Page 23

She could take the carriage and go on to Llandrindod Wells.

That was what she should do. Find Aunt Gertrude.

Demand an accounting for this supposed money Daron was staking his future on.

Get Aunt Gertrude’s advice about her current dilemma and how to help her family.

Or, hide behind her aunt’s skirts until the tempest of her ruination blew over and everyone forgot Anne Sutton existed.

Have her home by dinner , Hewitt had said, as if she were already his to command.

It would take at least a day to reach Llandrindod Wells by coach, if she could find a coach to take her.

But would he let her go?

“Cerys is inside and can fix you tea,” said the widow pleasantly, turning back to her task. “Mind there’s a bit of a bother indoors, as we’ve someone in the mother’s ward. But you’re welcome nevertheless, Miss Sutton.”

That was the thing Anne had learned about St. Sefin’s: they never turned any seeker away.

She tugged off her gloves and untied the strings of her bonnet as she headed through the door leading to the kitchen, where she’d sat with Gwen several times for tea.

St. Sefin’s didn’t have a formal parlor, or they did, but the inhabitants rarely used it; everyone gathered in the broad, warm kitchen.

Cerys, Dovey’s daughter, was there, singing to herself as she ground herbs in a mortar, one eye on the kettle on the hob grate.

She was almost supernaturally lovely, with her green eyes and dark, springing hair, her skin the color of sandalwood.

Unless one knew she were of mixed race, Anne thought, one might never see it.

Anne had never met a mixed person before.

She had never seen a person from Africa until she came to St. Sefin’s and met Dovey.

Mrs. Evans. But then Dovey—Mrs. Evans—had not been born in Africa either, but in the West Indies, and Anne didn’t know precisely how the woman had ended up here, only that Cerys’s father had been Dutch, and properly married to Dovey.

Hew believed the trade in slaves must end, that Britain should no longer allow people to be kidnapped from African shores and carried across the sea in chains.

He was opposed to it. If Anne gave it any thought—she never had, prior to this—she supposed she wanted such an awful practice to end, too.

Those were human lives. Dovey—Mrs. Evans—and Cerys were as tender and brilliant as anyone else of Anne’s acquaintance.

It unsettled her, how very provincial and sheltered her life in Llanfyllin had been, and how it had taken coming to Newport to open her eyes to what the world was like. How much of it she didn’t understand.

“Black or green?” Cerys demanded, fixing her light-green eyes on Anne.

“I-I beg your pardon?” Cerys, who could not be ten years of age, had more confidence and authority in her manner than Anne did at four-and-twenty.

“Tea,” Cerys said. “I’ve the fine black what we save for fancy guests, but I’d just as soon serve you nettle, as that’s easy to come by and don’t have a tax.”

Good heavens, the child knew more about housekeeping than Anne did.

“Er, green,” Anne said, realizing that she had always in her life expected to be served the fine black tea, and now felt she would never again be truly deserving of it.

“Is your mother about?” Perhaps Dovey would know about reaching Gwen.

“She’s—”

The reply disappeared as another woman, a stranger, swept into the kitchen.

A few years older than Anne, she wore her ash-brown hair coiled about her head and a simple round gown with one of those plaid Welsh shawls wrapped around her waist like the peasants wore them.

Her hairline looked damp and her face, a set of bold and striking features dominated by large blue-gray eyes, gleamed with sweat.

She rubbed a hand across her forehead like a fighter energized after a battle.

“Bring the water, Cerys, and the caudle. ’Tis time.”

The younger girl’s eyes flared wide and she caught up a cloth to pull the kettle off the stove. “The babe is coming?”

“Any moment.” The stranger swept a swift gaze over Anne. “Ah, iawn , I could use another set of hands.” She opened a cupboard and shoved a pile of rags at Anne as she stood awkwardly, about to protest, then nodded at Cerys as she poured the steaming water into a basin. “Come along.”

“I don’t—I am not here to—” Anne stumbled after her, doing the other’s bidding despite herself.

The woman had quite an air of command. She set off down a narrow hall off the kitchen, one Anne knew led to sets of rooms that had housed guests in the former priory and now served as a sort of infirmary.

It also served as a birthing ward. Gwen had mentioned that St. Sefin’s frequently housed women who, for whatever reason, could not birth at home, or had no home to give birth in.

The smell of a coal fire and lavender filled the broad stone room, which held about six cots and several small tables.

