Elsie met me at the side door, looking alarmingly disheveled, hair falling out from under her cap.
“I don’t know if I can watch the baby for you. I mean, if I had to,” she said. “Nanny Godwin stays in her quarters in the mornings, and there’s no one else about. I don’t know if I’d be able to get away.”
“You must,” I urged, taking her slim wrist and digging my grubby nails into the soft underside.
A gasp of pain escaped her. “I’ll do what I can.”
“You’ll explain that it’s for the baby’s sake, your duty as a servant.”
She looked bewildered, and as I followed her upstairs, I let out a sigh, thinking, God help me if the idiot girl ruins the whole thing!
Wimpy Mrs. Winthrop took the medicine without any qualms, only grateful that I should be thinking of her. Since it was her fourth child, labor began almost instantly, and the child’s head was peeking out before Elsie had got back with the hot water. There was a moment, I recall, where I wondered if luck would be with me and it would be male. But before I could even cross my fingers, the baby was born, and as she plopped out in front of me, my eyes homed in on the ominous lack of boy parts.
“It’s a boy!” I announced, containing my disappointment while snipping the cord and swiftly swaddling the baby in a blanket. I tried to be fast so Elsie wouldn’t see, but as I turned, there she was, a look of anguish on her face.
“But it’s a girl,” she said, quiet like.
“No, Elsie,” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s a boy.” I frowned at her and jerked my head toward the door, and I saw her eyes narrowing as the penny dropped.
Luckily the lady didn’t hear Elsie. “It’s a boy!” she cried meekly, “Thank God it’s a boy!”
“But he’s having trouble breathing,” I gasped, trying not to make it sound rehearsed. “I have a mechanical ventilator at my house. I’ll have to rush him away quickly. This maid can come with me. Will the nanny be able to help with the afterbirth?”
Elsie ran off to get the nanny, and I was left with Mrs. Winthrop begging me to see the child.
“Please, please, I want to see my baby!”
“No, no, no, Mrs. Winthrop. I need to get him away as soon as I can.”
She just kept on and on. Lucky she wasn’t strong enough to haul herself out of bed or else I’d have been in trouble.
Elsie returned promptly with the old nanny, who looked both tired and dismayed. I told her about the afterbirth, clamped the baby to my chest, and darted down the stairs and out the door. As I strode down to the village, Elsie trotted along beside me asking pointless questions and being worried about getting found out. I wished I’d never employed the stupid girl.
Back in my kitchen, I had a nice box for the baby and a bottle of milk made up from powder. The way I saw it, I’d only be gone a few minutes and she’d be fine with Elsie for that short time. As I laid her down, the baby looked up with her big china blue eyes, just like her sister Venetia’s, and I briefly wondered what it would be like to be a mother, to have such a lamb. I might have been a mother if that stupid Ida didn’t get pregnant and force Geoffrey to marry her instead of me. He didn’t even have proof it was his, the fool that he was. He could have asked me to help. I’d have sorted her out, well and proper.
“I know what you’re up to, and I want none of it,” Elsie suddenly announced, lifting up the baby. “I’m taking her back to her mum.”
“No, you’re ruddy well not,” I said, snatching the baby back and returning her to the box. “You’ll stay here and do as you’re told, or you won’t get a penny off me.”
“I don’t care about the money. It’s wrong, it is.” She brought a hankie to her little nose and blew it loud as a baby elephant, her pretty eyes begging me. “Can’t you see that? Can’t you give it back?”
“It’s being done for the right and proper reasons, and that’s all you need to know,” I told her.
“Well, I’m not having any of it,” she sniffed. “I’m going back to the Manor.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” I stood between her and the door. “I can’t have you ruining my plan!”
She tried to barge past me. I could hear the faint caterwauling of Hattie in labor next door and panicked that everything was about to collapse around me. “I’ll let you go if you promise not to tell anyone.”
She pondered for a moment. “I’ll not mention a word provided you give me my five quid.”
I seethed. It’s completely immoral to demand money for a service she’d failed to finish. But, like Hercules overcoming another obstacle, I reached into my black bag for the money. “You keep your mouth shut or it’ll be curtains.” She snatched the money away and barged past me into the sunshine. I fretted about what she’d say to Mrs. Winthrop, but then I imagined her dainty throat between my hands and focused on the task at hand, grabbing my bag and hurrying off to Hattie’s, leaving the baby girl to fend for herself in the box.