Talk Sweetly to Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

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