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“When he gets too worked up, I shall send him out for a calming walk in the garden or ask him to read aloud.”
Cat looked at her sidelong. “You enjoy hearing prose as much as I. Let us hope for your sake Woburn Abbey has an extensive garden.”
Eighteen
To Harriett’s utter disbelief, Manchester honored the truce and their agreement. From the moment she stepped over the threshold of the Hospital on Monday, he was civil toward her. More than civil—he was gentlemanly and remained so, despite her private prediction such behavior would last but a day or two. His manner was earnest, and he appeared to take both her and his duty to the Hospital quite seriously.
With each passing day, her surprise mounted until she wasn’t quite sure what to think.
When exactly one week after their initial discussion—as promised—he placed an advertisement in the London papers, she was flabbergasted. To be sure, it was a long and detailed advertisement with an exhaustive list of requirements. Reading it, she wondered whether anyone would dare apply.
To be fair, it was thorough and specific, and there was nothing in it that could be considered off-putting to a truly suitable applicant. There would be no time wasted interviewing unqualified candidates for either of them—a relief as there was a great deal to achieve in a few short months.
What was not a relief was the fact that he was now constantly at her side. He was her shadow, watching everything she did, listening to her every word. If she’d thought it difficult to be near him before, it was even more so now that he was being so nice. It had reached the point where she tried not to look at him unless it was necessary.
Unfortunately, whenever it was unavoidable, she could not help marking how handsome he was. Her eye was drawn by the way the light played in his warm, whiskey-brown eyes. Her belly tightened every time he gave her one of his rare smiles. And they were rare, even more so now than before.
A deep sadness seemed to have settled over him. It wasn’t evident in anything he said or did, but she felt it nonetheless. And it pulled at her heart. No doubt being here, in this place his brother had built, affected him so. She truly hoped one day he would see it as she did: a place of comfort, a place where he could be close to William’s lingering presence.
The thought elicited a frown. Her feeling of closeness with William seemed to have diminished of late. A side effect of having decided to move on, she supposed, dismissing the errant idea. Now was definitely not the time to reflect on what the Hospital meant to her. Such thoughts would only cause her further discomfort when it came time to cut the ties.
Manchester proved just as sharp-minded as he’d boasted when it came to running a business. But when it came to the other aspects of operating the orphanage, the skills about which he’d expressed some concern were indeed sorely lacking. He was every bit as inept when it came to dealing with the staff and children as he’d said. In the space of one particularly difficult afternoon, he managed to offend two nurses and cause a volunteer worker to quit.
“You cannot be so harsh with them!” Harriett scolded, pulling him aside. “That girl was helping us out of the goodness of her heart, and she’d been here but two days. You cannot expect her to know every rule in so short a time. Now she’s gone, and we’re short-staffed again!”
“How the bloody hell was I supposed to know the difference?” retorted Manchester, a bit of his former irritability showing through.
“Which is why I keep telling you to learn the names and faces of the regular staff. I know in your view they’re little more than servants, but the children here depend on them—and so do you. If they don’t come to work, you don’t have a way to care for the children.”
“She looked just like the other workers here,” he said, seemingly determined to remain obstinate. “We ought to have the volunteers wear a different color apron or something, so one can tell them apart. I want to be able to tell at once who is in the pay of this facility and who isn’t.”
It was not a bad idea, and she told him so. “But even with such a change, you cannot go blustering about and questioning everyone in such a gruff manner.”
“I was not being gruff.”
She crossed her arms and glared. “Why do the children stare at you like you’re going to eat them whenever you ask a question?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Because you scowl and tower over them like a giant,” she told him. They’d just finished talking to a little girl and her nurse—the same one he’d offended—and while the nurse had been forthcoming enough, he’d been unable to get a word out of the child until Harriett had stepped in.
“I do not scowl,” he retorted, scowling.
“Yes, you do,” she said, unable to help smiling a little. “You must try to see things from the child’s perspective,” she explained. “Get down and meet them at their level, eye to eye. And smile occasionally rather than looking like a thundercloud all the time. And lower your voice when you talk to them—try to at least sound gentle. You have to earn a child’s trust, especially these children. Think of where they come from.”
Though he nodded and looked thoughtful, she didn’t really expect him to try any of these suggestions. Which might have been why she was so shocked to see him employ them all. What’s more, it worked—which seemed to surprise him almost as much as it did her.
The weeks slipped by, and she watched him transform from an intimidating authority figure into someone much different, much more approachable. The harshness melted from him, replaced by a relaxed curiosity and a quiet confidence. Within a month of that conversation, nearly every child at the Hospital was calling him by his first name and smiling whenever he appeared.
His amazing transformation seemed to be mirrored by the changes he was making to the Hospital itself. Plans for the new sick ward had been drafted, and Harriett was stunned to find every suggestion she’d put forth had been incorporated. Every day she watched the new building rise a bit higher, and every day she felt a sense of great satisfaction—tinged with sadness.
She would be leaving soon.
Just this week, Arabella had written. Things were progressing as expected. The plan was to join her sister in Berkshire for the last anticipated two weeks of her lying in. Harriett felt it would be better to have a more experienced woman there, but at least she had attended several births and would be able to assist the midwife.
Time flew. Cat’s birthday party was tonight, and one short month remained before Harriett was to go to Berkshire—and still, to her frustration, she had not come any closer to achieving her goal. Every ball she attended, she tried to attract another suitor, to no avail. Russell seemed bent on preventing it. Whereas Manchester shadowed her at the Hospital, Russell did so everywhere else—which would have been fine, had he asked her father for permission to court her. But he had not. Not yet.
&nbs
