“Of course you will,” Lucie said, astonished. “Who doesn’t?”
“What about this?” Hattie pointed at the scolding paragraph.
“That’s lower-middle-class dross,” said Lucie.
“But the poor baby has hot, swollen gums—”
“Hattie. This is your first of likely several children. Will you not make art or help women or properly manage your household until all your offspring have a full set of teeth? You’ll be old before you see a camera or a factory meeting again.”
Hattie paled. “No. I can’t not make art. I mean, I could, but it would be dreadful as it’s hardly an urge I can control, is it. The work with the women is even more important.”
“Precisely,” Lucie said, sounding confident that the problem had been solved.
“What if they leave my baby to fry in its pram,” Hattie began again, and Catriona’s stomach lurched because tears glistened on Hattie’s lashes.
Annabelle put an arm around Hattie’s quietly shaking shoulders. “It’s all a little frightening, isn’t it,” she said in the soothing new voice. “A little emotional, too.”
“Just a little,” Hattie said with a small sob.
“You might feel inclined to listen to all sorts of radical voices in this moment,” Annabelle went on.
Hattie gave Annabelle a hopeful look. “How did you know what to do? With Jamie?”
Annabelle tilted her head from side to side. “I confess it was interesting. I was raised by a whole village, and childhood at Claremont is obviously different—I can hardly join the work circles on the farms or in the villages and do my weaving or sewing with the women while the children tumble about. I’d say it’s vital that you trust yourself, because, believe me, every baby is different, and the experts differ in their opinions. Remember when opium was all the rage to settle a child? These days, it’s whisky. The duke is against potions of any kind going into his son, so some nights no one really sleeps at all. Trust yourself, dear.”
Hattie dabbed at the wet corners of her eyes with her fingers. “I know you employed a nanny since the first day.”
“Goodness, I employ two—it’s hardly a job for just one person. It’s the three of us. Mothering is work, Hattie, and you lobby every day for workers to have sufficient rest.”
“Of course,” Hattie said. “I feel rather silly. I have some lovely memories of my nanny. I have no idea why this article frightens me so, but it’s been troubling me for weeks.”
Lucie audibly exhaled. “May I.” She snatched the pages from Hattie’s lap. Her sharp gray eyes flew over the lines. “Ugh. A woman wrote this, a Mrs. Amelia Barr.”
“Yes,” Hattie said glumly. “She’s a successful novelist.”
Lucie’s lips thinned. “Then she’s either not a mother, or she is a hypocrite—clearly, she considers her own mental faculties so supremely important, she must write judgmental articles rather than attend to her children her every waking moment.”
“I suppose—”
“And the natural mission of womanhood?” Lucie’s eyes were sparking as though flames were about to shoot out of the side of her head. “Mothers have worked hard for their bread since forever, Hattie. And noblewomen rarely see their children at all, they have castles, if not countries, to run—are they all unnatural? Raising unnatural humans?”
“I—”
“What even is naturalness? If it’s defined as ‘it has always been this way,’ then having others care for your children is as natural as breathing. Blimey, most women in Britain work out of the house six days a week to feed their families—have generations of farmers and seamstresses and miners done it wrong all along? Also, why is Mrs. Barr deriding our concerns for shopgirls—what if a shopgirl is a mother, too? How odd that she chooses to decry women who educate themselves rather than the working conditions that keep women from having sufficient time and money for their families.”
Hattie touched her temples with her fingertips. “What you say sounds logical.”
“Because it is,” Lucie snipped. “If I didn’t have a bill to push through Parliament, Mrs. Barr would receive a letter from me.”
Hattie nodded. “The truth is, though, that I don’t have to make art with the same urgency that shopgirls have to work. I’d survive without it. I’m quite free to lavish all my time on the baby.”