My Last Duchess, стр. 52
It was a messy business. Within minutes the baby was wet, Wick was wet, and Miss Damson’s dress was splashed with water. ButJonas kept swallowing, and soon he was crying only between sucks.
“Do you know if he has had normal bowel movements?” Miss Damson asked.
Wick blinked. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
She turned to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Apple, could you perhaps help with my question?”
“Lily’s the one you want,” Mrs. Apple said. With a nod, she dispatched a footman to fetch the appropriate maid.
“You can’t mean that the baby merely needs water,” Wick said. “One of the nursemaids who was here last week said he had sciaticgout.”
“Gout? Most unlikely. I think it’s colic,” Miss Damson said. “Surely a doctor has seen the child?”
“Yes, but he didn’t hold out much hope. He said Jonas was too ill for colic. First, he thought the baby had an intestine stone,then he suggested a quartan ague. Yesterday, he tried an emetic to clean out his guts, but it made Jonas vomit, and afterthat the princess ordered the doctor out of the castle.”
“She was absolutely right,” Miss Damson observed. “The child needs more fluids, not less.”
“I sent off to Manchester for other doctors. Someone must have some medicine they can give him. The doctor planned to tryDalby Carmel next, something like that.”
“Dalby’s carminative,” Miss Damson said with obvious disdain. “And I suppose castor oil as well.”
“His mother would be able to say more precisely. I believe he also suggested opium, but Her Highness disagreed.”
“No medicine will work,” she announced, dipping the cloth back in the pot once more.
There was a collective gasp from the kitchen staff. “No medicine,” Wick repeated, his heart speeding up. “But you said—”
“It’s simple colic,” Miss Damson said. “I’ve seen it before. There’s something about his stomach that doesn’t like milk atthe moment. But he won’t die of it, not unless he goes without water or milk too long.”
At that moment, the door to the kitchen burst open and a wild-eyed apparition surged through. “How could you, Wick?” Katecried, running to Jonas.
Miss Damson plucked Jonas from Wick’s arms and turned to the princess, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Sheput the baby straight into his mother’s arms. “Your son is going to be all right. You see? He’s not crying.”
Kate’s mouth was a tight line, and she glared as if this interloper were part of an invading army. “Just who are you?” shesnapped.
“She’s your new nursemaid,” Wick intervened. He had already decided that Miss Damson’s calm command of the situation was justwhat they needed. “She gave Jonas water, Kate. And he drank it all up. I think he looks better already.”
“He’s wet,” Kate cried, horrified. “Now he’ll catch a cold. He’ll—he’ll—” Clutching her baby, she darted from the room without anotherword.
Miss Damson looked unsurprised. Rather than running after her new mistress, she turned to Madame Troisgros and, in French,thanked her for her help. Then she switched to English and thanked everyone else in the kitchen. And, finally, she had a detaileddiscussion with Lily, the maid in charge of the nursery, about exactly what sort of deposits Jonas had been making in hisnappies.
“Are they green?” she was asking. “And how do they smell?”
She didn’t sound like someone who seemed barely old enough to have her first position. Wick couldn’t stop looking at her,though: at the rose color of her lips and the way her gown, where it was wet, clung to her bosom. It was a very nice bosom.
Very nice.
Wick glanced around the room and discovered that the footmen—not to mention the gaping knife boy—had noticed the same fact.With a jerk of his head, he sent them scurrying out of the kitchen.
Miss Damson, meanwhile, was giving Lily instructions about taking boiled water to the nursery three times a day. She didn’tsound like any nursemaid Wick had ever seen, not that he’d seen many.
Maybe that was what housekeepers sounded like when they were young. But that idea didn’t fit either.
She was a lady, Wick thought suddenly. Quality. He was amazed he hadn’t seen it immediately, but he knew why: because he wasn’tEnglish. He’d bet everything he owned that she had a lady’s voice except that he wasn’t quite good enough with the languageto tell the difference.
But then he listened closely and he realized he could tell the difference. After all, he and Gabriel had gone to Oxford back when they were striplings, before Gabriel took overthis castle. Wick recognized the sound of her voice, the way it sounded at once sweet and a little sassy . . . that was alady’s voice, not a nursemaid’s voice.
He had a cuckoo in his kitchen.
In her agitated state, Kate hadn’t noticed anything untoward, obviously. And Madame Troisgros had been far too glad to findsomeone who spoke French to consider the nursemaid’s origins. With Lily dismissed, the cook was now regaling Miss Damson withtales of the execrable vegetables she was forced to cook with, monstrous tubers fit only for pigs, or cochons. And Miss Damson was nodding and sympathizing . . .
Like a lady. A lady who spoke French, who had undoubtedly been brought up to a good marriage.
Wick became aware that water was running down the inside of his calf into his shoes. There was something about Miss Damsonthat made even a man with wet breeches hungry. Lustful. Those emotions that good servants could have only for each other—andnever, ever, for the ladies they attended. Wick certainly never allowed himself that sort of inconvenient desire.
Just like that, he decided not to say a thing to Miss Damson about the question of her birth. If she was a lady who was merelypresenting herself as a nursemaid for some obscure reason—well, then she wasn’t for him, not for the bastard brother of