Talk Sweetly to Me

“Patricia?” Rose turned to find her sister sitting on the bed next to her, her form dim in the night.

“It’s started.” Her sister’s voice crackled with excitement, but the hand on Rose seemed tense, almost fearful.

Rose didn’t need to ask what it was. There was only one it in the household these days.

She sat bolt upright in her bed. “What? Already? It’s too soon.”

“Thirty-six weeks, by Doctor Chillingsworth’s count. It is too early—but I felt a most definite contraction. It’s starting.”

“It can’t start. Isaac is—”

She cut herself off. Her sister’s husband was not yet home. They’d been so sure he would have returned by the time the baby came. They’d charted the remaining weeks of Patricia’s pregnancy against the expected return of his ship with a sigh of relief.

When they’d found out that Patricia was with child—days before Dr. Wells was scheduled to leave—he’d been upset at missing the majority of her pregnancy. Rose had promised to write to him, to tell him the day-to-day occurrences.

“Take care of her for me,” Dr. Isaac Wells had told her in return. “If I can’t be there, you’ll have to stand in my stead.”

Rose was the younger sister; Patricia had always taken care of her. But somehow, that solemn request, made by a brother-in-law that she liked, had only firmed her resolve. If Patricia had always taken care of Rose, that only meant that Rose now had a chance to return the favor.

And so she wrote to Isaac regularly, telling him everything that transpired. She’d reported faithfully every morning when Patricia felt poorly. She’d described the baby’s first tentative flutters, barely detectable, up through the more recent kicks that had drummed against Rose’s hand. She’d told him all…but it didn’t change a thing. Patricia wished her husband would come back before the baby was born, and Isaac wanted the same thing. He was a little more than a week away now. To have the baby come so close to his arrival would be…

…A blessing, Rose told herself firmly. No matter when it came.

So she swallowed what she had been about to say.

“Have you sent for Chillingsworth?” she asked instead.

“Josephs left a few minutes past. He should be back soon.”

Mr. and Mrs. Josephs were the married couple that kept house for Patricia—Mrs. Josephs as the maid-of-all-work, and Mr. Josephs as an all-around handyman. In their neighborhood, having two servants was considered an enormous expense; she’d heard someone whisper that Patricia was putting on airs above her station. But then, Patricia’s husband was away, and she herself was pregnant.

“Are you scared?” Rose asked. “What does it feel like, a contraction? I did promise to tell Isaac everything when he returned. You have to tell me.”

“Oh, I’m not having the contraction any longer—now I just feel…I don’t know, a little odd.” Patricia gave a deprecating laugh. “Like a bloated duck on the verge of being popped. But that hasn’t changed since last night.”

“Can you walk?”

“Of course I can. How do you think I got to your room? Even bloated ducks can manage a good waddle.”

Rose smiled. “Well, labor hasn’t altered your sense of humor. It’s still dreadful.”

“Wait until I have another contraction,” Patricia said. “Then I’ll have no humor at all. Come and wait with me downstairs?”

Rose dressed swiftly and held her sister’s hand on the way down the stairs—even though Patricia tried to wave her off, saying she was perfectly able to walk on her own. Once she’d ensconced her sister in pride of place on the sofa, Rose ran around, lighting lamps, pushing away all the shadows of the night. It was lovely to have something to do. She bustled about, fetching and carrying for her sister—slippers, a warm blanket, chamomile tea, and a crumpet that she toasted over a fire and then piled high with butter and currant jelly.

“Mmm,” Patricia said, closing her eyes. “Won’t you have one, too?”

“I was already having the oddest dream when you woke me,” Rose said. “I don’t need to upset my digestion any further.”

“Dream, eh?” Patricia’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t dreaming of—”

“I dreamed I was being chased by a heap of numbers,” Rose intervened.

Patricia choked, almost laughing. “You would.”

Yes, someone had been laughing in her dream. Almost like that. Friendly laughter, the mirthful burble of someone who knew all Rose’s faults and loved her anyway.

It had been too deep a laugh for Patricia, and not merry enough to sound like her mother. Her father’s laugh was more of a rumble. And yet it had seemed familiar.

The answer came to Rose as her sister took another bite of crumpet. Mr. Shaughnessy laughed like that.

She’d been avoiding thinking about him. Despite his protestations, she knew exactly what he was doing. This was how men like him seduced women like her: step by careful step, wearing away at her inhibitions one by one.

She had no illusions that her innocence would protect her; innocence was for a different class of women altogether. Rose was a shopkeeper’s daughter; she was a woman who worked for a living herself. The well-to-do men who could command society’s respect usually thought that women like her existed to serve in whatever capacity they were desired.

She didn’t know why she hadn’t sent Mr. Shaughnessy on his way. Stupidity, surely. Misplaced romanticism. But this wasn’t the time to berate herself.

As her sister took yet another bite of crumpet, the front door opened. Mr. Josephs entered.

Behind him came Doctor Chillingsworth. The physician’s coat was wet with glistening rain; he set an umbrella in the umbrella stand, frowning at it as if it had no business being wet. He took off his gloves and chafed his pale hands together for warmth. Then he looked over at Patricia—seated on the sofa, wrapped in wool blankets, trying not to drip red jelly down her chin—and his expression froze in something that looked alarmingly like a sneer.

The back of Rose’s neck prickled. But the doctor shook his head, and that hint of a scoff disappeared from his face.

Maybe she’d imagined it. Maybe he simply didn’t like jelly.

Chillingsworth was a tall, elderly fellow. He always had an air about him that Rose disliked. It was not exactly disdain; it only smacked mildly of disapproval.