Sophy stared at him miserably. She knew he was right but she didn’t want a stranger coming into her home and living with them, and that was what it would mean. Furthermore, she wanted to look after her children, but at the same time she didn’t want to let the theatre go, not now, not after the wonderful women she’d found who relied on her. Her hand rested on the mound of her stomach wherein her children lay. She nodded. ‘All right, but I’ll write the advertisement in my own way. Agreed?’
Kane eyed her suspiciously. ‘What are you going to say?’
Sophy giggled at the look on his face. ‘Nothing untoward, I promise. You can read it if you like. But I don’t want one of those officious types of nannies for my babies, someone who thinks they know better than me.’
Kane smiled. ‘I’m sure you’d put her right immediately, but do as you see fit.’ He put out his hand and stroked the side of her face, his eyes soft. He just wanted the best for her. He hadn’t thought he could love her any more than he did, but since he had known she was carrying his child – children, he corrected himself silently with a surge of inexpressible joy – he’d felt so protective, all he wanted to do was to wrap her up in cotton wool until the confinement. But Sophy was the last person to agree to that. Which was partly why he so adored her. He knew better than anyone how her beginnings had affected her, but she had fought back every inch of the way. She was a strong woman, but strangely, he knew, she didn’t see herself in that way. He also knew that although she was enough for him in every way, there was still something in her, a sadness, an aloneness, something, which afflicted her at times and which his love had not been able to banish.
She said now, ‘Two babies, Kane,’ with a gurgle of laughter. ‘Patience and David are twins, you know, so perhaps this has stemmed from my side.’
‘Are you pleased?’
‘That it’s twins?’ She smiled serenely. ‘Double the blessing.’
‘And double the crying, the feeding, the changing, the sleepless nights . . .’
She pushed into him with her shoulder. ‘And of course you, as a man, have to worry about all that,’ she said with gentle sarcasm.
Suddenly serious, he turned her face to his, his fingers holding her chin as he murmured, ‘I don’t want to be a distant father, Sophy. As youngsters we, my brothers and I, were left to the nanny and the nursemaids. We had an hour each evening before bedtime when we were brought to the drawing room to see our parents, but more often than not it was only our mother who was there. We were lucky if our father joined us for ten minutes. It was the way it was with many families such as mine, I suppose. And then there was prep school, followed by other boarding schools, and as often as not when we returned home for the holidays our parents were elsewhere – in Scotland for the shooting or taking the waters at Bath or holidaying on the continent.’
‘We won’t be like that.’ She kissed him, cradling his face between her hands. It hadn’t taken her long to realise, even before their marriage – while they’d still been engaged – that his reserved, enigmatic air was a front he’d erected to hide behind. The real Kane, the Kane she knew, was warm and spontaneous and endearingly vulnerable, with a heart as big as the ocean. ‘And you’ll be a wonderful father.’
By the end of September Sophy was feeling as big as a house. Her appetite had returned shortly after she had found out she was expecting twins, and with the theatre up and running and doing very nicely, the latter part of the summer had been enjoyable. At the beginning of October she placed an advertisement in the Sunderland Echo and the Newcastle Journal, as well as contacting three agencies in the north-east. Her advertisement did not follow the pattern of most such notices, but she was satisfied with it:
Wanted. A capable and friendly nursemaid to assist in the care of newborn twins. An affinity and liking for children as important as experience. Generous remuneration for the right applicant.
Her advertisement in the papers brought fifteen replies. From these she chose five, and on interviewing them deemed none of the women to be what she had in mind. The two Sunderland agencies she’d visited sent her seven interviewees between them but it was the same story. One stiff-faced matron told her straight out that she worked on the principle of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’; another was a fluffy-haired girl who giggled a lot and whom Sophy was sure wouldn’t know one end of a baby from the other; yet another lady, well past middle-age, smelled strongly of stout at eleven o’clock in the morning, and so it continued.