tiny limbs, lifting her head and encouraging his daughter to sip the tonic. Holding Rachel’s hand as they prayed together.
On a sigh, Rachel twisted in the chair and leaned over Amelia. “Amelia, sweeting? Are you awake?”
The child whimpered, softly, a noise of protest, and shifted in her sleep. Rachel swept a tangle of curls from her forehead. Amelia’s skin was cool. Finally, cool. And her color was more even, her breathing more relaxed.
“Oh, dearest Lord,” she whispered. The crisis was finally, truly over. Amelia was going to live.
Wonder spread through her like sun filling shadowy nooks long unused to light. God. Blessed God . . .
“Mrs. Mainprice!” she shouted, rushing out of the room, stumbling over the skirt hem snagged upon the heel of her shoe.
The housekeeper was already headed up the stairs, a tray conveying a bowl of thin soup in her hands. “Hush, I’m coming. Don’t wake Mrs. Woodbridge. She’s snoring down in the drawing room where I left her hours ago, sprawled across the settee like a drunken sailor. Never thought I’d see that.”
“But Mrs. Mainprice, it’s Amelia, she is . . . she is . . .”
“Going to be well.” Mrs. Mainprice grinned, a smile so large it pushed the folds of her face up around her eyes. The housekeeper balanced the tray in one hand, rested the other alongside Rachel’s cheek. “Our heavenly Father answered our prayers by working through you, child.”
Through me.
“I could not have done it without you. You made me see how arrogantly blind I have been.”
“Then God has worked through us both,” Mrs. Mainprice said. “We should be grateful for His mercies. Here and now.”
Rachel smiled. How difficult she had made her life these past months by concentrating on the difficulties, letting the hardships rule.
She returned to Amelia’s side. Tenderly folding the sheet beneath Amelia’s chin, Rachel bent to brush her lips across her smooth forehead, soft as the sweep of a feather to keep from disturbing her. “I am indeed grateful for God’s mercies, Mrs. Mainprice. Here and now.”
“’Tis glad I am to hear it.” Mrs. Mainprice set the tray on the dressing table. “I’ll tend to the child for now, miss. Try to get some soup in her when she wakes. You should go down to the kitchen for a bite of breakfast, take your food out into the garden. The master’s there. He might like to see you this morning.”
A flurry of nerves danced along Rachel’s arms. She swiped a hand over her tangled hair. “I shall not be gone long.”
The housekeeper smiled knowingly. “Take as long as you need, miss.”
The cup of coffee was cold in James’s hands, but he hadn’t taken a sip from it in a half hour, so it hardly mattered what temperature it was. He scratched his stubbled chin, set the cup on the bench next to him, and stretched out his legs. The day would be hot, last night’s damp lingering in the air, but he was chilled from lack of sleep and weariness and happy for the heat. He stared at the fountain, the stone scrubbed and ready for the new occupants. For once, for the first time since he’d accepted his father’s bidding that he move to Finchingfield, he could look on this tangible sign of his departure and not feel creeping dread.
Last night, as he’d sat at Amelia’s bedside, stroking her flaxen curls while she slept and Rachel dozed in a nearby chair, he had begun to feel a peace that had eluded him for too long. Odd, to feel peace at the sickbed of his only child, but tranquility had descended like a warm cloak to shield him. He’d permitted his anxieties, his feelings of inadequacy to rule him for so long, he had managed to fulfill his greatest fear—that he would not live up to his father’s expectations. The only person he had truly failed, though, was himself.
He had smiled over at Rachel then, the candlelight falling softly on her sleeping face. After Molly had died, Rachel had claimed that she blamed God, yet she remained. She kept returning to do the things that caused her the most pain, in the end never flinching from her calling. She’d had more faith in God than he had, all along, even if she hadn’t realized it. The faith that made her do what was right.
And he had nearly let her go, walk out of his life forever. What a fool he’d been.