Chapter Four
‘Oh, I am sorry...please excuse me,’ the stranger murmured.
How could Hetta have left her toes where a society beauty might tread?
‘It was nothing,’ Hetta lied politely.
‘All this bustle is distracting and I hate the sea,’ the lady explained as if she was grateful to have another woman to talk to, even a travel-worn and weary one dressed in a shabby cloak and old gown.
‘I’m none too fond of it myself,’ Hetta admitted ruefully.
The lady grimaced at the mud-grey water. It was calm at the moment, so she would have a far better crossing than Hetta had endured coming the other way, but it was still the sea and she obviously did not want to be on it.
‘I wish I could stay,’ the lady said wistfully, glancing back at the town as if she was having second thoughts about leaving it.
‘Then why go if you don’t want to?’
‘Because I must,’ the lady said, then seemed to recall Hetta was a stranger and stepped out of her path, looking regal and chilly again.
‘The swell has almost calmed now, so you should have an easy journey,’ Hetta said and turned to go.
‘Thank you,’ the lady said absently, her attention now fixed on a woman walking towards them with a grizzling baby of about eight or nine months in her arms.
‘She needs you, Lady Drace,’ the nurse said.
‘I know,’ Lady Drace replied, with a tender smile for her little girl. Love for the pretty, dark-haired and dark-eyed baby lit her face to a beauty far more compelling than the icy mask she seemed to use to keep the adult world at bay.
‘No, my lady, she needs you,’ the woman insisted.
Hetta saw the lady blush as the meaning behind those careful words sank in—Lady Drace must be suckling her child herself. Hetta had been happy to dislike her as a privileged being who stood on other people’s toes and then frowned as if it was their fault. Now she sympathised with a dilemma she knew all too well and warmed to a fellow mother.
‘There is nowhere private enough to feed you, my angel, but I expect you’ll work yourself into a tantrum and refuse to be comforted if I don’t, and the sea is quite enough to contend with without you adding to it, my pet,’ Lady Drace told her fretful infant with a besotted smile and shot a panicked look round the bustling harbour. Her pale blue eyes looked tearful, as if this was the last straw for her. Hetta could not make herself pretend it was none of her business and simply walk away.
‘Over there,’ she said, pointing at a pile of baggage waiting to be claimed and unwilling to admit it belonged to her family since it was much used and had their names on and she had learned to be wary on her travels. ‘That looks a quieter place than most and out of the way of all the hustle and bustle. If you hold your cloak around your mistress on one side, I can do the same with mine on the other, and Lady Drace will be hidden from view. Between us we can make a tent and glare at anyone rude enough to try to overlook us,’ she told the maid. Having to feed Toby in all sorts of odd places when she had been tracking her father across Europe after her husband died, Hetta knew how rude and crude some could be to a lady suckling her baby. ‘You will be nigh as private as at home in your own bedchamber, your ladyship.’
‘Ah, home,’ the lady said wistfully, eyeing her hungry and fretful baby as if torn between love for her child and her dignity. She must have made up her mind the little girl was more important since she sighed and shrugged. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You are very kind.’
‘High time I found Toby,’ Hetta’s father muttered and left the ladies to it.
“Coward,” his daughter whispered at his retreating back, but since she was worried where her boy had got to, she hoped her father really did mean to look for Toby. It felt wrong to dismiss this stranger’s dilemma and find Toby herself now she had made her impulsive offer. So once Hetta and the maid formed their circle, Lady Drace sat down to nurse her child while all three of them thought their thoughts and the baby fed. Hetta wished this trip to her homeland was over and she could go back to the warmth of a real summer somewhere more interesting. Now the greyish-brown waters of the Channel seemed to mock her with gentle ripples after the bitter squall on the way over here and she was quite surprised she was still alive. She stared towards Dover as tame little
