“This one.” He pointed to the blue one, rumpled on the floor.
“Very well.” She held it up, and Henry, suddenly all compliance, thrust his arms through the sleeves and allowed her to button him. She finished, then straightened and turned to Clara.
“What’s the matter, darling?”
Clara’s lip trembled, and for a moment Nancy feared tears. “It’s raining.”
“I see that.” Nancy sat beside her, tucking her knees up. “Do you like the rain?”
“I like it when it’s outside,” Clara said, in a voice so small it barely existed. “I don’t like it when it keeps you in the house. I like it when you take us to the river.”
Nancy’s heart gave a queer little tug. “We’ll go again soon. When it’s dry.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” Nancy held up her pinky, and Clara twined hers in with perfect solemnity.
She fetched the hairbrush and pulled Clara into her lap, then set to work taming the knots left by a day’s worth of rebellion.
Henry, now in pajamas, wandered back and flopped onto the bed. “You forgot the buttons, Nancy.”
“Did I?” She looked down at her handiwork. Indeed, the top button of Henry’s sleep shirt was fastened through the wrong hole, dragging the whole collar askew. “I am a disaster.”
Clara giggled, and even Henry smiled as Nancy undid and redid the buttons, slower and more carefully this time. The children watched her with matching, unblinking attention.
“Are you very tired?” Henry asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you keep yawning.”
Nancy looked at the two of them, their faces so earnest and small. “Maybe a little. But it’s nothing a good story won’t cure.”
Clara perked up. “Are you going to read to us?”
“Of course I am. That’s the rule.”
She tucked them into bed, then settled on the edge, book in hand. The twins pressed in close, Henry at her right, Clara at her left, both of them still as mice.
She opened to the marked page and began to read, the rhythm of the words pulling her into their familiar, gentle current. The twins leaned against her, their breathing slowing, warm and content.
As she read, the print began to blur. Nancy blinked hard, once, then again.
She felt Henry’s hand curl around hers, small and trusting. Clara’s head drooped against her arm.
Nancy kept reading, and before long, her eyelids grew too heavy to remain open.
CHAPTER 20
Oscar was on his way to his chambers after midnight when he saw a sliver of light coming from the nursery. He paused, first annoyed, then curious.
What new nonsense had the children invented to delay sleep now?
He crossed the runner and pushed the door open, then noted at once the problem: three candles left burning on the sill, two children drooped over the blankets in a tangle of arms and legs, and between them, a third body. Nancy.
She was sprawled, red hair splayed in chaotic liberty over a pillow that did not belong to her, one stockinged foot nearly off the mattress. He frowned. For a moment, he considered whether he ought to fetch a maid, or perhaps a bell and simply ring for order. But the sight was, somehow, more peaceful than he could have imagined.
The children had sandwiched Nancy between them with the precision of a military maneuver: Clara had one fist knotted in the sleeve of her dress, while Henry lay with his cheek pressed into her ribs, mouth agape, the faintest snore issuing from his throat.
