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Chapter Thirteen
Candleton Hall offered a great deal more space, indoor and out, than their London residence, and Beatrice and the children took full advantage. The governess shifted many of Miriam and Edmund’s lessons outdoors, and Isabella and Ben ventured out often with the nursemaid and her assistant.
It had been almost two years since Bea spent substantial time at Candleton Hall, for she had given birth to Ben midsummer the previous year. William and the two oldest children had spent a fortnight at the estate at the end of the summer, and he had returned to London reporting that the Hall had seemed empty without her.
A month after she and the children arrived, Bea could not say she missed William on the whole, for she could not think about him without pain, and she desperately needed the respite from her marriage. The children pined for him, which was a source of guilt for her, but they also greatly enjoyed the offerings of their temporary country life.
With determination, Bea let herself become absorbed into her new daily life—participating in the children’s lessons and appreciating the gardens and surroundings. She took part in local social events and attended services in the parish church, grateful that London gossip had not, and perhaps would not, reach those circles.
The day before Ben’s birthday, he took his first steps, toddling after Isabella through the grass. His own delighted scream announced how exciting the act was.
“Wherever she leads, he wants to follow,” Bea said to Hannah, the nursemaid, as the two watched and laughed.
A few exhausting months earlier, when Ben had been at his fussiest, she could not have predicted how independent he would become in such a short time. He was eating more of the foods his siblings were and showed great interest in emulating them as much as possible.
A week after his birthday, the only time he nursed was right before bed for the night, and even then, it was without great interest. A few days later, he stopped entirely. Even as she knew some measure of relief, Bea found herself unaccountably disheartened by the sudden weaning.
Is he my last babe?
After spending much of the last decade either being with child or nursing, she supposed the thought should have brought more solace than sadness. She would be free to mother her four children with more of herself left over. It would mean unhurried outings to the opera, without rushing home. Turns through the park without nausea for weeks at a time. Nights spent sleeping. Her body would become her own again.
But alone in bed that night, weeping, she realized all it meant. No more tender moments with a trusting babe at her breast. No more first smiles or steps or words. Never again would she spend those last weeks of pregnancy embroidering the next babe’s layette with love.
No more William in her chamber.
It meant the end of an era, which is what she had intended with her very departure from London. She simply hadn’t realized all it would entail and had not been fully prepared.
Of course you shouldn’t welcome him into your chamber ever again! Even for another child!All it took to stiffen her resolve was imagining William at the Venus, allowing a ladybird to touch him in ways he had not permitted from Bea.
Between stints of anger and self-pity, Bea took comfort in her family’s antics, even of the type that would have set Harriet’s nerves on edge. Laughing already, her mirth got the better of her, thinking of her sister’s reaction had she been present, as almost three-year-old Isabella surprised Edmund by jumping onto his back. He had been stalking a grasshopper through the meadow when his sister leapt upon him in a move not unlike his favorite insect.
“We’re always telling them they must take turns,” Bea mused to the governess. Wisely, the two women observed before intervening. “Isabella has certainly taken that lesson to heart—when it comes to mischief!”
Just when it appeared that Edmund might retaliate by bucking his interloping sister off his back, the tide turned, and he shifted from grasshopper hunter to playing pony, giving her a ride all the way to the spot in the shade where Miriam sat on a blanket, reading. Before reaching their destination, the two had paused for some time, and Bea understood why when Miriam launched straight upwards.
“Worm!”
Miriam’s high-pitched screech made Isabella and Edmund roll with glee, infuriating poor Miriam all the more when they knocked her book off the blanket.
“I’ve lost my place!” She growled, her hands fisted by her sides. “Wait until Papa arrives and I tell him about this!”
Edmund stopped laughing and followed Miriam into a patch of sunlight, which glinted off his tawny hair, halfway between William’s dark-golden color and Bea’s mink-brown. “If you don’t tell him about the worm, I won’t tell him about your favorite new word!Merde!”
Miriam let loose with a string of French, delivered straight into her brother’s face.
“What does that mean?” he asked, his voice full of suspicion.
With a sweep of her hand, Miriam rid her skirts of any last bit of offensive worm residue and lifted her chin. “Pay greater attention to your lessons and perhaps you’ll understand one day! Meanwhile, you may assume it has something to do with your place in the worm kingdom!”
“I’m king of the worms!” Edmund exclaimed, springing into a lunge with an imaginary foil in hand.
Though her insult to her brother had failed, Miriam couldn’t help but smile and shake her head.
Bea left the children with the governess and headed back into the house, where she had plans to meet with the housekeeper and cook to discuss the small dinner party she was planning for the next week. She paused on the terrace before entering the house, observing the three children from afar. Benny was up in the nursery for his afternoon rest, but he would have been in the thick of the action had he been awake.
How grateful she was her children had each other to annoy. To frolic with. To learn with. She may not have reached the heights she had hoped for in her marriage, but her children had the family she had always dreamed of—for their sake and her own. They trampled each other and forgave; their vexation usually melted into amusement.
Bea’s two living siblings were Harriet and her brother Ernest, who was over twenty-five years her senior and rarely ventured into London from the seat of his earldom. He had attended her wedding and they exchanged occasional formal letters. Aside from expressing his expectations of her during her coming-out and his approval of her marriage, they had shared no other personal interactions, and she had not seen him in several years. He certainly had never hidden a frog in the chamber pot under her bed, as Miriam had done recently to Edmund. She had never spooned a dollop of orange marmalade onto Ernest’s palm while he slept, as Edmund had done to Miriam.
