Page 42 of A Stormy Season

Penelope poured them both a cup of tea, which was still warm, and they ate biscuits and talked of what they’d seen and done with Jeffrey.

“I can hardly wait until Lilith is old enough to walk and explore out of doors,” Penelope said.

Jane had very much enjoyed her time with Jeffrey and Luke. She felt as if there was a new familiarity between them. When she caught Luke looking at her, there was the same frisson, but with less nervousness. But that was normal, she supposed, for two people who were pretending to be engaged.

Chapter Thirteen

The next day Luke was glad the weather was still holding out, as it had been cooler and wetter ever since the New Year had begun.

And once again Jane just happened to be around when Jeffrey was awake and wanting attention from Luke.

The day progressed much as it had the day before. Luke watched as Jeffrey began to sidle up to Jane more often, even seeking her help when he dropped his toy animal and it went under a table. And when he became out of sorts, crying over a little fall, then rubbing his eyes, she held out her arms to him and he climbed into her lap.

“My mother used to sing this song to me.” Jane looked into Jeffrey’s eyes and started to sing a lullaby that Luke vaguely remembered his nurse singing to him.

Jeffrey stared at Jane’s lips as if mesmerized. His head started drifting closer to her chest, but then he pulled himself straight and rubbed his eyes again. But after another instance of that, he finally succumbed to her soothing voice and the slow, gentle words of her song, and lay his head against her and closed his eyes.

Jane wrapped her arms around him, very lightly and gingerly.

Luke’s heart seemed squeezed by a giant fist inside his chest. Was this the independent Jane, who cared nothing for convention and other people’s opinions, whom he’d compared to Anne as someone similar? Her face was angelic as she sang and tenderly held his son in her lap. His heart clenched again.

As Jane continued to sing, Jeffrey sank deeper, until he was completely relaxed and would sleep through almost anything, from Luke’s prior experience.

“I’ll go get Sally to put him to bed.”

“I can take him to his bed,” Jane whispered. She stood up, cradling Jeffrey in her arms.

Luke led her to the nursery, where Jane laid him down and covered him with the sheet.

Sally walked into the room and whispered, “I’ll watch him now.”

Jeffrey and Jane left the room and he closed the door.

“Thank you for letting me do that,” Jane said. “I enjoy when Lilith lets me sing her to sleep, but she rarely ever does. She always wants Penelope when she’s sleepy.”

Luke didn’t trust himself to speak as he gazed down at her. Could she be real? A woman who was confident in her ability to run a clothing shop in London and do the bookkeeping, while also enjoying what most women would leave to their child’s nurse—comforting and holding their child while they fell asleep? Most ladies of Society considered such care of children, even their own, to be beneath them.

Jane was indeed an unusual woman.

He’d always thought, since the many problems in his first marriage, that he wished to marry someone like Penelope, who was sweet and soft-spoken, conventional and sensible. But Jane was definitely not soft-spoken or conventional, which only seemed to attract him more.

What if he made another terrible mistake?

But their engagement was not real. He had nothing to worry about, as long as he didn’t actually marry her.

The other problem was that the more time he spent with her, the more he thought about marrying her. Fortunately, his fears, especially the fear that Jane might reject him and break his heart the way Anne had, would keep him from doing anything impulsive.

A new problem had begun to dawn on him. What if Jeffrey became attached to Jane? When they broke off their engagement and stopped spending time together, Jeffrey would be brokenhearted when she suddenly disappeared from his life.

What had he gotten himself, and his son, into?

~ ~ ~

Jane was careful to avoid Luke and Jeffrey the next day.

It had been a mistake, she realized, to sing Jeffrey to sleep. The feel of the little boy in her arms, knowing he had no mother, having already spent so much time with him, had created some pretty intense feelings inside her. And though she would be fine, she didn’t want to hurt Jeffrey by letting him get attached to her. In a few months she and his father would no longer be engaged, even in pretense, and Jeffrey would suddenly cease to see her.

But perhaps she was overthinking.