Page 65 of Scandalous Nights With the Earl

Mrs Withers, the housekeeper, had been nothing but kind, providing her with her meals and making certain her room was cleaned and the bedsheets changed.

Willa had just felt exhausted and sick, her stomach churning and black spots appearing in her eyes if she tried to do too much. And so she had not. She had sat here looking out of the window at the river, the Brede, it was called, the last river flowing thereafter a storm centuries before that had washed all the others away.

The drowned old town was under the sea off the shale banks. Sometimes Willa saw the upward arms of old pieces of rock and stone if the tide was right. She liked looking for them, this history, because she felt a kindred spirit with the ruins drowning more and more, year on year.

Phillip.

She said the name less and less now to protect herself, though she dreamed of him every single night. Of them, together, making love in the moonlight.

Where would he be? Enjoying a life at Elmsworth, she hoped. Tending to his land. Or in London still, cursing her probably and hoping to never see her again after all her lies.

She could not help it. She had protected him and if that was all she could do for him she would be forever thankful. But her life had stopped and the money she had brought with her was running low. Soon she would have to decide what to do and where to go.

That thought brought on terror because she just could not decide, and the effort of leaving and moving on was too much to handle.

When the housekeeper came with a light lunch at noon, Willa thanked the woman as she smiled.

‘You have been a wonderful help to me, Mrs Withers, and I hate to think what I might have done without you.’

Putting the plate of food on the small bedside table, Mrs Withers pulled a chair from the other side of the room and sat down. She had never done this before; usually she came in quickly and left just as quickly, a woman with all the chores of a busy inn sitting on her shoulders. So Willa was surprised by her tarrying.

‘Might I talk with you for a moment, Mrs St Claire, woman to woman like? A moment just between ourselves?’ She waited until Willa nodded before going on. ‘Is your husband an abusive man? Is it him you are running from, my dear?’

‘My husband died over two years ago, Mrs Withers. I am a widow.’ This seemed to take the wind from the housekeeper’s sails and she sat back, her teeth worrying her top lip in the motion of someone most nonplussed.

‘Then perhaps a lover, my dear, for I think this sickness you have is almost certainly coming from the effects of early pregnancy.’

The world caved in around Willa and she could barely breathe, but Mrs Withers carried on. ‘There is no shame in a love affair to my thinking, and any child is a gift, but your family might be worrying for you…’

‘I have no family.’

A small smile creased the woman’s lips. ‘Well, maybe that’s about to change, my dear, because you will have one in about seven months, I would say.’

‘But I am barren. I have always known that I am.’

‘Who told you that? A man, I would bet, and one that was probably infertile himself. It’s how the world works. Men protect men and women protect women.’

Lionel and Lionel’s doctor, a strict old man of strong beliefs. She remembered their telling her it was so in the dark sombreness of her husband’s office and she had never questioned it. Barren Willa. Doomed to never carry a child. Infertile Willa. A burden on a husband who would want progeny. Sad Willa, stripped of any hope of a happier future.

Tears ran down her cheek in runnels and, using the back of her hand, she wiped them away. Could it be true? Could such a marvellous thing be possible?

‘There, there, dearie. It’s not all that bad. You seem a learned woman who could no doubt find work to support yourself and the wee one. I could ask around the village if you like to see if there is an opening?’

Willa shook her head as she thanked the woman. ‘Is there anything I need to be doing to make certain this baby stays safe?’ Suddenly it was important that she know everything.

‘Nothing. Rest, food and drink is the answer. The first three months are the worst and after that it all gets better and better. The last three months you will be tired but the middle ones are wonderful. Well, t’was so with my three, at least.’

At that Mrs Withers stood and placed the chair she’d sat on back in the spot she had moved it from.

‘I ought to have said something to you before this, Mrs St Claire, but I did not quite know how to approach it and you never said anything at all of it.’

‘I thought I was simply sick. I worried I might die.’

‘Well, now you can relax a little and if there are things you need you just have to ask me.’

‘Thank you.’

When she had left the room Willa stood and walked to the window, looking at her reflection in the glass. There was only a small face mirror here in this room and this was the best way she could see all of herself. Pulling her light cotton dress over her stomach, she fancied she saw a slight rounding, the shape of the tiny person who now lived inside of her.