Chương 11
“Most impropriety is.”
Clara looked at her.
The housekeeper’s mouth remained stern, but her eyes had warmed.
The nursery door opened.
Marianne came out first. She had been crying, though she had wiped her face and would have denied it under oath.
“The car is leaving,” she said.
“Without you?” Mrs. Finch asked.
“I will stay another night.”
Lady Agnes followed. She paused in front of Clara.
“You will receive revised terms from the family office,” she said.
“Thank you, my lady.”
“Do not.”
Clara waited.
Lady Agnes looked toward the nursery, where Edmund spoke quietly to Oliver.
“I was wrong to dismiss you during a crisis,” she said. Each word appeared to have been inspected for hidden humiliation before release. “I was not wrong to fear that the child had become dependent on you.”
“No, my lady.”
“You agree too easily.”
“I have been trying to correct it.”
“With my son.”
“Yes.”
Lady Agnes’s eyes rested on Clara’s face. “He is not another infant for you to rescue.”
“No.”
“He will disappoint you.”
“I expect so.”
“He may retreat again.”
“Yes.”
“You cannot speak to him as you speak to me.”
“I speak to him somewhat worse.”
Marianne made a small choking sound that became a cough.
Lady Agnes’s mouth tightened. “You will remain through the end of winter. After that, we reconsider.”
“That is sensible.”
“I do not require your approval.”
“No, my lady.”
Lady Agnes walked away.
Marianne waited until she reached the stairs. “She likes you.”
Clara looked at her.
“That is how it appears in our family,” Marianne said. “Hostility with contractual detail.”
She followed Lady Agnes.
Clara entered the nursery.
Edmund stood beside the window with Oliver against his shoulder. The empty bottle sat on the walnut table, the cream cloth still wrapped around it.
“He has gone to sleep,” Edmund said.
“Yes.”
“I am afraid to move.”
“Your left hand is too high.”
He adjusted it.
“Too low.”
He gave her an exhausted look.
Clara showed him where to place his palm.
Oliver sighed against the black waistcoat.
Edmund looked down at him. “The car has gone.”
“I heard.”
“My mother believes we will regret it.”
“We may regret parts of it.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“Reassurance has been overused in this house.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said, “You should unpack.”
Clara glanced toward the doorway.
“Is that an order, sir?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She took the empty bottle to the washstand.
The days after the canceled departure were not transformed by courage. Oliver did not begin taking every bottle from his father. Edmund did not wake healed. Lady Agnes did not surrender authority, and Marianne did not stop questioning every choice merely because the car had returned to Richmond empty.
Progress arrived unevenly.
On Monday, Oliver drank two ounces from Edmund and three from Clara.
On Tuesday, he screamed when Edmund lifted him and would not settle until Mrs. Finch entered carrying warm linen. The housekeeper stood near the cradle, completely still, while Clara fed him.
On Wednesday, Edmund missed the noon feeding because a tenant’s cottage pipe burst. Oliver drank from Clara without noticing his absence, which relieved Edmund and offended him.
On Thursday, he arrived in shirtsleeves after running from the estate office. Lady Agnes said grief did not excuse appearing before staff improperly dressed. Edmund replied that the staff had survived his forearms.
Mrs. Finch later repeated the exchange to Clara with great satisfaction.
Dr. Mercer weighed Oliver every third day. The gains were small but steady. He advised adding a trained pediatric nurse to the household.
Lady Agnes objected that trained nurses had caused half the trouble.
Clara supported the recommendation.
“You wish to be replaced?” Lady Agnes asked.
“I wish to be unnecessary.”
“No competent employee should say that.”
“No child should require one specific employee in order to eat.”
They interviewed four candidates.
The first spoke to Oliver in a high, relentless voice and called him a brave boy before he had done anything. Clara ended the interview in eleven minutes.
The second possessed excellent references and disapproved of feeding on demand. Lady Agnes liked her until the woman suggested closing the nursery curtains all day.
The third asked sensible questions but referred to Edmund as “the bereaved parent” while he sat opposite her.
The fourth, a quiet nurse named Ruth Bennett, noticed the feeding notebook before she noticed the ancestral portrait. She washed her hands without being asked and sat on the floor near the cradle until Oliver looked at her.
Clara recommended her.
Lady Agnes said she was too plain.
Edmund hired her.
Ruth began with one hour a day. She did not feed Oliver for the first week. She carried cloths, warmed bottles, and spoke in an ordinary voice while Clara or Edmund held him.
At the end of the week, Oliver allowed her to lift him without crying.
Clara wrote the event in the notebook.
Edmund read the entry twice.
“You are pleased,” she said.
“I am.”
“You appear troubled.”
“I am also that.”
“Because he accepted someone else?”
Edmund closed the notebook. “It seems ungrateful to resent success.”
“Gratitude and resentment are not mutually exclusive.”
“That sounds like experience.”
“It is employment.”
He looked toward Ruth, who stood at the window showing Oliver the snow.
“You were right,” he said.
Clara waited.
“He was not refusing me.”
“No.”
“I was refusing the possibility that he might need me after Eleanor no longer did.”
Clara did not tell him that the sentence sounded too polished. He had probably been carrying it for weeks before he could say it aloud.
Instead she asked, “Will you feed him at four?”
“Yes.”
“He may refuse.”
“I know.”
He did refuse.
May you like
Edmund sat through twelve minutes of crying before handing the baby to Clara. He left the room angry and returned ten minutes later ashamed. Clara made him wash his hands again.
On the second attempt, Oliver drank half an ounce.
