Authors: Father Christmas
Wet nurses didn’t come cheap, not even in Ireland, where children died at an appalling rate. Father Padraic found Shanna McBride for Graceanne in the workhouse, where the poor girl would never be able to work off her debts. Tossed out on the street from her indentured position in an alehouse when she was found to be breeding, Shanna had begged and wandered homeless until her time. Her impoverished family couldn’t take her back; they’d had to put her into bond-servitude in the first place just to feed the younger children. So Graceanne paid off the indentures, then the poorhouse costs, and what the parish had outlaid to bury Shanna’s stillborn infant. Feeling dirty, like she’d just purchased a slave, Graceanne watched the magistrate filling out forms making Shanna her property. But Antonia had to be fed.
Pru almost laughed when Graceanne suggested she try nursing the infant. “What, and never get my figure back?”
Graceanne laid out more money for a solicitor to draw up papers, making everything legal. Prudence gladly signed, although she kept swearing there was no need; she was never going to try to reclaim such a sorry specimen. Why Graceanne wanted to go to all the fuss and bother was beyond her anyway, for the child couldn’t live out the first fever or influenza.
Gilly also had to sign. He was all too happy to put his signature on the papers if it meant he’d never have to pay out good blunt to support the pawky bastard. “Never sure it were me boy’s in t’first place,” he muttered with a sour look at Prudence, who was smiling at the middle-aged solicitor. Pru slammed a book down on top of Gilly’s favorite clay pipe. The noise woke the infant, who set off a feeble wail.
“Hush,
cara mia,
hush,
niña.
” Graceanne cuddled the infant, rocking her back to sleep while she scowled at the others.
Antonia was now Graceanne’s, hers and Tony’s. She’d simply move the date of his death forward a month or two, if anyone asked, and wear her blacks a month or so longer. She was sick of them, but there was no money for a whole new wardrobe anyway. Antonia would need dresses and sweaters and caps and more blankets to keep her warm, even in the Irish summer.
And Antonia, little Nina, was another day old. She was not thriving, hardly suckling according to Shanna, but alive. If a heart could be kept beating on strength of will and prayer, Nina had Graceanne’s. And Willy and Les’s, who thought she was the best thing they’d ever seen, uglier even than the pink baby mice that fell through the roof last week. And a sister might be nice, they allowed, for when they played knights and dragons. Duke never liked being the captive maiden waiting to be saved. He never wanted to wear a hat.
Every day the baby gained a bit. Her breathing was still ragged, her lips were still blue, and she was taking so little nourishment, Shanna was afraid her milk would dry. Then they’d just have to get a goat, Graceanne declared, not giving up. She held the baby as if her body warmth would keep her with them. She talked to Nina constantly, promising a world of wonders, pretty gowns she was even now embroidering, doting brothers, dolls.
If the baby was slow to gain, Pru was quick to lose. She dropped the extra pounds as fast as she could, almost overnight, and with them the drained, pulled look. She started eating decent meals, taking walks in the fresh air, and sleeping as much as she thought she needed, which was, of course, twice as much as Gilly thought any female needed.
One day Pru begged a wagon ride to the little village to buy a new hat, which she charged to Graceanne without a by-your-leave when Lord Asquith told her the bonnet was a perfect companion to her beauty. Graceanne was too busy with the fussing baby to argue, and too relieved to have Pru out of the house and out of Gilly’s way. For the most part, Prudence spent her time reworking her gowns, taking them in, adding new trimmings. Not even she dared to ask Graceanne for money to hire a seamstress.
Lord Asquith took to calling, and Graceanne was happy enough when Prudence acted as hostess in her stead, pouring the tea, making conversation about people she never met. Graceanne had enough to do between the boys’ lessons, the new baby, the household, and trying to keep some peace between Gilly and Pru.
One month after Nina’s birth, the baby was almost as big as a normal newborn and almost healthy in color and breathing. Graceanne was almost ready to stop worrying that every time Nina went to sleep she might not awaken. And Prudence was almost ready to leave.
“Lord Asquith is going to Scotland for the rest of the summer,” Prudence announced one day. “He’s asked me to accompany him.”
“To accompany him? That’s an odd synonym for marry, Pru.”
