Chapter 7

There was jubilation in the nursery the day the twins were born. Angélique and Helen were thrilled to hear the news when Sarah came to tell them, and when they told the children, they were very excited that they had a brother and a sister and wanted to see them. But Angélique explained that they had to give them a few days to rest.

“Why? Did they get tired getting here? Did they come from a long way?” Emma asked. They were all young enough not to have made the connection between a baby coming and their mother’s growing girth. And it had not been explained to them, so they were surprised to hear that the babies were tired now.

Emma wanted to see her mother, but Angélique said she was exhausted and probably asleep. And Emma looked disappointed.

“Did they come from far away? Did Mommy go to fetch them?” It all seemed very confusing to them. And their father came to see them that afternoon while they were having tea. He said that their new brother and sister were being named George and Rose, and they could see them very soon. He said they were very small and were going to sleep for a few days. And their mother was fine, and had things to do. He didn’t want to worry them, and there was no reason for them to know or see how battered she was by the birth. By the time they saw her again, he wanted her to be well and feeling better. There was no sense in frightening them, and had they seen her then, they would have been. He was worried about her too.

She looked better the next day, and sat up in bed to drink some tea. She hadn’t eaten in two days. She was following the doctor’s orders closely, and well tended by the nurses, and the doctor had told her that if she wanted to recover quickly, she had to rest. She had no trouble following his orders and said she felt so weak that she was sure that if she tried to get out of bed, she’d fall down. But she got stronger every day, and had better color. And when the babies were a week old, Angélique was allowed to bring all four children down from the nursery to see them. Both twins were wide awake, wearing little wool dresses and warm caps and matching booties, and were tightly wrapped in blankets as the wet nurse and baby nurse held them and warned the children not to touch them. Their four older siblings stared at them in awe, and Angélique was touched by how beautiful they were. They looked absolutely perfect.

“Can I hold one?” Emma asked with interest, as she hovered over Rose, and the nurse said she’d have to wait until the baby was stronger, and soon she’d be in the nursery with them. The baby stared at her big sister, listening to the sound of her voice.

“Why are there two of them?” Simon asked. “Why didn’t we just get one, like we were supposed to?” It seemed mysterious to him and made no sense. Last time there was only one baby when Charles was born, and Rupert before that.

“They gave us an extra one,” Angélique explained.

“Did no one want the other one, so they gave him to us?” he asked, frowning.

“Your mother and father wanted both of them,” Angélique said, smiling, although it clearly seemed like unnecessary excess to him. “Now there are six of you.” Simon nodded. That made sense.

They lingered in the temporary nursery for half an hour, and then they went outside to play, and they seemed pleased. Emma commented that Rose was very pretty.

“She looks just like you,” Angélique told her, “except for her red hair.”

“Will she get ringlets too?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

After that, they went to visit the babies every day. Simon got bored with it after a few days, they were always asleep, and Rupert and Charles were still too young to be interested. But Emma asked to see the twins every day, and Angélique took her to visit them. Emma was particularly enchanted with her new sister, and enthralled by the fact that there were two babies, although Simon still said it was silly. It seemed like a mistake to him. Like a delivery error from a shop, that had sent two babies instead of one. But Emma liked them, and talked about the babies constantly.

They were allowed to visit their mother for a few minutes, three weeks after the birth. She was lying on a daybed in her dressing room, and she still looked tired and pale, but they were happy to see her and said they liked their new brother and sister very much.

“Are you feeling better now after your trip?” Emma asked her politely, and Eugenia looked blank. “They said you were very tired after you went to fetch them. It must have been far away.”

“Yes, it was,” Eugenia said, smiling at her. “Very far away. But I’m better now.” She and Angélique exchanged a smile and a look, and then their mother said they should go out to play. The weather had been glorious since the twins were born. Their visit with her lasted only five minutes, and for Eugenia, it was enough. She didn’t want to exhaust herself with them, and was trying to regain her strength.

