Ferndean Manor, Yorkshire
April 1, 1820
Reader, I am delivered of a son.
What a noble burden it is to be entrusted with the life of another!
The midwife settled the little stranger in my arms, and with a bit of adjustment I became comfortable. That is, we became comfortable, young master Edward Rivers Rochester and his mother. My baby relaxed in my arms, and I sighed with happiness.
Everything about this moment seemed right. Satisfyingly so.
“Jane, my darling. My brave, brave girl. We have a son. Shall we call him Ned?” My husband, Edward Fairfax Rochester, planted a tender kiss on my lips and another on the top of our baby’s downy head. “Welcome, little man.”
I unfurled our son’s tightly clenched hand and counted all the fingers. Five, I assured myself. I repeated my investigation with his other hand. From there I moved to his budlike feet—pink and fresh and new—and examined his curled toes. How could he be so impossibly small? So tiny? So vulnerable?
Mrs. Alice Fairfax, our housekeeper and Edward’s second cousin on his mother’s side, hurried into the room. “He is perfect. What a blessing! I shall go tell the others. They will be over the moon with joy.” In short order, I heard happy voices from the other side of the bedroom door.
Inwardly, I laughed. My son was less than five minutes old and already he had set the household aflutter.
Spent with the exhaustion and emotion of a long labor, I adjusted the unaccustomed bundle. I stared down at Ned’s wrinkled, red face and wondered, Who is this?
With a yawn, Ned blinked up at me. Long lashes framed eyes the same color as his father’s. At that moment, I fell unreservedly, irrevocably in love with my baby. I knew I would do anything to safeguard my child. Anything! A lump formed in my throat, a pain squeezed my chest, and I burst into tears.
“Are you all right?” Edward stroked my hair and gestured frantically for the midwife, a quiet grandmother from Millcote, our nearest town. A woman much recommended for her experience, but whom I valued for her manner. Her reddened hands were rough to the touch, but gentle when assisting me.
“’Tis to be expected, sir.” The midwife peered over Edward’s shoulder as she sipped her well-earned cup of tea with three lumps of sugar. “Tears are part of the package. A body’s heart overflows wi’ joy.”
Oh, my little one! my heart sang. Sum of my heart’s desires! Forgive me for I am new to this business of being a mother. I pledge to you all that I am, and all that I have, to safeguard you. You lie here trustingly, but the world is vast and I am so weak right now.
As I wept, with joy and fear and frustration, my husband put his arm around me and our son. “It will be all right, Jane,” he promised me. “We will be enough. I promise you, we will be.”
But it takes more than a promise to protect a child.
I have reason to know.