The younger girl brushed her sister’s qualms aside. “Perhaps he’ll come around by the time we get to Scotland.” She didn’t seem concerned. “He owns property in Jamaica, too, and says he’ll take me in the fall.”
“Oh, Pru, that’s not the way it should be. It’s wrong!”
“What’s right, then? For me to go back to the vicarage and sing in the choir? Even if Papa would let me, that’s not what I want, that’s not what I’ve ever wanted. Besides, Gracie, not even you with your rosy outlook can have forgotten that I am already ruined. I can’t make my reputation any worse. Instead of putting on sackcloth and ashes, I may as well wear silk.”
After Prudence left, Graceanne had a lot to think about, although not much spare time to do it in. What about her own life? And the boys’ and Nina’s? It was time she thought of their futures, too. The twins were content enough, but they were nearly savages except for their two-hour lessons. How could they learn to be proper English gentlemen fit for polite drawing rooms if they were running wild in the hills? If, Heaven forbid, Willy got to be duke, he’d need to know more than how to tickle fish out of streams. And Nina would always be a by-blow of Liam Hallorahan and an English doxy around here, no matter what name she bore. The country people had long memories, besides every superstition and prejudice Graceanne could name.
No, they shouldn’t stay there. Gilly wasn’t even family. And he was beginning to look at her in a way she did not like.
Things came to a head one day when she was sitting in the sun next to the kitchen garden behind the house. She was watching the twins gather peas, Nina on a blanket next to her.
Gilly stepped out of the kitchen door, pipe in hand, and sat next to her on the ground, too close for comfort. She pretended to fuss with Nina’s blanket, as an excuse to put more inches between them.
“Ye know, ye could do worse’ n settle here,” Gilly started to say. “Ye seem to fit in the way of life hereabout. None o’ them prettified ways about ye.” He nodded. “That’s good.”
Well, it wasn’t much of a compliment, but Graceanne bowed her head and murmured a thank-you.
“No telling if Liam’ll ever get back, I be thinking,” he went on. “An’ I need brawny sons to help run th’ place. Your two ain’t fallen off th’ roof recently, nor tried to burn th’ barn down but that onct.”
“It was an accident! And they’re just babies, not the stablehands you keep trying to make them into.”
“They’ll grow” was all Gilly said. “An’ I’m not too old to have more sons meself. A man needs a woman. Been a long time without.” He let the implication drift off, that while she was there, he couldn’t entertain another.
“Does this mean that you are asking me to…marry you?”
“Aye, ye’re a bonny enough lass, for an Englishwoman. Good mother, hard worker…”
Graceanne said she needed time to think about it.
Gilly did offer security, and he was decent enough in his way. She’d seen him in his cups only twice, once when the letter came saying Liam was impressed, and the other time when Pru had given birth to the only grandchild he was liable to have, and that one a sickly female. Gilly already treated the boys with casual affection and her with a modicum of respect. She supposed Willy and Les could learn the ways of a gentleman when they went off to school. And she could convince Gilly to install a real roof as a wedding present.
But was a real roof over her head enough? Here was another man who wanted her sons and her warm woman’s body. Gilly was more honorable than the duke, but the whole came down to the same: Graceanne was a commodity, not a person wanted for her own self, not a woman to be cherished. She couldn’t do it. And if she was going to reject Gilly’s offer, she definitely couldn’t stay.
She couldn’t face the return trip on her own either, not with the addition of a fragile infant, a young wet nurse, and an uncertain welcome in England. She almost wished the duke were back in London. He’d know what was best to do. Surely he had a small bit of property where she and her family could settle for a new start. Somewhere he wouldn’t visit too often, with his too-tempting importunities. No, Graceanne told herself, she did not need any more complications, only an escort. She recalled how Tony’s batman Rawley had seen her and the boys home from Portugal, taking care of their every need despite his injury. She’d had one letter from him after Christmas, thanking her for the gift. And no, he hadn’t found work by then except helping out in his brother-in-law’s apothecary. There wasn’t much call for a one-armed veteran, he’d written.
Graceanne sat down and wrote to Rawley that very day. A one-armed veteran was precisely what she needed as pathfinder, protector, and provider of a male influence for the twins. Tony’s cousin Ware was being generous, she wrote, so she could hire Rawley’s services as equerry if he was still free. She enclosed a check for his expenses and asked him to hurry, since she found herself in a rather uncomfortable position in Ireland. She didn’t mention the new baby; Pru’s lapse was better explained in person.