The twins were a month old when she came downstairs for the first time. She had dinner with her husband in the dining room, sat on the terrace for a little while to get some air afterward, and then went back to bed. He was leaving for London the next day, and she was planning to join him in a few weeks, and hoped she would be stronger then. The social Season was starting in a few weeks, and she didn’t want to miss it. Gwyneth’s ball was at the end of June, and she had promised Elizabeth she’d be there, and hoped to have gotten her figure back by then. She had begun having Stella lace her into her corsets, and felt more like herself once she did.

They had acquired a second pram, and both nurses took the twins out every day, to get fresh air. They slept peacefully while the two women wheeled them through the park, and the older children peeked at them whenever they could, as did the rest of the staff, who couldn’t wait to see them.

Later in June, Eugenia’s friends began coming to visit, excited to see the twins too. Eugenia had finally begun holding them. She had been so distraught after the birth that she hadn’t seen them for the first two weeks, and didn’t want them brought to her, but Harry had been so ecstatic about them that she eventually asked for them, and held each of them for a few minutes, and sent them away when they started to cry, saying that they needed to be fed. Newborn babies always made her uncomfortable, they were so small and delicate, she said she was afraid she’d break them, like porcelain dolls. But she was content to look in on the nursery and peek at them once in a while. Mostly, she was concerned with her figure. And as always, after a delivery, she was careful about what she ate. And the weight she had gained had already begun to slip away. She had no intention of losing her figure because of them. And by the end of June, when they were seven weeks old, she looked beautiful when she left for London. Her shape was still a little fuller, but she was voluptuous and lovely. And of course she left the twins in Hampshire, with the other children. She said that London was no place for newborns, with all the activity and noise. The staff at the house on Curzon Street were disappointed not to see them, but Harry had told them they weren’t coming.

The moment Eugenia arrived in London, she felt like she’d been released from prison, after the last boring months at their country home, and her long recovery from the delivery. But just as the doctor had predicted, she was young and got her strength back quickly, and told all her friends that having them had been the worst experience of her life, and she wouldn’t think of doing it again. Harry believed her, which made the twins seem even more special to him.

Once Eugenia left Hampshire, Angélique began spending more time with the babies. She wanted to get to know them, and get used to them, before they moved to the nursery in August, when they were weaned and the baby nurse went back to London. They had kept her longer than planned since they were twins. And Helen had been told that she would have to help Angélique care for them, since there would be six children in the nursery for a month, and five when Simon left for Eton. And Eugenia still insisted they didn’t need a second nanny, which Sarah said was crazy. How was Angélique going to manage five children, and two of them brand-new babies?

“You’ll have to be an octopus to manage that one,” Sarah said wryly.

“The baby nurse said they’re easy babies,” Angélique said confidently. It was going to be a new experience for her, caring for such young infants. Mrs. Ferguson had assured her she could do it, and that she had total faith in her to do it well. Angélique loved holding them, and like Emma, although she didn’t admit it, she had a marked preference for Rose. She even looked like a rosebud, while George looked like a sturdy little man. One of the Scottish housemaids called him a “bonny bairn.”

Eugenia and Harry didn’t return to Hampshire until they had gone to every ball they had been invited to, including Gwyneth’s, and came home at the end of July, when the Season ended. And three days after they got back, they went to Bath for the month on holiday without the children and to enjoy the restorative waters, which Eugenia said she needed after all she’d been through.

When they returned at the end of August, they were busy every night right until the end of the first week of September, the night before Simon was leaving for Eton. He had cried about it for several days with Angélique, but he knew that he could not complain to his parents. Angélique had told him he had to be brave, and he promised he would be. She never let him know how sad she was for him to be leaving home so young, and she knew she would miss him.

