Lynna Banning - Plum Creek Bride

“Mrs. Callender must have very beautiful been,” she murmured.

The doctor turned away abruptly. Erika watched as he bent his head and fingered a framed portrait on his cluttered desk.

“Aye, she was that,” Mrs. Benbow volunteered with a significant look at her employer. “‘Tis a sad house ye’ve come to, lass. Nothing’s been the same since Miss Tess has been gone.”

Erika saw the doctor turn the photograph face down on his desk, but still he did not turn around. A silence thick as cold molasses descended as Mrs. Benbow dabbed at her eyes with the towel.

Erika waited for someone to speak. After a long minute, she concluded that the conversation had come to an end.

The baby’s comforting weight against her breast reminded her why she had come in the first placeto help with the infant. Now more than ever she wanted to stay and work in this house with its spacious, elegantly arranged rooms and the lacy, private bedroom upstairs. More than that, she realized, she felt an inexorable pull toward the soft bundle snuggled in her arms.

“I presume you will leave in the morning,” the doctor announced. His voice sounded ragged with fatigue. The expression in his face was cold, as if a lifeless mask had been drawn over his features. But in his eyes, Erika saw the agony of a bereaved man and a silent, unconscious cry for help.

She shifted the baby to her shoulder. “I stay for three dollar a week,” she said quietly.

“No,” the physician said. “Mrs. Benbow can manage until—”

Mrs. Benbow slapped the tea towel onto her lap. “I say she’s a gift from God.”

“No,” Dr. Callender repeated.

The housekeeper studied Erika with unsmiling eyes. “She’s young, but she’ll do in a pinch.”

The doctor scowled.

“Just until—Lord preserve us, lass!” the housekeeper cried. “Where are your shoes?”

Erika winced. In her haste, she’d forgotten them.

Fighting back a choking fear, she caught Dr. Callender’s cool, calculating gaze as he awaited her answer. Would he dismiss her on the spot for being a lackwit?

“Well, Miss Scharf?” His tone was silky with derision.

“I—” A warm wetness seeped through the soft blanket. “The baby is needful,” she said, quickly shifting the topic.

She bent over the cradle and laid the infant on its back. Reaching for the diaper folded over the foot of the crib, she spoke over her shoulder. “I stay. Shoes do not matter.”

Erika lifted the square of soft cotton diaper and froze. She knew nothing about babies! She was a cobbler’s daughter, the only child Mama and Papa ever had. She’d never even had any younger cousins to care for. Oh, what was she to do?

- She knew what a diaper was for, but how in the world was it attached? She’d been engaged to do laundry and ironing, maybe watch over the child when the mama went out. But now she was not the helper—she was the mama!

She felt eyes boring into her back—one pair black and disapproving, one pair gray and distant. Measuring.

Erika closed her eyes and uttered a brief, silent prayer. Help me, God! Show me about diapers!

When she opened her lids, the room hummed with tension. Summoning her courage, Erika unfolded the diaper and peeked under the infant’s soaked cambric gown.

With grudging admiration, Jonathan watched as Erika bent over the wicker cradle. She wasn’t the first serving girl to be subjected to Adeline Benbow’s assessing eye and pointed questions, but she was the first to stay more than five minutes after the experience.

How long Miss Scharf would last under his housekeeper’s exacting rule was another matter entirely, but at the moment the prospect solved the problem of what to do with the young woman. Since Mrs. Benbow expressed a preference for the girl’s help, however temporary, he couldn’t simply turn her out.

He’d lay odds she’d last less than a week. Mrs. Benbow could be a stem taskmaster, and now that she was too old to climb the stairs more than once a day, she bore an extra grudge against life in general and young women in particular. If Miss Scharf lasted more than the week, he’d try to find her another position. But she would need the hide of a rhinoceros to survive even one day under Mrs. Benbow.

He watched Erika gently lift the folds of the cambric sacque away from the baby’s body with capable, graceful hands. The look on her face when she touched his daughter told him she had a sentimental nature. And sentiment meant vulnerability. If he knew anything about women, Miss Scharf had a soft heart, and because of it, she would suffer. In spite of himself, he felt a twinge of sympathy for the eager, rosy-cheeked woman.

Erika smoothed out the diaper and draped it over the edge of the wicker cradle. Moving very deliberately, she unsnapped the safety pins holding the wet garment in place. As she did so, she studied the arrangement of folds in the material, the position of the fasteners, how they were attached. With care, she lifted away the wet diaper.

The housekeeper watched her every move, then tossed the tea towel she’d been fanning herself with into the cradle. Erika’s toes curled. What was she supposed to do with that?

“Cornstarch is in the candy dish,” the older woman offered in a dry tone. She pointed to a fluted glass bowl on a side table.

Cornstarch? Why would she need cornstarch?

As if in answer to her unspoken question, Dr. Callender spoke in a low, controlled voice. “It is much superior to nursery powder.”

Powder! Of course. With an inward sigh of relief, she rolled the wet diaper into a wad and deposited it on an empty corner of the doctor’s desk. She heard Mrs. Benbow’s snort of disapproval and the physician’s quick intake of breath, but she was too distracted to care. Cornstarch must be for the baby’s moist skin. She eyed the huck tea towel.

That was it! She must dry the infant’s tender skin, then dust on the fine white powder. Oh, thank you, God, for showing me how to proceed

She snatched up the wrinkled towel and just as quickly discarded it. “Is soiled,” she said as calmly as she could. “May I have clean one?”

The housekeeper rose and drew herself up with an air of superiority. The stiff bombazine dress rustled in the quiet room, and Erika had a quick vision of a peacock displaying its feathers.

“Certainly,” the woman snapped. The door clicked shut behind her.

Left alone with the doctor, Erika experienced a moment of panic. Would he notice her inexperience?

She kept her back to him as she folded the dry material into what she judged to be a diaper-shaped rectangle. The door opened and in swept Mrs. Benbow, a clean towel in her hand. Erika accepted it, then reached for the dish of cornstarch. She patted the baby’s damp skin with the towel, then dusted on the powder with the cotton ball in the dish cover.

As she lifted the folded diaper she managed a surreptitious glance behind her. Both Dr. Callender and his housekeeper had their attention riveted on her. She could block out one person’s view with her body, but not both. One of them would just have to witness her first fumbling attempt at changing an infant’s diaper. Which one should it be?

She chose the housekeeper. The physician would dismiss her at once if he suspected how inexperienced she was. Mrs. Benbow might disapprove, but she would not complain, since she obviously regarded caring for the infant herself with some distaste.

Keeping her back toward. Dr. Callender, Erika lifted the baby’s tiny legs and slid the material beneath her rump. She wished her hands would stop shaking! Slowly she brought the material up between the kicking limbs. Praying she would not stab the infant with the pin, she forced the point through thicknesses of cotton material and, using her finger as a guide, snapped the device securely in place. When the second pin closed, Erika breathed in relief. She’d done it!