* * *
Graceanne didn’t get her knight in sergeant’s uniform quickly enough. She got an escort fit for a princess instead, and she only wished the princess had managed to keep him.
His Grace finally got under way. Dead calms turned into thunderstorms which turned into gales. This was a bone-headed notion in the first place, taking the yacht to Ireland. What if the twins got seasick? What if they fell overboard? Grace would never forgive him. Besides, he could have been there ages ago if he’d driven. What if she needed help, with Liam taken up by the press gang? All in all, Lord Ware had too much time on his hands and too many worries on his mind. If not for the handsome wages he paid, the duke’s crew would have jumped ship the third day out. By the time the Emerald Isle hove into view, they were considering tossing him off the side of the yacht, the salaries bedamned.
Totally unaware that his foul temper had nearly caused a mutiny, Leland hailed the first fisherman he saw on the docks at Wicklow Head and asked for directions to Hallorahan’s stud farm. Then he asked again at the livery stable, where he hired the likeliest-looking beast. And again from a shepherd at an unmarked crossroads. The deuce take it if he could understand a word these people spoke. So what the hell was Graceanne doing here, especially if Liam wasn’t?
He got his answer soon enough, when Graceanne, looking more beautiful than he remembered despite the blacks she still wore, with a warm sun-glow to her skin and paler golden highlights to her hair, introduced him to Gilly Hallorahan. Liam’s father refused to leave her side, even when Leland suggested they had private matters to discuss.
“Reckon ye do, but not in my house. High-nosed English toffs ben’t in such high odor, Duke.”
So that was the way of it. She’d left with the son, then took up with the older man—not too old; Leland noted the strong forearms and well-muscled thighs—when Liam involuntarily deserted her. Leland sat stiffly, his face a rigid mask of controlled fury.
At first Graceanne was delighted to see Ware, even allowing herself a moment to believe he cared enough about her to come fetch her home. Not with that aristocratic disapproval writ on his stony countenance, he didn’t. She quickly realized he wanted the boys, that was all. Chiding herself for being a peagoose, she called them in and took up her sewing.
Watching Leland with the twins was like watching an iceberg melt. They threw themselves at him in an ecstasy of welcomes, raining hugs and wet kisses and shouts about their ponies and their friends and the mice in the roof all at once, while Duke pranced in circles, adding to the noise with excited barks. The twins wanted to show Collie their swimming pool and the foals and the barn cat’s kittens and the new baby and their ponies.
“Whoa, bantlings,” he told them, tossing one after the other up in the air and pretending to stagger when he caught them, so big had they grown. “Let me talk to your mother, then you can show me all your marvels.”
When Willy and Les rushed out to tell the stablehands that their cousin Collie, who was really a duke, was really here, Leland straightened his clothes. He brushed a smudge of dirt off his fawn breeches. “The boys look well, sturdy and solid. They’ve lost some of the baby roundness, and their voices have deepened. They speak much better, too, even if they still both talk at the same time.” And he still couldn’t tell one from the other. “And Duke has turned into a handsome animal.”
Graceanne was wishing they hadn’t stormed in like unmannerly urchins, dressed like ragamuffins and climbing all over the immaculate nobleman. Even Duke had forgotten his training. “They’re still young,” she said by way of an excuse—for the boys, not the dog. “Only four.”
“Are they?” They’d been three at Christmas. Leland felt a pang for the changes he’d missed seeing, the birthday he hadn’t acknowledged with gifts, the blasted ponies some jumped-up horse-coper was providing! He addressed the older man, still hovering behind Graceanne: “I heard about your son’s impressment. I’m sorry.”
Gilly barely nodded, so Leland turned back to Tony’s widow. “As soon as I heard, I started arrangements to have him brought home.”
“How generous of you. Isn’t that kind, Gilly?”
Gilly grunted.
Ware said, “Yes, well, I’m sure you’ll be glad to see him.”
Graceanne wasn’t sure at all, not if she had to explain about Pru traipsing off with Liam’s landlord, and not if Liam was going to cause trouble about the baby.