Page 4 of Breathe Me: Smith & Belle

“I don’t think babies require discipline,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. Did she think she was being asked to run a nursery or a boot camp?

Martha’s withering glare suggested she felt differently.

“It’s certainly something to keep in mind,” Smith mused, squeezing my knee twice, our secret code for let me handle this. “As you can see, we’re still figuring out the best fit, and we will have a while before we need someone here.”

“There are always preparations to be made,” Martha said.

“Naturally, but we’ll want to wait for construction to finish, regardless.” Smith seamlessly transitioned the excuse from reason to another. “We’ll be in touch.”

We all rose and Smith showed her out of the room. When he returned, my eyebrow was etched into a question mark.

“Where did you find that battleaxe? I thought their type had gone extinct.”

“I think they were all simply banished to the countryside,” he said wearily. “Ready for round two?”

“Do you think they’ll all be like her?” I asked, wondering if our day would be full of disapproving Marthas.

“Let’s hope not.”

Our wish was granted, but not in the way we’d hoped. There were a few more stern, conservative governess types amongst the candidates, one former school-teacher, and an American college student clearly looking for a quick visa fix. None of them quite fit the bill. They all wanted live-in situations and full-time. I could hardly blame them for that.

“Doesn’t anyone just want something on the side?” I grumbled.

Smith reached down and grabbed my ankle, pulling it into his lap, he popped off my slipper and began to rub my foot. A moan spilled out of me and he chuckled under his breath.

“Never stop,” I ordered him, my eyes rolling back as I relaxed into the massage.

“Not stopping is what got you into this trouble in the first place, beautiful,” he reminded me in a gruff voice that sent my thoughts to darker places only he could take me.

“Shut up and rub my feet.”

He obliged, his strong hands working away the stress that had plagued me the whole week. “Maybe, we need to consider hiring someone full-time.”

My eyes flew open, the spell broken. “What? No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want someone else to raise our baby.”

“I don’t want that either,” he said in a soothing voice. “But honestly, I don’t want a stranger around her either. How do you know you can trust someone with your child if you don’t know them?”

“We can have them to dinner,” I said. “We don’t have to live with them.”

“It was just a thought.” The concession was anything but. I could hear as much in his voice. He’d come back to the topic later with better ammunition for his side of the argument.

“Maybe we don’t need a nanny at all.”

“Beautiful,” he used my nickname like a warning. “We’ve been over this.”

“You don’t want to give up Bless, and I don’t want you to either. With my new office, I’m going to have my hands full.”

“What’s the point of moving to the country if we don’t slow down? It would be easy to find a sitter in London. Jane. Edward. Clara. They’d all do it for free—and we know them. Plus, Buckingham comes with its own army. She’d be very safe.”

I waited for him to contradict me. Instead, he continued to the next foot. He was buying time. The truth was that I’d made this point a number of times. Each time he’d managed to avoid answering me. But we both knew the reason he didn’t want to be in London. He didn’t want any of them watching the baby. He didn’t want them around. In a way, I couldn’t blame him. After everything that had happened there—to us and those we loved—staying in the city seemed like a dangerous move. But the city was full of allies not strangers. I didn’t know how to make them see that.

The door opened and an unfamiliar dark head poked through the crack. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I was knocking, but…”

“Come in, Miss…”

“Ms. Welter,” she said, stepping inside.

I pulled away from Smith pushing my foot back into my shoe as he stood. When I looked up, I did a double take. The woman walking into the room couldn’t be more than twenty-two years-old but she was stunning. Not in your typical girl from the village way, though. She radiated confidence, managing to look posh in an ensemble I might find in my own closet down to a pair of leopard-print flats. Her dark hair, the color of bottled ink, swung around her shoulders. She smiled at me. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but Humphrey told me I could find you in here.”