The morning he left was a beautiful day, and Angélique got him up early. She had been packing for him for days, and included his favorite books, a blanket he loved, his pillow, and a beloved bear that he had slept with since he was born. He was far too young to give that up, especially if he was going to leave his parents. He had to have some small form of comfort. She just hoped the other boys didn’t make fun of him or take it from him. But there had to be other boys with whom he would form lifelong friendships. And all the boys in the entering class were the same age he was, at five. Angélique thought to herself that it was really a class of babies. She hated the idea of sending him away at five, and thought his parents were doing it just because everyone else did and the school was legendary, famous, and their son going there was a sign of their social status.

Angélique had taken Simon to say goodbye to his parents the afternoon before he left. His father had shaken his hand and his mother had hugged him, and they had warned him to be good and study hard. He looked like a baby to Angélique as he stood before them. And then she took him back upstairs to the nursery, and had given him extra hugs that night herself.

The next morning when it was time to leave, she took him downstairs. His bags had been collected by the footmen the night before and had already been put in the carriage. His father was sending him with their best carriage and coachman for the trip to Windsor, which would take them five hours. And the cook had prepared a picnic basket to take with him for the journey. He had everything he needed, and before they handed him into the carriage, Angélique hugged him tight. Neither of his parents came to see him off. And as the coach pulled away, Angélique stood waving at him for as long as she could see him, and Simon sat silently in the coach with tears rolling relentlessly down his cheeks as though his heart would break.

Once Simon left, she went back to the nursery where Helen was tending to the others. They had two baskets for the twins, whom Angélique had been taking care of since August. It gave her little time for anything else, but she was managing nicely, and Helen was being extremely helpful. They ran their feet off all day, and except when they were sleeping, one of them was always holding one of the twins. The babies had adjusted well to nursery life, and Emma was thrilled to have them close at hand. She was four years old now, and loved her baby sister. She was never jealous of her and wanted to play with her like a doll. And Angélique constantly reminded her to be gentle with her. The two younger boys were still too young and too rough to hold a baby, but Angélique let Emma sit on the floor and hold one of them, wrapped in a blanket. That way, the baby was protected and wouldn’t have far to fall, if Emma lost her grip when the baby squirmed, or got too heavy for her.

The nursery felt strange to her without Simon. He had been such a strong presence ever since her arrival, and had all the earmarks of an oldest son. He took care of his sister, was protective of the others, and in some ways was like a little man. He talked to Angélique as though they understood each other. And she found it very odd without him now, and very sad. She hoped he’d be happy at school, but she didn’t see how he could be, being sent away so young. Angélique felt Simon’s absence sharply for two months, and in November it was shocking to her to realize that she had been with the Fergusons for a year. In some ways, it seemed like only minutes, at other times it felt like a lifetime, and she had begun to wonder what she was going to do with the rest of her life. She was happy in the job and doing well, and even liked being a nanny. She had grown very attached to the children, and most recently the twins. She had no desire to live or work anywhere else, except Belgrave, but she knew that would never be possible. She wondered at times if she should be doing something more important with her life, or when she should use her father’s money to buy a house. But it still felt much too soon for that, and she was safer under the Fergusons’ protection. And it seemed like the right job. Who would hire her with no experience, except now as a nanny?

She liked working for the Fergusons, and they gave her a fair amount of leeway with the children. Eugenia didn’t come upstairs to observe them or have tea with them. Whenever she wanted to see them, she had them brought downstairs to her but rarely for more than a few minutes and never more than once a week. Her absence left Angélique totally in charge and free to make decisions. If she was going to be a nanny, this was the best job she could think of, but she knew she didn’t want to be a nanny all her life. It was a strange existence bringing up other people’s children, and living in someone else’s house, and she knew that as long as she did, she would never have a life of her own.

