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A knock at the door, a second knock. He dropped the pen with a splatter of ink, and Mrs. King the midwife stepped into the room.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Your wife is tired and sad, but she will be all right.”
“I left her. Three days ago she was well and I left her. She was upset and it…Was it…?”
“Naught but coincidence,” she said briskly. “I told her the same.”
Not you. Just go. Not you.
“She blamed me?”
“She blamed herself, poor lamb. But there’s not one thing either of you could have done different to change this, that’s the truth, and don’t you listen to any fool doctor what tries to say otherwise. I’ve been doing this a long time, and my mother and my aunts and their mother before, and let me tell you, if a baby wants to come, it’ll come, and it won’t care if you’re in the midst of heartbreak or war. But sometimes babies just don’t want to be born and there’s an end to it. But you have to stay away from her now.”
“What?” It was a conspiracy. “Never.”
“Out of her bed, I mean. For a month or so. Give the poor lamb time to recover.”
“But I can stillsleepwith her?” Another thing he learned in Birmingham: He hated to sleep alone.
“Aye, sleep, if you want. But mind that’s all you do.”
“Can I see her?”
Not you. Just go. Not you.
“She’s sleeping now. Let her rest.”
* * *
Alone again,he went to the window. The light was fading but it was still the same day. It was still the same garden. She would sleep, and she would wake, alone. Would she reach for him, as he reached for her?
There had been a moment, when she first saw him. She had been happy to see him. Shehad.
He had to give her something, so she knew, when she awoke, that she was not alone. She would never be alone again. Had he ever given her anything? Not in London, and when everything was arranged with Das, he had left Birmingham too quickly to even think of buying her a gift. That was what husbands did for their wives, wasn’t it? Bought them gifts. He should get her something she liked. What did she like? What was wrong with him, that he loved her so much and didn’t even know what she liked?
I like it when you leap through windows.
She did like him, shedid. She liked flowers and music and pigs and cats and making love to him. She liked soft fabrics and strawberry tarts and those awful herbal wines her mother made. She liked meeting new people and winning at cards and balancing the ledgers and rubbing her cheek against his scruff. She liked it when he teased her and when he brushed her hair and when he kissed the underside of her breasts.
And he had a lifetime to learn everything else she liked and make sure she always had it.
The plans! They could be a gift to show her! He grabbed them up and was halfway to the door when he stopped. Wait. No. She was ill. She didn’t want him blathering on about plans and money and businesses. Not now, not yet. That wasn’t a gift.
Then out the window—Flowers!
He’d take her flowers. Roses and…the other ones. The Donkey’s Elbows or whatever they were called.
He ran into the still-wet garden and grabbed at a rose, which bit him, and he sucked the blood off his finger and tried again, and his sleeve snagged on a thorn, and he tried to free himself, but then his other sleeve snagged too, and then he couldn’t even get the wretched rose to snap off, and it occurred to him that flowers might be more complicated than he thought.
He ran back inside—sprinting, because he didn’t have time for this, no time to argue with flowers when his wife might think she was alone—and he found a knife, a nice sharp pen knife, and he ran back out and this time the rose could not withstand him. Ha ha! Behold the mighty conqueror of roses! One pink rose, and then another rose, and this purple-blue flower and that yellow one, and this white one, and it needed some more pink ones, and then he had a whole bunch of flowers, and they didn’t look nearly as pretty and symmetrical as the flowers in the house, those flowers made harmonious by her competent hands, but he decided that didn’t matter, because at least he had a lot of flowers. Now he needed to tie them together.
He dashed back through the entranceway, under that carving of “Every sunne is a new one,” which went to show how much they didn’t know, because it was the same sun every day, rising and setting, constant and sure and endless, and sometimes one simply needed to look at it anew. That was a nice thought, and he’d tell Cassandra that thought; he had so much to tell her. But first, no time to waste—string!
He charged inside, but before he found any string, he found a ribbon. How fortuitous! It was a pretty green color, not unlike the color of Cassandra’s eyes when they were being green and not brown, and he decided that yes, this ribbon would be ideal for tying up the flowers. Unfortunately, the ribbon was attached to a bonnet, but Joshua decided that he needed the ribbon more than the bonnet did, so he pulled out his handy pen knife and sliced the ribbon from its bonnet and tied up his flowers, which still didn’t look nearly as good as bunches that she made, but he had no more time to waste, so he jogged up the steps, only to see that the door to his wife’s room was closed and her mother had just come out.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Lady Charles pressed her fingers to her lips.
