Page 79 of Tremaine's True Love
Kirsten unhooked her knee from the horn and slid to the ground, her mare taking a sidewise step to enliven the maneuver.
“Is that why you didn’t call upon your fiancé’s escort for this outing?” Kirsten asked, running her stirrup up its leather. “You worry that someday, you’ll come up this lane and find another dead baby?”
Nita got off her horse, for once finding Kirsten’s blunt speech appropriate. “Nobody talks about it, but I delivered that child and I do fear for her siblings.” Babies died with appalling frequency, but a baby stood no chance when the mother resumed drinking shortly after her lying-in.
“I’ve always wondered how the men of this parish engage Addy’s services,” Kirsten said, passing Nita one of the two sacks they’d brought. “Many of those fellows grew up with her, saw her at services, and knew her parents. How can they undertakedealingswith a woman whom they knew was once respectable, when they might instead offer her gainful employment?”
“Lady Nita!” Evan stood in the doorway, his little face wreathed in smiles, the blue scarf about his neck and the ends dangling nearly to his knees. “And Lady Kirsten! The baby’s awake, and I’m learning the letters for my name.”
“Letters are a fine thing,” Nita said, entering the cottage. Addy sat before the hearth in the rocking chair, Annie cradled in her lap. “Addy, good day.”
“My ladies.” She rose, bobbing a curtsy with the child in her arms. “Evan, close that door or we’ll all freeze. Mary, wipe your brother’s nose.”
“How is Annie,” Kirsten asked, “and how are you, Addy?”
“Annie is better, and we’re managing.” Managing did not mean the cottage offered any hospitality. Even a cup of tea was an extravagance beyond Addy’s means.
“Managing is the best many of us can do,” Nita said, peering at the baby. “Her color’s good and she’s breathing well.”
Addy kissed the child’s brow, the gesture both defensive and protective. “I’ll not lose this one. Not this one too.”
Kirsten took the sack Nita had been clutching. “Children, I’ll slice you some bread, and there’s butter and jam in these sacks somewhere. Perhaps you’ll help me find them?”
The household afforded no more privacy than it did hospitality, though Kirsten would hardly gossip and the children were absorbed with the prospect of good food.
“I do not judge you, Addy,” Nita said, taking off one glove and running a finger over the child’s cheek. “I certainly do not judge wee Annie.”
The baby rooted against her mother’s shoulder, a normal, healthy infant indication of interest in nutrition, the same interest shared by the other children.
“Come sit with me,” Addy said, moving toward the sleeping alcove.
Nita followed her behind the curtain to a pathetically tidy square of bedding, an extra blanket—one Nita had brought when she’d first learned Addy was carrying—folded at the foot of the bed.
Addy passed over the baby and loosened her jumps in anticipation of nursing her child. When her clothing had been rearranged, Addy put the baby to her breast with the detached efficiency of an experienced mother.
“I want to tell you something, my lady.”
Dread swept up from Nita’s middle, like a cold gust tearing into a cozy parlor from a window slammed open by a winter gale.
“You’re not surrendering this child to the parish,” Nita said. “I’ll not take her to the foundling hospital either.”
The baby latched on greedily, her mother wincing. The late countess, a mother of seven herself, had said afterpains were often as painful as the birth pangs, and yet Nita envied Addy her discomfort.
“I’ll not surrender the child to the parish,” Addy said, “though I understand why you’d think that of me. I need paper, Lady Nita, and pencil. I’ve a letter to write. I hate to ask, when you’ve done so much for me, but I have a cousin in Shropshire who last I heard had longed for children and been unable to have them. Her husband’s a kind man, and she wrote to me even after Mary came.”
That would have been as much as ten years ago, and yet Addy still clung to hope regarding this cousin.
“You’d send the baby to her?” Nita hated that notion. A newborn needed her mother.
“And Evan. Jacob and Esau are good, sturdy boys, but Evan needs a trade. I won’t want to, and certainly not until the baby is weaned, but I cannot—”
A combination of emotions chased across Addy’s once-pretty features. Determination, resignation, anger, and despair were all made more passionate by the mother-love nature intended every child to know from the moment of birth.
“You cannot what, Addy?” Nita asked. Beyond the curtain, the cottage had grown quiet as the older children consumed the bounty of bread, jam, and butter.
“I cannot continue as I’ve been doing. I can’t go back to it, Lady Nita. You might think I’ve grown accustomed to the shame, to the men, but I haven’t. I want better for my Annie, and for Mary too.”
Did anybody ever grow accustomed to shame? To guilt? “What about their fathers? Might they at least help the children?” Did they feel any shame?
