Darien tried and failed to tear his eyes away from the woman’s bared bosom and the dark, prominent nipples pointing straight up. How like a man to be knocked senseless by the sight of a woman’s bosoms, Henrietta thought as Darien sent her a stricken look. She pulled the shawl firmly about the woman’s shoulders, tying her up in a tidy bow.
“Do you require stockings as well?” she asked.
“Not the drawers you got, gawkey!” The woman laughed and moved away to proposition the porter.
“Shift yer bob, ye draggletail!” James cried after her. “An’ quit sportin’ the dairy.”
“I needs me one o’ them shawls,” piped a woman sitting on the floor.
Henrietta offered her one, noting the dirt and scars on the woman’s face, the tangles in her hair, the shabby, threadbare state of her dress. The Sisters of Benevolence would never allow their tenants to remain unwashed or thinly clad. The woman rose and hiked up her skirt, pulled the shawl between her legs, wrapped and tied it around her waist, and then dropped her skirt back into place. It was fair to say she was wearing neither drawers nor stockings.
“It’s thanking you I am,” she said, patting the bulge at her hips. “Ran out of small clothes, I did, and bleedin’ like a stuck pig all o’er the place.”
Henrietta tried to stand her ground as other women surged forward and plucked at the items in her boxes, fighting over the ones they wanted, throwing those useless to them on the floor. This was not at all like her missions to the hospitals and workhouses of the north. There, she bent over cots and tucked soft blankets around the shoulders of shivering women, swaddled babies, exchanged words of hope and encouragement in quiet, soulful murmurs. Here, faces swirled before her while handkerchiefs, blankets, and stockings flew through the air and her arms were pulled this way and that.
“Please,” Henrietta said as one woman wrenched a small blanket out of her arms. “That’s for a baby.”
“It’s fer me now, ain’t it!” the woman cried. “Stiff rump! Dog’s wife!”
“Sauce box!” James yelled back.
The woman turned and spat. Henrietta clamped her teeth together and fought the impulse to throw the box at them and run away, shrieking.
All of a sudden Darien was before her, one strong arm sweeping the crowd of women away. “Stand back, all of you,” he said in a commanding voice. He took one of her boxes and stepped forward, shielding Henrietta from the horde. “Do not pull Miss Wardley-Hines about. Sit down,” he said over his shoulder, without looking back.
“Where?” Henrietta asked with a shaky breath, looking around.
In a corner of the room, a young girl lay on a cot under a thin blanket, an infant at her side. The poor child squirmed and kicked weakly. The girl stretched out a hand to soothe it but did not lift her head.
Henrietta laid an extra blanket over the girl’s legs. “Look at you,” she cooed at the baby. “Is this your brother? Sister?”
“Brother?” The girl had a thin, freckled face, but her eyes were unfocused. She was either under the influence of opiates or exhausted. “’E’s mine.”
Henrietta blinked. “Oh. I did not think you old enough to be a mother.”
“Hush, ye great roarer.” The girl patted the wailing infant with a thin hand. “’E’s sick as a horse,” she told Henrietta. “Nothing settles ’im. Can’t eat, can’t sleep. An’ never stops crying.”
“He may need his breeches changed,” Henrietta said, detecting a distinctive smell.
“I run out of cloths for him,” the girl said. “Wash day’s Friday.”
Henrietta gagged when she opened the swaddling clothes. There was a bucket in the corner that appeared to be the sole water supply; she poured some onto a cloth and carefully cleaned the baby. He stopped squalling and watched her with a resigned squint, as if he already knew the world he had been brought into was a cold, cruel place.
“How old is he?” Henrietta asked.
“Six months,” the girl said with a tired smile. “A fine banging boy, aye?”
“He’s lovely,” Henrietta murmured. She’d had a hand in the care of all five of her half-sisters, so she managed a fair swaddle in a fresh cloth and blanket. The poor mite poked a fist into his mouth and watched her with hopeful eyes.
“I believe he’s hungry.”
“I barely got milk,” the girl said, her lashes drifting closed. “And what grub I give ’im, ’e shoots up.”
And how could she nourish a baby, being malnourished herself? Henrietta looked around and saw a small dish of something clotted and brownish gray not far from the girl’s head. She poured a little water into the dish to make a thin pasteof the gruel. Then she took off her gloves, scooped gruel onto her finger, and slid it into the baby’s mouth. He mewled and turned away, giving that thin, hoarse wail.
“What’s his name?” Henrietta asked. The noise of the room had faded. It was just her, the baby, and this frail girl, at sea on a frayed blanket.
“I named ’im Elijah.” The girl watched her son with a small, sweet smile. “The one so special that God took ’im straight up to Heaven, aye?”
