Page 102 of The Summer Country

“Mind on your work, my lady.” The midwife was massaging her stomach, pumping and palpitating. “You’ll have your wee one soon enough.”

“Here.” Charles knelt down, holding the bundle out so Jenny could see her.

Jenny stared at the little scrunched face blinking skeptically up at her. She reached out a finger, very tentatively, to touch her soft, wrinkled cheek.

“It’s our baby,” she said, not quite believing it, not quite believing this little creature, this little person, had come from her, had lived inside her all these months, and here she was, alive and whole and rather displeased at being born.

“Our little girl,” said Charles, reaching out a finger gingerly, so gingerly. Their daughter clamped her hand around it. He looked at Jenny with delight. “She’s a grip like a land crab!”

“She’s strong,” said Jenny softly.

“Like her mother,” said Charles.

“She’ll be wanting to eat now,” said the midwife, and Jenny realized that while they’d been staring at their child, Jonathan Fenty’s alarmingly competent sister had made a pile of cushions and blankets against the wall.

Helping Jenny up off the soiled clothes, she led her across to the improvised bed. Jenny’s body felt strange and sore, a mass of aches, but she was only just aware of them, all of her attention focused on the bundle in Charles’s arms.

“Nah, nah, baby, you’ll not be getting anything from him,” said Miss Fenty, and transferred the baby neatly from Charles to Jenny. The baby began rooting blindly at her chest, nudging the nipple with her nose.

“Like this,” said the midwife, and expertly guided the baby’s mouth to Jenny’s breast.

The child sucked for a few moments and then dozed off, mouth open, head lolling back in the crook of Jenny’s arm. Charles sank down against the wall next to her, his arm around her shoulders, both of them quiet, watching their child.

In the background, Jenny was vaguely aware of the midwife, industriously tidying, piling up the bloodied sheets.

“You won’t mind if I take these?” she said to Charles.

“Have them,” said Charles, not taking his eyes off the baby. “Have anything you want.”

Jenny was tired, so tired. Charles’s shoulder and the cushions were soft, the weight of the baby warm against her. She found herself drifting in and out of sleep, Charles’s lips brushing her forehead, her arms locked around her baby. Every now and then she would start awake and blink at her child, at the wrinkled eyelids, the fine tufts of dark hair, the crumpled little mouth.

She came awake again to see Charles standing, staring out the door of the mill. The sky had begun to turn from black to gray. Jenny felt a chill steal across her heart and held her baby tighter.

“What time is it?” she asked, her voice raw.

Charles didn’t need to consult his pocket watch. He must have already looked. “Nearly gone five,” he said. “We’ll have to go soon.”

“No.” She didn’t mean to say it, it just came out. “Please, can’t we wait a little more?”

It was the midwife who answered, her supplies neatly packed, the fire banked, the pot that had sat upon it gone cold and stowed in a straw basket. “It’s time,” she said.

Jenny’s lips tightened; she blinked hard against a frightening rush of tears, holding her baby close, resisting the urge to hit out at anyone who came near her.

But to what end? She knew it as well as they. If she refused now, if she took her child back to Beckles, her baby would be marked, forever, as chattel. If they liked, Robert and Mary Anne could take her away from Jenny, give her to another family to raise, sell her, starve her.

Mary Anne wouldn’t—Jenny didn’t think. But it was so hard to tell with Mary Anne these days.

“All right,” she said reluctantly. And then, delaying the moment as long as she could, she said to Charles, “What shall we call her?”

“I had thought . . . Carlota. Since she’s meant to be Portuguese. We can call her Lottie.”

“But we’ll just call her Baby,” said the midwife, kneeling down to take the child.

“Wait.” One-handed, Jenny reached up to her neck, yanking so hard that she tore the frayed old ribbon. She tried to tuck the locket into the folds of the baby’s blanket, but her hand fumbled and failed. She could have cried with frustration. “I want her to have this.”

She had nothing of her own mother, not even her looks. When she looked into the mirror she saw her father. What would it have been to have something to hold, to remember?

“That’s Mary Anne’s locket.”