A Name Unknown

by Roseanna M. White

  Rosemary cleared her throat and trotted back to the table to grab her things. “Well then. Let’s go, shall we? Do you need help with your bag?”

  “I can carry a blighted valise, Rosie.” And smile sweetly while drilling her with visual daggers, as could they all.

  Rosemary sighed and rolled her eyes. “All right, then. Let’s go so you can say whatever it is that’s burning you up.”

  “Rosie! Who’s your friend?” Treeve’s voice came from the open window. It was smiling, which meant he was, though she didn’t turn right away to see it. Rather, she squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Rosie, is it?” Willa hissed.

  Rosemary cleared her throat and pivoted to send him a smile of her own. She hadn’t invited him to use the nickname—but he’d taken to doing so, and she hadn’t seen the point in objecting. “Hello, Treeve. This is my sister, Willa.”

  Treeve’s eyes sparkled, and his grin was his most charming one, good teeth gleaming. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Gresham.”

  Willa stood ramrod-straight, her smile surely cutting poor Treeve to shreds, it was so brutally sharp-edged. “It’s Forsythe. Mrs. Forsythe—I’m a widow.”

  Rosemary barely kept from lifting her brows at that little tale. Until it hit her—Peter must have heard her last name. Leaving Willa to scramble for an explanation as to why they didn’t share the same one.

  Treeve didn’t seem hindered by the false and finished nuptials. “Mrs. Forsythe, then. Will you be staying at Kensey for a while?”

  Willa’s smile was ice. “No, I daresay not. I must be back to London tomorrow.”

  “Oh, so soon?” Rosemary frowned. That would barely give them time to get through the fighting and on to the fun. And why would she have come all this way for so short a stay? “That hardly seems worth the price of the ticket.”

  Willa turned that slicing smile on her. “Well, a friend paid for it.”

  Mr. V.

  Rosemary’s stomach went tight. “How kind.” She turned back to Treeve. “I’d better show Willa to the cottage, so she can rest for a bit.”

  “Aye, and Kenver’ll be on me for wasting time. Just wanted to say hello.” He nodded, his amusement still firmly in place, and took a step back, lifting his burned arm in farewell.

  “What happened to him?” Willa asked in a low tone as he strode away. “His arm looks terrible.”

  Rosemary hadn’t mentioned the fire in her letters home—it only would have worried everyone. “The stable caught fire, and a beam got him. But the arm’s much better than it was—he’s back to work, and he doesn’t keep it bandaged all the time anymore.”

  “I saw the new construction—and the rubble of the old one. But I thought surely you would have mentioned something as noteworthy as that.” Willa gripped her arm and tugged her toward the door. “But it seems you’ve neglected to mention any number of things, haven’t you?”

  “Well, it isn’t as though I was in any danger from the fire, and I didn’t want you to worry.” Because she would have—Rosemary hated fire, but Willa feared it like Rosemary did darkness.

  Willa snorted. “Oh you weren’t, were you? Funny, I could have sworn that when I mentioned the rubble to your beloved Mr. Holstein, he said something about how you were in—invaluable in the effort to extinguish the b-b-blaze.”

  Rosemary pulled her arm free, barely restraining herself from slapping at Willa in earnest. “Don’t make fun of him. Don’t.”

  Willa stepped close. “Will you listen to yourself?”

  This, the hallway of Kensey Manor, with Peter likely just around the corner, was not the place to get into it. Setting her face in a neutral expression, Rosemary yanked the valise from Willa’s hand and strode through the passages she deemed it least likely to encounter anyone in, then out one of the side doors that put them into the garden.

  Willa snorted. “Know your way around rather well, don’t you?”

  “Well, of course I do. When do we not know our way around a place we’re working?” Her blood rose a bit more in temperature with every step. Willa had some nerve, showing up here and promptly judging her. Looking at her as if she’d committed some kind of crime.

  Or, rather, that she hadn’t, when she ought to have.

  Mr. Teague’s prized gladioli waved a greeting as she stormed through, but she didn’t pause to greet them or admire the fragrance wafting on the breeze. She all but stomped to the cottage, the silent and simmering Willa a step behind.