Windows along the ceiling, too high to reach and cover as was the custom, let in light and birdsong.

In the center of the room stood a birthing chair, unoccupied.

Dovey paced the room with a hugely pregnant woman leaning on her arm. The mother was disheveled, her gown stained, her dark hair plastered to her head with sweat, her cheeks hollow with pain. She moaned quietly with each step, cradling her swollen belly.

“A bit more.” Dovey crooned soothing phrases in Welsh intermixed with the English. “There’s a dear. We’ll just walk a bit more then, and the pwt will be here.”

The mother muttered something in another language, one more foreign than Welsh. Dovey kept up her soothing cadence.

“Na, all will be well, and the babe will be healthy. A fine, strong, dear one, and all the family will be proud.”

Cerys, as if she knew what she was doing, placed her basin on one of the tables. Anne placed her stack of rags alongside. “You would not call an accoucheur?” Anne whispered, for that was the extent of her knowledge about childbirth.

Dovey lifted her head. “ Bore da, Miss Sutton.” She greeted Anne with civility, but Anne was quite sure Dovey didn’t like her.

“I sent for our usual midwife, but she’s abroad, and Mrs. Lambe here is as good as one.

You’re a godsend, you are, Eilian,” Dovey said to the woman now organizing the table, pouring hot water into another bowl and then swirling her hands through it.

“Mrs. Bernstein won’t want a lying-in hospital anyway, even were there one near about, would you, Leah? They’d just insist the babe be baptized. And I’ve yet to meet a man-midwife not eager to use his tools, whether or not they are called for,” Eilian said.

Anne stared at the mother, scandalized. What parent wouldn’t baptize her child in the one true faith? She stared next at the new woman taking such command in St. Sefin’s, and her thoughts snagged. “I’ve seen you about,” she said. “The new pie shop, in High Street. That is you.”

The woman inclined her head. “You make pies,” Anne said, “and deliver babies?”

Eilian raised a brow in return. “A woman cannot be two things?”

Anne wasn’t even one thing. She ought to leave; she didn’t belong here. But there was something compelling about the primal scene of women gathering for that most sacred of observances, the birth of a new life into the world.

“You came back?” Anne echoed. “You are from here?”

The mother gave a sharp cry then, her hands gripping her belly. Eilian beckoned her forward and wiped her hands on a cloth before dipping them below the woman’s skirts. Anne stared in fascination and terror.

“It is time,” Eilian said. “Come to the chair. Cerys, hold her other arm. Leah, when the pains come, bear down.”

“All must be well,” the mother fretted. “This child must live.”

“She’s put her head down and is pushing out like the good strong girl she is.” Eilian pulled up a small stool and settled herself as Leah lowered into the birthing chair. Anne marveled at Eilian’s confidence, tucking her hands beneath another woman’s skirts and touching her parts. Touching a baby .

“It must be a boy,” Leah whimpered, screwing up her face as a pain struck her. “It must .”

“Then it shall be,” Eilian soothed. “Now push, mam fach !”

The straining and shrieking began. Anne’s feet rooted to the floor. This was what Gwen had gone through, because of Daron. And her friend had given birth alone, in coldest winter, with no one to help her or save the babe in distress.

This was what she would go through to have a child, Anne realized as the hours wore on.

The pain, the sweat, the shrieking. Birthing was a tedious process, sharp moments of action pierced by lulls where they simply stood and murmured encouragement while the straining woman panted and gathered her strength. And it clearly hurt .

Anne could not marry and face this torture. She would go to Aunt Gertrude, she would hide from her parents, and from Daron and his relentless need of funds. She … she would work in a dress shop. Or a pie shop. She’d work in a butcher’s if she must. Anything to?—

“A set of cloths, Miss Sutton,” Eilian, the pie shop lady, called. “Not the ones I’ve used. Clean ones.”

“I don’t—” Anne bit back the protest of her ignorance. She fetched a stack of soft rags from the table and stepped forward.

“A moment more,” Eilian encouraged the mother. Anne watched in wonder and terror as the woman’s face screwed taut in lines of pain. Dovey and Cerys stroked her arms and back from each side, murmuring encouraging words, more tender than anything Anne had ever witnessed.

“Once again—bear down, push him out—push, push!” Eilian cried. Suddenly she sat back, something filling her hands. “ Baban! ”