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He'd been in search of a fresh tablecloth when he found the dresses at the bottom of one of the linen chests.
Today was market day, and Benjamin, who had been confined to the house while he recovered from a bad winter's cough, had offered to go with Georgiana. She'd declined and left Eli with Benjamin instead.
Benjamin didn't mind watching the baby, but he would have liked being able to go for a walk. Still, as Georgiana had pointed out, the cold morning air was probably not good for his still-healing lungs.
"What shall we do?" Benjamin asked Eli when they were alone, Eli perched securely on Benjamin's hip. Eli stared at him with large dark eyes and waved one slightly sodden fist in the air.
Benjamin carried Eli into the parlor, put him on the floor, divested himself of his coat, and got down on the floor as well.
Eli could do three things very well. One was putting his head up, craning his neck as he looked around him. He could also squirm around quite well on his belly, and the third was putting things into his mouth. Benjamin tried to encourage the last activity to only involve the wooden rattle he'd taken from Eli's cradle in the kitchen.
Together they happily passed the time by playing a game where Benjamin placed the rattle on the floor and Eli squirmed forward the few inches to claim his prize, Benjamin enthusiastically cheering him on.
Eventually, Eli's eyelids began to droop. Benjamin scooped him up and rocked him, singing softly until Eli drifted off, his small face pressed against Benjamin's shoulder. He roused somewhat and fussed when Benjamin laid him down in his cradle but settled again when Benjamin rocked it and continued his gentle singing. When Eli was well and truly asleep, Benjamin carefully snuck away to go about his own business.
Not that he had very much of that. There was the morning paper, which he read before carefully noting the weather in his diary. Timothy had brought notes on several of the shop's newest commissions back home with him the night before. "You could sketch out some ideas," he'd said. "I know I'd appreciate the guidance, as I'm sure would the boys."
It was hard, though, to sit and think through a piece, to plan it out and draw it knowing he could not go back to the shop. He wouldn't be the one beating out and molding the silver, wouldn't be overseeing one of the other apprentices cast the embellishments. He wouldn't be the one inspecting the piece, making changes to the design as he saw how it would come together into a whole.
He rose from his writing desk and fetched the broom. He swept out the main rooms of the house and halls, careful not to wake Eli. Then he went to find a fresh linen tablecloth so he could set the table for supper.
Georgiana kept such things in her linen chests instead of the closet to discourage insects from nesting in them. Benjamin knelt in front of the chest and was shifting piles of carefully folded white cloth when he caught a glimpse of pale pink. He paused, then dug farther into the chest.
There was pink there, fine pink linen with white flowers embroidered across it. Benjamin shifted the other items off of the cloth until he could see that it was a dress folded neatly at the bottom of the chest. Benjamin reached down, running his fingers against the cloth and the fine needlepoint before easing it out of the chest. There was another dress folded underneath it, plainer but still beautiful in a light blue cloth.
Benjamin didn't need to wonder who had made the dresses; the painstaking flower pattern had been one of their mother's favorites. These dresses weren't the right size for Georgiana to wear, though.
The back door opened and shut; it was probably Georgiana and the others back from the market.
"Benjamin?" Georgiana called, and there was the tap of her boots against the floor. "What are you doing down there?"
"I was looking for a tablecloth and I found these." He looked up from the dresses on the floor in front of him.
Georgiana was quiet for a long moment, her gaze also fixed on the dresses with their careful embroidery.
"Mother made them, didn't she?" It wasn’t really a question, but Georgiana nodded anyway. "And they're not your size."
They were quiet, both looking down, not meeting each other's eyes.
"She made them for me." Benjamin reached out and smoothed one hand against the cloth again. He took a long, deep breath.
Beside him, Georgiana sighed. "I told her not to. I told her to make something for me if she wanted, or herself. It was such fine cloth, but she insisted. After she passed, I didn't know what to do with them. Maybe when Charity gets older, I'll be able to refit them for her."
Benjamin nodded, his fingers still tracing out the tiny flowers. He felt the thread catch, a tiny bit, on the calluses on his hands. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want to upset you or make you feel guilty. I know it was difficult with mother and you. She was sick at that point, and I . . ." Georgiana shifted Eli, holding him tighter against her breast. "I should have told you. I'm sorry."
"No, I understand. But it must have cost her so much for the cloth and thread." Not to mention the hours upon hours of work.
They both looked back down at the flower dress in his hands.
"I think she intended for you to be married in that one." Georgiana reached down to caress the pink cloth. "Or at least hoped."
Benjamin's breath caught. He jerked his hand back as if the cloth might burn him. Pushing himself to his feet, he turned away from the clothes scattered across the floor.
Georgiana still knelt beside him. "I'm sorry. This is one of the reasons I didn't tell you," she said, and he heard the rustle of skirts as she stood.
"It's all right." The words felt heavy and wooden in his mouth. It wasn't all right, not really, but it was also not Georgiana's fault and never had been. She'd loved them both, him and their mother, and had tried to support and protect both of them.
He took a breath and squared his shoulders, trying to put the bewildering hurt aside. "Should I help you unpack the shopping from the market?"
Georgiana nodded, then gathered up her skirts and headed for the kitchen without waiting to see if he'd follow. After one last glance at the dresses on the floor, Benjamin did.
~*~
He couldn't stop thinking about the dresses.
