“I’d rather not say.”
She shook her head in refusal. “I won’t let you past unless you tell me what you’d rather not say.”
She lifted the empty bucket and began to walk fast toward the open door of our house. A horse’s hooves sounded in the street behind us. She stood in the door frame like a log blocking the way of a stream.
I pulled the shawl back over my head to keep the approaching person from recognizing me, then took a few steps closer. “I need to get some of my possessions.” I spoke softly, so as not to be overheard. “I only want what belongs to me.”
Her tone was harsh. “That won’t happen till you tell me.”
“What’s going on, Mrs. de Jong? Someone botherin’ ya?” I recognized the deep voice of a local busybody whose visits had been dreaded by Mother. Patience looked up to address the man on horseback.
“Fine morning, isn’t it?” She inclined her head to indicate me and added, “We’re talking over private business.”
“Good day, then.” His horse’s hooves rang on the bricks as it moved away.
I decided to tell Patience a sort of truth. “My baby is gravely ill. I need money for her treatment.”
Her blue eyes narrowed. “You didn’t keep the child.”
“I did give her up, but—” I stopped. I’d have to reveal my situation to get into the house.
What is a reputation, really? A pile of platitudes, so often inaccurate.
Patience cut in to my thoughts. “You surrendered the baby, and now you want her back?”
“I kept her,” I said. “I kept her, but now she’s in the almshouse.” My voice grew tight and strained. “I must get her out or she’ll die.”
Patience spoke in a whisper, but her face beamed with ugliness. “With a bastard in arms, you’ll have no place with us. And while I’m in this house, not a single thing will leave in your hands.”
“I have a right to my belongings, and what my mother left me in her will,” I replied—“at least the items thee didn’t steal!”
She seethed with dislike. “You’d best be off, or your father will wake and your secret will be out.”
At the mention of Father, I lost strength. “Does he ask after me?” How I longed for his care, which had been seldom in coming. And how I hated myself for revealing this weakness.
“No.”
“Thee has kept my secret, then?”
“You’re a governess so far as he knows, and he’s pleased with that.” She adjusted the bucket at her front. “He has plenty to worry about, with his workers having abandoned him and our baby on the way.”
My throat clenched with the force of tears unshed. “Thee won’t tell him what I’ve done, will thee?”
So all my posturing came down to this.
She smiled, relishing my abject state. “No, I won’t tell him, on one condition.” The smile disappeared. “That you go away and never come back.”
How dare she speak so cruelly to me? “This is my home, and thee can’t keep me out.” I took steps forward. “I’m going in to tell Father what thee pawned of mine.”
“He’s already at the mill, buying lumber,” she said, altering her earlier claim.
“Then I’ll go in and take my things.” I tried to dodge her body and step into the main room of our house, first to one side of her, then to the other. She and her bucket blocked whichever way I went. Her body had the fixed strength of a mountain. Over her shoulder I caught a glimpse of the long oak table we’d used for meals and studying, and our pie cabinet with its cut tin front. Beside the kitchen hearth, I knew, hung many of the items Mother had meant for me to inherit—the copper and iron pots, the wrought-iron utensils passed from daughter to daughter, the carved spoon rack. Those I would never get. I raised my arms, determined to move this imposter aside and run up to my bedroom to claim what was mine. But she was quicker. She raised the bucket and used it to shove me backward.
I reeled away, struggling to keep from falling on the peonies and the fence, and then that woman picked up a sharp stone and threw it at me.
It hit its mark. My fingers flew to my neck and came away with blood. I clasped my locket to see if it had been struck—it hadn’t. But look what a tyrant Father had chosen in Mother’s stead!
“Thee is evil,” I yelled.
“My children will be respectable,” she hissed. She stepped into the house and began to shut the thick wood door, speaking her last words through a narrow space: “Your name will not be spoken! My family will know nothing of you and your bastard!” At that, she pushed the door into its tight-fitting frame.
I stared at the old door a moment, then scurried away—like a stray dog.
I’d always been glad that our stone house had passed from generation to generation in my father’s family. But at that moment I wished its insides would burn to the ground and its stones would be knocked into piles for farmers to cart away. They would become walls for pastures, and sheep and cows would rub their itching hides on the gray roughness and leave tufts of fur behind, and the memories of centuries would float into the ether.
I headed toward the Burnhams’ mansion, not knowing what I’d do once I arrived. The trip took longer than it ought to have, for I was forced to stop and collect myself several times, sitting with my back to the road on whatever tree or large rock would support me.
I had in some hideaway of my spirit harbored the belief that my family, even Patience, would offer aid if I were otherwise without hope. But in those moments, hidden from the road, I scraped that belief out of me with a crude and rusty knife.
Finally I turned onto the driveway to the Burnhams’ house. Perhaps I’d find a stash of bills inside and become an outright thief for Charlotte. A large carriage led by two sweating horses was just departing from the front door, its driver directing it toward the stable.
In terror, I rushed around to the kitchen door and entered, with milk dripping down my front and blood at my neck. A startled Miss Baker told me that the Burnhams had returned a moment earlier—with Clementina’s parents.
I took the back stairs to the door of the nursery and found Clementina and her mother already in the room. Mrs. Appleton was tall and imperious in her French heels and elaborate gown; Clementina held her mother’s arm for support as the two of them beheld the nursery in a shared state of alarm and disgust. They’d just discovered Henry weeping and wet, since Margaret had been unable to attend to his every need; even worse, the brown medicine bottle sat on the floor beside his crib, open, with the dropper beside it. For in my near madness the day before, I’d left them there. Thus the women understood that Henry had been drugged. Adding further to their revulsion were the soiled bedsheet and clothing from yesterday, which I’d heaped in a corner and neglected.