As his new little daughter sighed and stirred and opened her black eyes, peering about in a dazed, half-blind sort of way, Alex remembered the anguish in Maria’s eyes as she’d begged him to be kind to Pippa, and to love her. Whatever Maria had been, she was a good mother, Alex thought. Healing remembrance flooded his soul. He, after all, was alive. He didn’t have to say goodbye to Pippa, or to Charlotte, or to this little scrap of humanity in his arms. Alex shuddered inwardly. But he smiled too. The burning, corrosive rage was gone. When he thought of Maria now, he knew he would remember the dying mother, tears streaming down her face, telling him in a broken voice that she hadn’t allowed Pippa into the room for three weeks so that their daughter wouldn’t catch scarlet fever.

Alex’s new child opened her delicate red mouth and cried the desolate, high wail of a hungry newborn. Charlotte’s eyes snapped open and she sat up, bewildered. Then she held out her arms, smiling as Alex gently arranged their daughter’s round head against Charlotte’s breast. And when Alex’s eyes met the forgiving eyes of his wife over the head of a noisily sucking infant, there was no man in all of England who could claim to be happier than he.

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

For the first few weeks, as Charlotte’s body mended, she pored over her baby, learning every little bump and curve, the enchanting dip of her eyebrows, the sturdiness of her body, the wildness of her hungry eyes, the bliss of the little grunts she made while eating. When she thought about Alex at all, it was with gratitude. He got up in the dark and went to the door in answer to Katy’s soft knock, bringing Sarah for a feeding. He played with Pippa in the afternoons. Alex and Charlotte curled together like spoons at night, at least the part of the night during which she wasn’t nursing Sarah. And after the first few weeks, Sarah roused only once a night for a feeding. Charlotte would wake up, wondering where Sarah was, and find a warm, masculine arm wrapped around her stomach, or a muscled leg carelessly thrown across her own. It made her heart glow.

Sarah was a very even-tempered baby, easy to care for and undemanding. Charlotte soon began to feel like herself again. One morning when Sarah was around two months old, Charlotte was woken by the faint jiggle as her husband swung his legs out of bed.