The house was a bit down at the heels, but the roof didn’t leak, the chimneys worked, and the rent was reasonable.
“I’ve been practicing Patience,” Bea said. “And my letters. Why are there so many letters, Papa? Why not twelve, like the ’Postles, or the Twelve Days of Christmas? I’m trying to teach Thad his letters, but he makes a T like this,”—she waved her hand around, a downstroke and four cross strokes—“and that’s not how a T goes.”
“But it’s a start,” Michael said. “For a boy his age, learning how to hold the pencil is the first step, and I’m glad you’re helping him with it.”
Bea beamed at him, dimpled, and grabbed for his hand again. She seemed to need to touch him, to afford herself tactile reassurance that her only parent was real. Mrs. Harris thought nothing of it—children were affectionate by nature, according to her—but the truth was more complicated.
Michael’s children were more affectionate with their father than most sons and daughters would be, and they had their reasons for that.
“I am prepared for a demonstration of this prodigious skill at Patience,” he said, hoisting Bea to his hip. “But you must promise to be gracious in victory. Mrs. Harris, if you’d be good enough to send along the supper tray?”
“Of course, sir. Please do remember to admire Thaddeus’s new teeth. They’ll be at the back of his mouth.”
“I will be amazed and agog.” Assuming Thad stopped talking long enough to permit an inspection. The boy chattered like a squirrel and had a squirrel’s quickness and agility.
“What is ‘a gog’?” Bea asked, resting her head on Michael’s shoulder. “Is that like a bog? Or a dog? Why would you be like a bog or a dog?”
Rhymes were of particular interest to Bea lately. “If you liken me to a frog, I will have to tickle you.”
She stuck her little nose in the air. “You are not like a frog, Papa. Even I know that.” Something about her posture struck a chord of memory, perhaps reaching back to when Dorcas had been a darling, exasperating little sister. Bea was fair, while Dorcas was dark-haired, but feminine dignity was the province of all denizens of the distaff.
“Agog is like agape,” Michael said, “agoggle. When I am agog at your skills, I am impressed to the point that I stare in wonderment.”
“We’re supposed to stare in wonderment at Thad’s new teeth, though they look like his last new teeth to me. You can put me down now.”
At the top of the steps, Michael complied reluctantly. As the oldest child, Bea occupied a place of seniority over her brother, a status that even the limitations of gender would never quite obliterate. She guarded her ascendency jealously, and again, Mrs. Harris said that was no cause for worry.
Michael passed the next two hours playing Patience, then eating sandwiches while sitting on the carpet as Bea and Thad argued about toy soldiers. While Finny took a much-needed break, Michael read the requisite story—four brave kittens lost in the vastness of Hyde Park eventually found their way home—and tucked in each child.
Thaddeus simply trusted that Papa would come around again someday soon to play soldiers and read stories, while Beatrice hugged Michael with desperate ferocity.
“Do you promise you’ll be back on Sunday, Papa?” Bea asked when she’d climbed beneath her blankets. “That’s in seven days.” She held up seven fingers and silently counted off the days of the week.
Michael sat on the edge of her bed and knew the meaning of heartbreak. “I promise. I came despite the snow and cold, didn’t I? I visit when it rains. I visit when the fog is thick and yellow and stinking. I would not miss my Sundays at home for anything.”
“A promise is forever, Papa. Do you promise forever?”
The interrogations had been escalating in recent weeks, for no reason Michael could determine. With greater maturity came a greater capacity for worry, perhaps.
“I promise forever that I will visit again next Sunday. I love you, Beatrice Delancey. Now go to sleep and dream of alphabets with twelve letters.”
She surged up from the blankets and hugged him about the neck one more time. “Good night, Papa. Love you too.”
He gently returned her embrace, so unlike the last hug he’d received, but sharing with it a quality of fierceness. What would Psyche Fremont make of this little house on Circle Lane? How would she paint its inhabitants, and would she still want Michael to model for her if she knew who bided here?
“Good night, poppet.”
He had nearly made his escape when Bea’s voice floated through the nursery gloom. “Could I write you a letter, Papa? When you’re away at work? Mrs. Harris got a letter this week, in the post. Not a letter like A, B, C, but a letter like ‘Dear Mrs. Harris.’ She explained about the post. I could write to you, when I’m better at spelling words.”
No, she could not write to him. Not at his lodgings, where the landlady would take a great interest in his correspondence, and not at Lambeth, where the other clerks would likely read his personal mail before he did.
“To use the post costs money, Bea. Practice your penmanship, and we’ll see about the occasional letter later.”
He made a shameless exit before Bea could pose another question and paused in the chilly shadows outside the nursery door. Guilt was his constant companion—guilt for not spending more time with the children, guilt for stealing what time he did with them, guilt for not providing them with more than necessities, guilt for housing only two in a nursery that would hold four times that number.
If he had to walk naked in the street to support them, he would, but children needed more than porridge and spare blankets if they were to thrive.
That thought raised the specter of yet more guilt. On a bad night, when Michael’s calves were aching from walking too many miles in resoled boots, when the landlady had claimed for a week straight to be out of butter, when he faced the prospect of yet another genteel matchmaking ordeal at his sister’s table… He resented the bottomless emotional and financial pit that parenting had become and the constant sense of being overwhelmed.
Babies were simple—one end fed and the other end clean, as Mrs. Harris had said. His children were no longer babies, and the complications that posed kept him awake many a night.
“Mrs. Harris awaits you in the kitchen, sir,” the nurserymaid, Finster, said, coming up the stairs. “I vow winter gets longer each year, but the kitchen’s always cozy.”
“Then I will take myself there. Until next week, Finny, and thank you for all your hard work. The children are clearly thriving.”
“You’re welcome, sir. My pleasure.” She ducked into the nursery, and Michael steeled himself for the weekly ordeal of the ledgers. To his relief, Mrs. Harris’s report was better than usual—the books balanced for once—and thanks to an evening spent with Mrs. Fremont, Michael was able to pass along a bit extra.
They reviewed ledgers at the kitchen table because Mrs. Harris economized by eschewing a fire in the housekeeper’s parlor. The tea was weak and the shortbread stale—Mrs. Harris was prodigiously talented with economies—but the kitchen was indeed warm.
“You found a pot of gold, sir?” She slid the extra coins into her palm and dropped them into a blue glass jar on the mantel.