Most of the people she worked with had been brought up to a life of service. She never had been. She thought about it from time to time, and wondered what it would be like to run her own home the way she wanted, and make decisions about her life. The Fergusons offered her protection, but she gave up a great deal to be there as well. The years would so easily slip by, and one day she would be old, like many of the other servants. When her brother had banished her, he had not only stolen her home from her, but he had condemned her to a life that she hadn’t been prepared for, and had never dreamed of, and she couldn’t help wondering at times if this was now her destiny and she had no other choice.

She spent her second Christmas with the Fergusons, and it was all familiar to her now. And with Helen’s help, she was managing five children, and she knew she loved them, more than their parents did at times. And she also knew them better. But they would always be someone else’s children, and it would always be someone else’s home. She wondered if the other servants ever thought about it, and questioned what they were doing, but she didn’t dare to ask. She and Sarah talked about it at times, since she knew Sarah wanted to marry one day and have children, and was still secretly walking out with one of the grooms.

At nineteen, Angélique had no idea if this was meant to be her life forever, or if somewhere, someday, she would follow another path. She had no time to think about it, except sometimes at night when she lay in bed, and then one of the children would call out to her, or have a nightmare, and she would get up to comfort them, and when she did, or held the twins in her arms, she realized that this was the life she was meant to live for now. What she didn’t know was if it was forever, or only for a time. And for now, maybe she didn’t need to know.

Simon came home from boarding school for Christmas, and Angélique saw instantly that he had grown taller, and was very thin. She was worried they weren’t feeding him enough, and his eyes were sad. He looked like an abandoned child. She poured all her love and energy into him while he was home. And one of the maids had taught her to knit a sweater for him, which she gave him for Christmas. She asked him where his bear was, and he told her that when he got to Eton, they had made him leave it in his trunk, and told him he was too old to have it, and a big boy now.

He looked thrilled to be home, and clung to her the entire time he was there. And he sobbed miserably in her arms the night before he had to go back. He begged her to let him stay home with her.

“I can’t do that, Simon,” she said, with a lump in her throat. “Your parents want you to be there. They won’t listen to me.”

“Tell them I’ll be good for the rest of my life.”

“They want you to get a fine education, and meet new friends.”

“I don’t want new friends. I have you. Will you stay here forever?” He was asking her the same questions she had asked herself, and she didn’t have the answers for him either. And she couldn’t lie to him—it wouldn’t be fair.

“I don’t know. That depends if your parents want me. And one day you’ll all grow up.” Sooner than he thought. His brothers would all go to school at the same age he had, and they might send the girls away to school as well, though not at five.

“Why can’t we just stay here?” he asked her unhappily.

“Because boys like you go to schools like Eton, and it’s a good thing to do.” But she wasn’t sure she was telling him the truth. She would have loved to keep him at home, and school him herself, or have tutors like she had. But his parents led a different life, and she was a girl. Her own brothers had gone to boarding school too, though not as young. Edward had hated it and done poorly. Tristan had loved going away to school.

Simon looked miserable when she put him in the carriage the next day, and his parents had said goodbye to him the night before. She watched his small unhappy face in the window as the carriage pulled away, and felt as though she had failed him again.

She went back to the nursery with a heavy heart, and made breakfast for the children when they got up. She noticed that Emma seemed feverish and had a cough, and decided to keep her in that day. She had wanted to go skating on the pond, but she couldn’t go if she was sick. Angélique promised to take them another day. Helen said she’d watch Emma, when she took the boys out for some air. And before she left, Angélique tucked her back into bed. She seemed happy to be there with her favorite doll next to her, and before Angélique left the nursery with Rupert and Charles, Emma was sound asleep.

“Send someone for me if she gets worse,” Angélique told Helen as she left. Helen was holding both twins—it was too cold for them to go out too, but the two older boys needed a run. And as Angélique hurried down the back stairs after them, she hoped that Emma would be better when she woke up. Her mind was focused on Emma, as she tried not to think of Simon on his lonely ride back to school. It was more than Eugenia was thinking of. She was planning her menus, for friends arriving from London that night. Eugenia wasn’t thinking of her son at all.