After they'd eaten and done the washing up from supper, Georgiana had packed them away, back into the chest.
Still, those delicate embroidered flowers stayed in the back of his mind as he helped Georgiana with the house and children. They were there as he listened to Timothy recount the work of the shop, and when he sat down the next day to begin drafting plans for the teapot Timothy had brought him the commission for. He found himself sketching them into the handle and around the lip at the top of the pot before he sat back with sigh.
He kept remembering the curve of his mother's back as she leaned over the sewing spread out across the table. The way her hands had moved over her work, quick and rhythmic, the needle catching the sunlight over and over.
He remembered standing in a dress she had made him.
Up until then, he'd worn girls’ dresses, functional ones for work and play. This particular dress, though, had been a woman's dress—meant to be seen, to be worn to church or to a party.
When he thought of the dress now, it came to him only in snatches of sensation. The rustling noise it had made when he'd picked it up and put it on. The way it had felt against his hips, waist, and chest. The texture of the cloth against his skin. The dead, sinking weight in his stomach, every breath catching in his throat like a jagged piece of something he hadn't quite been able to swallow.
His mother's hands had rested on his shoulders for a moment and then run down to smooth the dress and shake out the skirt.
"There," she'd said, voice full of pride and satisfaction. "Don't you look pretty?"
He shouldn't have. He should have looked grotesques and wrong, unmatching pieces grating against each other. Her smile should have slipped from her face when she'd seen him.
It didn't, of course. Her smile stayed in place; her hands were warm on his shoulders.
Because he did look very pretty.
That had been the worst part, the betrayal that made tears start at the back of his eyes and his throat close up in sheer grief. Because his entire being had turned against him in that moment, showing the world a pretty girl in a new dress her mother had made for her.
Not the disaster happening underneath.
He hadn't cried then. He hadn't cried when they'd gone to church or when his mother's friends had fussed over him, telling him how lovely he looked.
He hadn't cried until that night, in bed with his hands pressed over his mouth. Then he'd sobbed with grief and sheer helpless rage as Georgiana lay stiff and silent beside him, not knowing what to say.
Benjamin stood up from his desk and put his writing things and the sketches away before going to find Georgiana.
She was in the kitchen kneading dough for bread while Charity sifted flour. Eli was beside them in his cradle, and Benjamin scooped him up in his arms and carried him to the kitchen window. It looked out onto the back courtyard where, their maid, Aveline, was currently bent over a washtub. Beyond her, Benjamin could see the silversmithy.
"You want to be there, I know," Georgiana said from behind him.
"Timothy is an excellent silversmith, and he has the boys to help him." Benjamin listened to the rhythmic thump of the dough against the top of the kitchen table, the soft noises Eli made as he sucked on his fist. "But of course I do. I want to be working."
He'd been away from the shop too long over the winter, sick in bed for weeks and then plagued by this cough that wouldn't seem to leave him.
Eli's small fist connected wetly with the side of Benjamin's head. Benjamin reached up and took Eli's hand loosely in his own, turning his head to smile at the baby and sticking his tongue out in order to make Eli smile. Eli just responded with a slightly worried look, so Benjamin let go of his hand and tickled Eli’s chubby little side until he won a real smile for his trouble.
"I've been thinking about the dress mother made," he said, keeping his gaze on Eli's smiling face. “Are you really planning on refitting them for Charity to wear?"
By the time Charity was old enough to fit into an adult-size dress, the cloth would be thinning with age.
"Is there something you would rather I do with them?" Georgiana asked.
Benjamin didn't answer, bouncing Eli on his hip as he thought. Eli wrapped his fists around the top edge of Benjamin's waistcoat and made happy cooing noises into his ear.
Unbidden, another memory of his mother came to him. Sitting on her lap as a small child, watching her hands move across what seemed like a vast expanse of cloth as she carefully fit and arranged pieces on top. A warm memory, not tinged by grief or anger for once. He snatched at it without giving himself time to question or think it through.
"It would be a shame to waste the fabric," he said. "Perhaps they could be made into something like a quilt."
"Well, if you would like. The dresses are yours," Georgiana said, sounding dubious. "But I don't know anything about quilting. Do you really want to pay the money to commission it out?"
"I have some money saved, or I could trade for it," Benjamin said. Truthfully, he hadn't thought that seriously about it until now.
Georgiana finished kneading and patted the loaf out before placing it into the bowl at her elbow and covering it with a cloth. "I won't stop you. Just as long as any of the money you spend on it, whether commissioned or otherwise, doesn't come out of the household accounts."
"I wouldn't dream of taking it from there.” Benjamin bounced Eli a bit more before going to retrieve of one his toys from the cradle.
Honestly, he wasn't even sure he'd get beyond drafting some ideas. It had been years since he'd put needle to cloth, and a quilt was a very large project to embark on. Still, it would give him something to think about that wasn't the shop and the work he could be doing there. Perhaps he could incorporate some of the designs into a silver piece, later on, so even if he never sewed the thing, the mental effort wouldn't go to waste.
Georgiana took the bowl of flour Charity had been sifting over and over until it was fine and began preparing the ingredients for the cake she would make next.
Benjamin carried Eli into the parlor and settled him on the floor.
The images of designs didn't stop playing in his head, unraveling themselves into the image of a quilt.