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Anne stared as the child emerged, its head enormous, its body long and stretched and covered with blood.

Eilian whisked a cloth from Anne’s hands and wiped its face, eyes, and nose, swiping a finger through its mouth.

The infant opened its eyes with a mewling cry.

Then Eilian set the thing and its cloth in Anne’s hands.

“Hold a moment, me lovely, while I tie the cord.” A long tube extended from the babe’s belly, and Eilian quickly tied it with a piece of string.

Anne froze. She held a newborn child. A living creature, perfectly formed, unbelievably tiny.

“There we go.” Eilian transferred the bundle back to her own lap, then beckoned Anne close. “Let’s clean him, shall we? You do the feet.”

Anne feared to touch it. How could something so small not break?

But Eilian moved firmly, if gently, scrubbing the cloth over the wee head and shoulders, wiping off layers of stickiness and blood.

Anne cautiously touched a foot. Five tiny toes, curled like a pillbug.

The babe pulled its knees close to its belly, fists tucked beneath its chin, the way it had been formed in the womb.

“A boy?” the mother cried. “’Tis a boy?”

“Aye, a boy,” Anne assented, for she could see that much.

“ Baruch Hashem ,” Leah said, her voice breaking with relief. “A boy.”

“A fine, strapping boy,” Eilian assented. She looked on the thing with a soft, marveling gaze. Anne had to admit that, with the goo polished off, it did increasingly resemble a human child.

“Oh, here’s the rest,” the mother said with a gasp.

“Another child?” Anne cried.

“That will be the afterbirth, and we want it out, we do,” Eilian said. “Hold this roaring boy for me, dear.” She plopped the baby once more into Anne’s hands. “When it’s out, I’ll cut the cord, and then we can swaddle your bachan .”

Anne was clearly expected to hold it. The infant scrunched up his face and mewled, little fists striking the air.

His eyelashes were tiny threads on his cheeks, his mouth a Cupid’s bow, and thick dark hair thatched his head.

Anne held the babe close to her body so she would not drop him as the tiny thing squirmed.

The puckered face reminded her of a newborn kitten and how she’d spent hours with the stable cats and their litters, watching the pink sausages grow fur, open their eyes, and gain their feet.

This was how the miracle of life began, right here with this bloody magic.

No, Anne thought, the miracle began with a man and woman doing what Hew had done to her last night—only he had not done the full deed, had he, likely to avoid this result.

But would he want children of his wife? No doubt he’d be as concerned for heirs as this woman.

He wouldn’t be marrying Anne for affection, not after what she did, but only for convenience.

To sop up a scandal. Have a wife without the trouble of wooing.

Have a woman nearby to provide heirs as needed, and?—

“That’s that, then,” Eilian said with satisfaction. She tipped the bundle in her hands, tissue veined purple with blood, into one of the basins, then snipped through the cord and peered at the child in Anne’s arms. “Is our bachgen swaddled, me lovely?”

“No, I didn’t … I don’t know how,” Anne said humbly.

“Aye, then, here’s the way of it,” the other woman said breezily, and Anne’s shame lessened.

Eilian laid the child on the table and examined it briefly while the thing stirred and gave its soft, mewling cries.

Then she wrapped it like a handpie in a fresh, soft shawl and took the babe to the mother, whom Dovey had cleaned up and transferred to one of the beds, propping pillows behind her back.

Leah held out her arms eagerly, her face soft with weary wonder, and brought the infant to her breast. Eilian watched, made a small adjustment, and the babe fell to sucking greedily. Eilian nodded with satisfaction and stepped back.

“We can leave you to rest now,” she said with a fond smile. “I don’t suppose you’ve a monthly nurse, Leah, not as things are.”

“I will see to her.” Mother Morris, the older of the crones, hobbled forward pulling the wooden stool. She’d settled herself onto it and brought out her darning before Anne even knew what to say.

“Splendid, Mother,” Eilian said. “You’ll call us if Leah or the babe have need.”

Mother Morris responded with something in Welsh that must have been assent, for the others turned toward the door of the room, gathering up the detritus from the table. Cerys took the last of the rags, leaving Anne to take the basin of bloodied water and trail after them back to the kitchens.

She didn’t know her place in any of this, but she didn’t want to leave. She’d been part of something wonderful, a grave and important undertaking in which she’d been needed, and that had never happened to her before.

“Why doesn’t she want her child baptized?” Anne whispered.

“They are Jews,” Eilian said. “They live up in—Merthyr Tydfil, is it, Mrs. Evans?”

Dovey nodded and went to the scullery, where her voice floated back into the main kitchen.

“She’s the widow of a businessman, Daniel, who was murdered these weeks past by the Black Hound.

Leah came looking for him to find out what had happened, whether any justice might be done.

They have only daughters, and she feared her husband’s family might turn her out unless this next child was their heir. ”

“And now he is?” Anne asked, placing her basin on the table. “The heir, I mean.”

“So it seems. She ought to be able to keep her home, once she returns with the child. She says she cannot stay for the usual lying-in, there is a ceremony their rabbi must perform for the boy after a certain number of days. I hope she will be well enough to travel.”

“We will make certain she is.” Eilian moved into another smaller room Anne knew to be the stillroom. Gwen kept her herbs and her remedies there. “Red raspberry leaf?” she called out.

