood behind her, holding sacks of provisions and pondering the doctor’s philosophy. Was it kinder to let this family starve or freeze today? Kinder to see the children into the poorhouse, where their lives would shortly end?
Addy Chalmers opened the door, the baby at her shoulder swaddled in a clean shawl, a tiny knitted cap on the infant’s head.
“Lady Nita, Mr. St. Michael, welcome.” Addy looked tired but sober, and the cottage was as neat as such a space could be, also not too cold, though Tremaine kept his coat on. Nothing short of the Second Coming would relieve the place of the stench of boiled cabbage.
“Addy, children, greetings,” Lady Nita said, sounding genuinely glad to see them. “I think the baby has grown already.”
The ladies were off, rhapsodizing about the infant, disappearing into the sleeping alcove while Tremaine was left to investigate the sacks.
“I can hold your horse again,” said the girl…Mary? “Or ride him for you.”
“Thank you, but I must decline that kind offer,” Tremaine replied. “Lady Nita and I can stay only a moment. I do believe there’s cottage pie in this sack, still warm, and bread and butter, along with cold milk and a few butter biscuits. What shall we do with it?”
“Eat it,” said the youngest boy, whose nose ran ever so copiously.
Tremaine passed Mary a handkerchief. “Please see to your brother. Why don’t we start with bread and butter, and save the cottage pie for your supper?”
Keen disappointment registered on four little faces, replaced by eager anticipation when Tremaine cut thick hunks of warm bread and slathered each one with butter.
And still, the ladies remained talking softly behind the curtain.
“Who can show me some letters?” Tremaine asked, because no toys were in evidence, and the only book looked to be a Book of Common Prayer perched on the mantel.
“We haven’t paper,” Mary said. “I can write my name, though. On paper. We have a pencil. Mama knows where it is.”
Tremaine fell back on strategies he’d learned around the shepherds’ campfires. “Paper is an extravagance—a luxury,” he said. “We need only our minds and a fire in the hearth.”
He took a seat, cross-legged, on a floor even colder than his saddle had been and was soon ringed with children. While they watched, he spread a layer of ash over the hearthstones and used a stick of kindling to draw a large letterMin the ashes.
“Look familiar?” he asked the girl.
“M, for Mary!” she said, her expression suggesting Tremaine had put the entire French language into her keeping. “Do another!”
They had worked nearly through the alphabet—Ais for apple,Bis for butter,Cis for cockles—when the ladies rejoined them. Nita’s expression was quietly pleased, the baby was drowsing on the mother’s shoulder, and Addy looked…in need of a long nap.
As new mothers generally tended to appear.
