Page 37 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
The babe quieted and a moment later the door creaked open. And there she was. The wet nurse.
‘Where have you been?’ Mary asked, not pausing to think about the fact that she was likely stepping out of bounds by lecturing another member of the household.
‘Not your concern, miss high-and-mighty,’ said the woman.
‘It is my concern. Because this is the second time the babe has been in distress and you have not been here. You are meant to be here.’
‘Am I not allowed to use the necessary?’
‘If that is what you were doing. I don’t believe that it is.’
‘It isn’t your job to tell me how to do mine. It is not your concern.’
‘The children are my concern.’
The woman looked through the darkness at her. ‘Are you shagging him?’
She was taken aback by the crude question, but she knew immediately who the woman meant. Unbidden, it created images in her mind. His strong body over hers. And never in her life had that image infused her with anything but revulsion, and yet in this moment...revulsion was not what she felt.
She pushed it aside, allowing anger to guide her.
She would not be cowed by this, not this woman.
‘If I wasshagginghim,’ she said, ‘I would still see to my responsibilities. Whatever you’re off doing is preventing you from doing yours, and that is the issue. I don’t care whose bed you occupy, but I do care if it keeps you from being where you were meant to be.’
‘It isn’t going to kill the child to wait a moment to be fed.’
But the cries killed her. Slowly and by inches, and she could not bear it.
‘See to him,’ she said.
The woman approached the cradle and took the babe out, releasing her breast and latching him on easily. ‘There. You can go now.’
Mary gave the woman a long look as she walked out of the room, her heart beating painfully.
Are you shagging him?
She blinked back stinging moisture from her eyes, and she could not say why all of this felt so raw. So uncontrolled. Only that it did.
She went to her bedroom and closed the door firmly behind her.
Between Pelham and the Duke and the babe, the wet nurse, she felt like pieces of all her defences were being torn away. Revealing truths.
She was stronger than she had feared she might be, but she was also more susceptible to other things that she had not yet imagined.
She was determined that she would weather this. She was determined to find her footing again.
Chapter Eight
The next day with the children, she continued to think about the bairn.
How pitiful he had been. How guilty she felt that he did not have a consistent champion.
The wet nurse was here to care for him, to feed him, but it was her job, and she was not in any way caring for whether or not he was... Nurtured.
Having had a childhood with parents who had not seen to the care and keeping of their brood, she felt especially sensitive to that.
Or perhaps it just made her think of her son.