“There’s some drying before the window. We’ve been making buckets of tea for Mathry,” Dovey called back.

“I’ll want some of the blessed thistle I saw in your garden,” Eilian answered. “Have you goat’s rue? Ah, here.”

These strange words meant nothing to Anne, whose hands began shaking with the aftereffects of a trial. She realized she was sticky and she went into the scullery to wash.

Dovey finished wiping out a basin, then turned to face her. She was Anne’s height, and hauntingly beautiful, with a slender neck, large eyes, and high cheekbones. Her mouth was full and curved into a smile Anne had never seen from her.

“Thank you, Miss Sutton. For your assistance.”

“I did nothing,” Anne said, not humble but honest.

“You came for a visit, I don’t doubt, and we put you to work.” Dovey’s smile widened as she returned to the kitchen.

Widow Jones was there, stirring a pot of broth that had been simmering on the hob all this time, sniffing and then adding handfuls of herbs now and again. “Mother will want bone broth,” the widow said, “and I say to add anise seed. Helps bring down the milk.”

“And fennel,” called Eilian from the stillroom.

Anne felt an odd squeeze about the heart, being here with these women who were bent on the care of one of their own. So different from the kind of mornings calls she was acquainted with, or the customary amusements of her female friends.

Dovey started taking down bowls and dishes from the shelves above one of the worktables.

“Gwen left last night so they might spend their first night at Penrydd, and I don’t expect her back for a time,” she said to Anne.

“The viscountesses set sail this morning for Bristol, and we’ll not see hide nor hair of them again, I wager.

So I’m afraid it’s just us if you’ve come for company. ”

Anne drew in a long breath. “I came to tell you. You’ll hear I’m to be married.”

Dovey’s eyes were flat and hard, her lips tight, but her nod was polite. “To Calvin Vaughn.”

“To Hewitt,” Anne said.

The change in Dovey’s face was almost comical. A clang sounded as Cerys dropped a utensil on the worktable.

“Captain Vaughn?” Cerys demanded. Eilian came out of the stillroom and stared at Anne, a stoppered jar in hand.

Anne’s blush rose from her neck to her hairline. She must be as red as a raspberry herself.

“We—Captain Vaughn, Hewitt, and I—decided we would suit better than Mr. Vaughn—Calvin—and I would.” And, oh, glory, wasn’t that a fabrication.

Dovey looked cautious. “Well, you did find the pin, didn’t you now? I suppose we’re to felicitate you on the happy turn of events.”

“The elder Vaughn?” Eilian sounded eager, yet somehow brittle, lacking the assured confidence she’d shown before. “Him as arrived yesterday. Hewitt. You’re to marry.”

“Er. So it seems,” Anne stammered.

Eilian curled her fingers around the jar. “I thought you had broken with the Vaughns. This seems awfully fast.”

Was the woman jealous? Had she looked upon Hew and wanted him for her own? Mrs. Lambe had made no mention of a husband, and Hewitt Vaughn was very fine to look upon. Not only that, he was master of Greenfield now, and in charge of its incomes.

And Anne could have him. All she had to do was go back.

“I-I wanted to tell you first. There will be gossip.”

Dovey shrugged. “Shall you be married at St. Sefin’s, too?”

She intended no such thing. This priory was the scene of her humiliation, watching her brother and Calvin make pitches for Gwen, then watching her old friend marry a viscount. But it was also the place she met Hewitt.

A Vaughn would want somewhere grander, perhaps St. Basil’s in Basseleg, which the Morgans of Tredegar had made fine.

But if she was the bride, and she were not to marry from her own home, then she could at least choose the church, could she not?

And if she were to be married, she would want the ceremony to be here, in this one place where she had come bereft to Newport and found an odd sort of community.

In this place designed to give shelter to the lost.

“Vicar Stanley could do it,” Dovey thought aloud. “You’ll need three weeks for the posting of banns.”

“And a gown,” Anne said, feeling more and more that she’d parted from her senses. Where was she to produce the funds for a new gown for a wedding, when she had nothing to call her own?

“That means they’ll all be coming here,” Eilian said. “The Vaughns. To Newport.” Her voice still held that strange, brittle quality.

“Er—I believe they travel to Newport rather frequently,” Anne said.

Eilian turned and abruptly vanished into the stillroom.

Dovey looked at Widow Jones. Cerys looked at Anne. Then the girl approached, shyly, and smoothed her apron over her skirts.

“I’m an excellent flower girl, I am,” Cerys said confidingly. “And I’ve done it before, you know.”

Anne laughed. She didn’t recognize the sound her own throat made.

Why was she behaving as if she were a happy bride in truth?

She did not intend to marry Hewitt Vaughn .

Not like this, with a snare drawn tight around the both of them.

She was simply going through the motions, that was all, until she found a way to escape to where she was meant to be.

The life she was meant to have, one of her own design and making, for once. Whatever that might look like.

And if she were to marry, as she’d been always told she must, then she wanted a man who chose her. Not her dowry. Not her name. Not the last straw he could clutch as he went over a cliff.

None of this was real, and yet, as the women closed around her, busy in their preparations for the babe and new mother, for dinner, and chatting of Anne’s wedding the whole time—as if she belonged, as if this were her circle of friends in truth—Anne ached for all the things she had never known to want, and now well and truly would never have.