  She unlocked and opened the kitchen door of the cottage and dumped Willa’s bag rather unceremoniously on the floor. Spun to face down her sister.

  Willa was smirking on the threshold. “Well, at least you still lock your door. What, don’t trust these people quite as much as all that?”

  Rosemary shoved a chair away from the table, though she didn’t much feel like sitting in it. “What are you doing here, Willa? I appreciate knowing that Liv is doing better, but you could have just written or sent a wire.”

  “No. I couldn’t.” Willa tugged off her gloves and tossed them to the counter, her hat following a moment later. “Mr. V sent me for an update.”

  And Rosemary felt prickly as a hedgehog. “Why would he do that? He said I’d have as much time as I needed until war was declared, which it hasn’t been. I don’t need a . . . a nursemaid.”

  “Look.” Willa edged half a step closer, face hard and one hip cocked out. “I came here fully expecting to have a nice chat, get an update on all the things you can’t send along in the post, and go back to Mr. V ready to tell him that Rosie’s got it all under control and will be home soon. Then I get off the blighted train and run into that man, who starts talking about our family like he knows them. Our family. Rosie, we don’t talk about our family!”

  Rosemary rolled her eyes. “I’ve been here for months, Will. What am I supposed to talk about?”

  “The blighted weather! His family. Not ours!”

  “What am I supposed to say, then, when I’m so exhausted with worry for Olivia? When I burst into tears at random moments for thinking of her? Do I just let him think me unhinged?” Not that she actually burst into tears in front of him, but she’d come close a time or two, and he would have noticed. He always noticed—when he wasn’t in his other-world.

  Willa shook her head. “This is what we do, Rosemary. We hide things. We find things. We don’t . . . we don’t let the marks in. We don’t ask them to pray for our sisters.”

  “Well, why not? It worked, didn’t it?” When a curl had the audacity to tickle her cheek, she shoved it back behind her ear. “God listens to him.”

  “Then I want nothing to do with Him, if He exists.” Willa slashed a hand through the air. “Because I don’t need the favors of a traitor.”

  “He’s not though.” She said it calmly. So calmly that it wasn’t until that moment that she was absolutely, properly sure. Peter Holstein was many things. And he had his secrets. But he loved England. He would sooner cut off his own hand than betray his country.

  Willa went still too, but the fire in her eyes was only banked. Cautious. Not extinguished. “I beg your pardon?”

  Rosemary leaned close and pitched her voice low. “Peter Holstein is not a traitor. And I can’t prove he is—because he’s not. All the evidence—”

  “Evidence be hanged!” Willa’s voice was naught but a hiss, low and throbbing. “You have to prove it, because that’s what you’re being paid to do.” She charged past her, to the table, where a vase of flowers sat. Mr. Teague had clipped them for her himself yesterday. Willa motioned to them as if they were, somehow, the proof she needed. “The problem is that you’ve been blinded. By flowers and good food and—”

  “I have not been blinded!”

  “—and people thinking you’re more than you are. You’ve let it go to your head.”

  “I have not. I know exactly what I am.” Knew, perhaps, better than she ever had before. It kept wiggling and niggling and slithering around inside, when she least w
anted it to.

  “Then by people knowing your name. Greeting you warmly. By, I don’t know, Holstein’s handsome face—though I thought cleft chins were Ellie’s thing, not yours.”

  “They are. Ellie’s, I mean.” She didn’t even like them, especially. Or hadn’t. Much. “And I’ve scarcely noticed if he’s handsome or not.” Which was true. Perhaps he was—certainly he was, if one thought about it—but why would one? When it mattered so little next to the heart of him?

  Willa growled and pivoted, marched to the far corner. “Let me remind you of facts, Rosie. You were hired to do a simple job.”

  “Yes, to find the truth.”

  “No. I don’t recall the word truth coming up when you told me what was said.” She spun back around but leaned against the wall over there, a room away, rather than stalk her way back. “You deliver what you were asked for, and you keep in mind that the stammering fool—”

  “Stop it!” She didn’t mean to shout. It was a bad idea to shout, she knew that. “So he stutters—that is not a crime, it is not a fault. It does not make him a fool. He is a wise man, a clever man, a good man, a kind man, a nice man—the best man I’ve ever known, and I won’t suffer you or anyone else speaking ill of him just because he has difficulty expressing himself!”

