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“I know. You must be welcome there.”

Anna dropped the cloth. Thomas bent to pick it up, considered where it had fallen, and reached for another from the pile beside Ruth’s chair. Martha wiped her eyes while he did so. Darcy was glad of a moment in which to collect himself.

“Would she come home if she could not settle?” Martha asked.

Home. Darcy felt the word before he considered it. To Anna, this was home. He had no right to be wounded because Martha called it so.

“Certainly.”

“You would not have us keep her crying because the room was made ready?”

“No.”

Martha nodded, once, as though that answer mattered more than any assurance of fine furniture.

Darcy told them what Mrs. Reynolds had found. The chimney was sound. The carpenter could put the window catch right in a morning, and the curtains needed washing. Nothing required a child to sleep there before the people who cared for her thought her ready.

“Could you come to see the rooms first?” he asked Ruth and Martha. “Bring Anna for a little while, and take her back with you.”

“After she has been fed,” Ruth said at once. “And not near the time she usually sleeps.”

Martha looked at her. “Tomorrow morning?”

Ruth considered it, then nodded.

Thomas would come when he could leave his work. Darcy made certain he understood that no invitation would be required each time. Thomas thanked him with a reserve Darcy found harder to bear than Martha’s tears.

At the door the older man followed him out.

“I shall miss coming in and finding her there,” Thomas said quietly.

Darcy stopped with his hat in his left hand.

“Yes.”

Thomas looked away toward the orchard. “That is not a reason you should not have her with you.”

“It is a reason to make certain you still see her.”

The man nodded. Darcy could offer no arrangement which would leave everything exactly as it was. For the first time he understood why promising money had been so much easier than promising a home.

On Saturday morning he waited outside the nursery with one button of his coat put through the wrong hole.

Mrs. Reynolds noticed it immediately and put it right.

“The catch is mended,” she said. “The curtains will be back on Monday. For today we have these.”

Plain curtains from another room hung at the windows. The hearth had been swept and a fire laid well behind its guard. His mother’s chair stood near enough to be comfortable, with another chair beside it for Martha.

Anna arrived looking pleased by the journey. Martha carried her familiar blanket and Ruth carried Anna. Mrs. Reynolds showed them the rooms before asking whether they wished to sit.

Ruth examined the nurse’s chamber, opened the door to the passage, and asked where she might obtain hot water if Anna woke early. Mrs. Reynolds answered, then asked whether the bed should stand against the other wall.

“That would leave room for my little chest,” Ruth said.

“It can be moved.”

Darcy remained in the larger room with Martha and Anna while the two women considered the sleeping arrangements. Martha put the blanket upon his knees before settling the child there, with her own hand supporting Anna until he had placed his left arm securely about her.