  For a second Willa just stared at her. Then she loosed a low curse and shook her head. “Blazes, Rosie. You’re in love with him!”

  “I am not! I’m not stupid enough to fall in love with a gentleman, no matter how good and noble and handsome he is!”

  “Not that you’ve even noticed if he’s handsome or not.”

  “You’re insufferable.” She spun away, needing space from her sister before she strangled her. But one step toward the door and she growled too. “Ducky.” Mrs. Teague stood just a few paces from the door, luncheon tray in her hand, and her expression . . . oh, who even cared what her expression was? Condemning, no doubt, as always.

  Rosemary strode forward and jerked the tray from her hands. “Go ahead. Add it to my litany of sins and shortcomings and whatever else you’re keeping track of day in and day out. I’m sure it is somehow a new fault in your eyes that I recognize the basic truth about him.” She pivoted back through the door and sent it slamming with a well-placed heel.

  The sound should have soothed her. It only made her angrier. She set the tray on the table with a clatter of fine china and motioned toward it. “Eat. Unless you think it’ll blind you to some wisdom I can’t even fathom.”

  Willa pulled out a chair with an arm as inflexible as the wood. “You’re an idiot. He’s not a good man. He’s a gentleman.”

  “Yes, well, apparently the two aren’t as mutually exclusive as we assumed.” She couldn’t sit. She couldn’t. So she leaned against the counter and folded her arms over her chest. “He’s loyal. And he’s good. And he’s—”

  “A gen—tle—man.” Willa exaggerated the enunciation, punctuating each syllable with a gesture of her hand. Then she reached for a sandwich with a sad shake of her head. “You’ve always been the reasonable one, Rosie. I might have expected Ellie to fall in love with a rich bloke someday—star-crossed lovers and all that nonsense—but not you.”

  “I have not fallen in love with him.” This she delivered from between clenched teeth. And spun to look out the window, so she could be sure Mrs. Teague wasn’t still hovering.

  She wasn’t. She was sitting on a bench in her husband’s garden, staring up at the sky. Curious—Rosemary had never seen her idle.

  But she was too far away to listen, so what did it matter? So long as they could keep from yelling.

  A challenge, that.

  Willa had taken a bite, swallowed it. “It’s doomed, you know. Men of his station only have one use for women of ours.”

  Her hedgehog spines came back, all bristling out around her. “Hiring them to clear their libraries?”

  Willa rolled her eyes. “Don’t pretend to be naïve. If he cares for you at all, he’ll just think it’s reason to make you a mistress. Is that what you want?”

  “He wouldn’t. You don’t know him, Willa. He’s . . . he’s godly. The real kind, the kind that reads his Bible every day and actually believes it. The kind that lives by it. He gives to the poor and visits people in prison and feeds the hungry and—”

  “And puts on a good show, apparently, if you believe that.” Willa poured some lemonade from the pitcher on the tray into a glass. “He’s. A. Gentleman.”

  “I know what he is! And I know what I am.” Now she had to sit. Her knees wouldn’t hold her any longer. “He’s a good man. And I’m a thief.”

  Willa’s hand, as she set it upon the wrist that Rosemary let rest on the table as she sagged to a seat, wasn’t exactly encouraging. It was more purposeful. “No, Rosie. You’re a good thief. You’re one of the best thieves in England, that’s why Mr. V came to you for this. And you have to ask how he knew that. How he knew who we were, why he ever came to you last year for that first job. How he does the things he does. You have to ask, and you have to respect him. And fear him. Because if you don’t give that man what he asked for . . .”

  Rosemary pulled her arm away and used it to hold up her head. “I’ll give him what I’ve found. I owe him that, I know it. But I can’t help it if it’s not what he wants. The truth is the truth.”

  “Rosie.”

  “I can’t hurt Peter. I can’t. He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “And what will you gain by protecting him? He’s still a gentleman. He’s not going to . . . to marry you or whatever you’re hoping.”

  “Of course he isn’t. And I’m not hoping it. I’m not in love with him.” She just wanted to make sure he was safe. That he was appreciated for being the amazing man he was, not lied about so slanderously. She just wanted to make sure of that, no matter what Mr. V demanded from her when she handed him proof of innocence instead of guilt.

  “Peter Holstein will hang you out to dry if he learns what you are—don’t think he won’t. He will especially if he fancies himself a good man, a godly one. He’ll say you’re a thief and you deserve what’s coming to you.”

  But that wasn’t how he’d been about Tim and Betty, was it? Still. Rosemary drew in a long breath. “It doesn’t matter what he does. I’ve got to do the right thing. I’ve got to do . . . Willa, I can’t keep doing this.”

  The words hung there in the air, a mirror. Reflecting thoughts she hadn’t even known she’d been thinking, much less contemplating enough to spew them out there like a firm decision.

  Willa froze, her lemonade halfway to her lips. “Doing what, exactly?”

  Rosemary sat up straight and splayed her hands out on the table. “I’m a thief. It’s all I have to define me, and . . . and I don’t want to be just a word like that. I can’t be. I can’t keep taking things from people, just assuming they’re all selfish and cruel and have it coming. What if they’re not? What if they’re all like him? Good and kind and willing to give if you just ask?”

  “They’re not.”

  “But how do you know?” She looked up, over to those familiar eyes that were begging her to be quiet. Those familiar eyes that were shadowed with fear. Rosemary’s nostrils flared. “We always hated it, didn’t we, when people just assumed we were rubbish because we were poor? That we deserved all the ill to befall us? How are we better if we do the same in reverse? If we assume that they’re rubbish because they’re not poor? That they deserve to be cheated and robbed?”

  “Rosie. You can’t. You can’t quit. It’s what you are, what we all are. What makes us family.”

  “No.” She traced a chipped nail along the wood grain in the table. “It’s love that makes us family. Not the stealing.”

  “You don’t know anything else! What could you possibly do?”

  She sighed and flexed the fingers that would hate her for saying it. “I can sew. I’ve got some seamstress work while I’ve been here. I could make a business of it.”

  Willa snorted. “You hate sewi
ng.”

  “But I’m good at it.”

  “You’d be miserable in half a day. And you’d never make a living like that in London, there are too many other seamstresses.”

  “So we leave London. Let the little ones breathe fresh air for a change.”

  A dry laugh blew past Willa’s lips like a leaf in the wind. She stood. “I see where this is going. We can all just move down here, yeah? Set up house here in the neighborhood. Maybe Georgie and Barclay can work in your darling Mr. Holstein’s burned-out stables. And what of us girls? Should I be a housemaid?”

  Rosemary closed her eyes. “I don’t have the answers. I just know that I can’t. I can’t keep doing what I’ve always done. It . . . it doesn’t sit right anymore.”

  “Well, it sits just fine with me.” Willa’s footsteps moved behind her, toward the door. “I’ve delivered my message. And I’ll tell Mr. V what you’ve said. Don’t be surprised if he shows up himself here soon.”

  “Willa.” She opened her eyes again and spun on her seat.

  Willa had her bag and gloves in her hand, her hat on her head. And her other hand on the door. “I never thought I’d see the day when you chose a bloke over your own family, Rosie.”

  Her throat had gone so tight. “I haven’t.”

  “You have. And it’ll be your ruin.” She pulled open the door. “Well, when he breaks your heart and kicks you to the curb, come home. We’ll be there. And we’ll still love you, even if you are a thief.”

  Rosemary’s lips turned up, though it didn’t feel much like a smile. “Will you love me if I’m not?”

  “You will be. You always will be. We can’t just change who we are.”

  She’d never thought so. But maybe they could. If they were willing to pay the price.

  After Willa left, Rosemary padded back to the hall, to the bedroom with the desk and the paper and the books and the piles and piles of letters she’d stacked up. Unwilling to throw them away or burn them. Unwilling to even put them out of sight.