Lucinda stared in the fire. What in the world made David whisk her away like that? If he didn’t have a good reason, they were going to have words. Just because she was a servant girl didn’t mean she would allow such treatment. She had been assigned to the game room, and she was going to be on duty there whether David liked it or not. Dinner would soon be over, and the guests would be adjourning to the game room. What would Mistress Tillotson do when no one was there to serve? As Mr. Button threatened, Lucinda would be out with the chickens for sure. She was ready to leave when the door opened and closed.
“Lucinda?” David whispered.
She leaned around the chair so he could see her. “I’m here, but now that you’re here, I must leave.”
“I’ve brought Pearl to see you.”
“Pearl?” Lucinda started to stand.
“Please, sit down.” David’s words were gentle as he pulled up a chair for Pearl and knelt beside Lucinda. “Pearl has something she needs to tell you. It will help you understand many things.”
“What is going on? David, I won’t be ordered around like this.”
Pearl took Lucinda’s hand and gave her a weak smile. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you years ago, but I never imagined anything like this would, could ever happen.”
Chills ran up Lucinda’s spine. “I don’t think I want to hear this.”
Pearl looked deep into Lucinda’s eyes. “And I don’t want to tell you, but you must know.” When Pearl finished her story, Lucinda sat silent. “I hope you can forgive me.” She hung her head and stepped back beside the fireplace.
Lucinda felt as if she had been pitched off a cliff and sent spinning toward huge rocks at the bottom. She gasped, but her lungs refused to fill. David rubbed her back. “Breathe in,” he said softly. “That’s right, another breath.” She heard his voice as from a distance until her breathing stabilized and she could speak. “This is going to take time to sort out, Pearl. But I love you and hold nothing against you.”
Pearl kissed Lucinda and held her for a moment. “I must get back to the laundry. David is a good lad. He’ll see to your safety.”
The door clicked shut, and David moved to the chair Pearl vacated. “The problem is keeping you safe through the night until we can put together a plan for getting you away from here.”
“No matter if Rosella does recognize me, she’ll be as shocked as I am. I’ll be safe for a while yet.” She slumped back in the chair. “Could I rest just a minute before I go upstairs?” Her eyes drooped from weariness.
He nodded, and her lids closed.
When voices filtered into the room from the hall, Lucinda woke. She felt brittle, as though if she were touched she would shatter into myriad slivers of glass. She felt the urge to scream and to go on screaming until she broke. Instead, she stood, her hands balled into fists at her side, and willed herself to complete the task at hand. “They are on the way to the game room. I must go.”
“Come with me,” David said. “I’ll show you a way to the card room that will keep anyone from noticing your arrival.”
Holding her hand, he led the way to a large mirror on the fireplace wall. He touched the heavy gold frame, and the mirror swung open. Lucinda gasped. “What, how … ?” she stammered.
“This house was used to hide runaway slaves during the War between the States. This is the hidden stairway they used.” He helped her through the opening, closed the mirror, lit a small lamp, and led her up stairs that eventually came out at a panel in the library next to the card room.
“You go in. Busy yourself like you’ve been there all the time. I’ll go back down and come up the main stairs.”
When Lucinda arrived in the card room, Mistress Tillotson was waiting across the room at the top of the main stairway. She had changed clothes and wore a peignoir of white satin, flounced at the throat and covered with heavy lace at the waist. A double rope of pearls and diamonds lay across her ample bosom. Her amber hair was locked in a careless chignon held in place by a white net. So, that is my mother.
Thankfully, the mistress couldn’t see her. Lucinda picked up a tray of champagne, and, staying as far from the woman as possible, began passing it to the guests. Mixing among them, she felt safe until she felt a tap on her shoulder. Keeping her head down, Lucinda turned. Rosella tipped her face up. The attempt to stifle her gasp failed. She continued to stare with a look of unclothed astonishment little different from those registered by David Morgan and Mr. Button. She recognizes me!
Lucinda kept her face frozen. “Champagne, mistress?” Her voice sounded normal, the English accent firmly in place.
Rosella, on the other hand, turned deathly pale, and her chest heaved for breath. “What is your name?” she gasped through trembling lips.
“Lucinda, ma’am.” She carefully balanced the tray and curtsied. Over Rosella’s shoulder, she saw David’s eyes widen. He turned as pale as Lucinda felt.
Rosella’s eyes narrowed. “Come,” she said in a shrill voice and led the way to a card table. Her hand trembled as she picked up the deck of cards. “Now, my dears,” she said to the three men present, “if you don’t mind playing with my personal maid and secretary, we can begin.”
Lucinda gasped. “Mistress, I–I …,” she stammered.
“You do play whist, do you not?” Her tone was sarcastic.
“I have played some,” she said quietly.
“I do not wish to play this evening,” Rosella announced. “You will be the fourth at my table.”
The looks on the men’s faces told what they thought of the idea. “Really, Rosella, this is too much,” one of the men objected. “We came to play with you.” The others at the table echoed his sentiments.
Mistress Tillotson ran an unsteady hand over her brow. “Very well, gentlemen, but don’t expect much of me. It has been a long and most trying day.” She looked squarely at Lucinda before she sat down and began shuffling the cards. “Lucinda, put that tray down.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lucinda curtsied and handed off the tray.
“Make yourself useful in the library.” Rosella began dealing the cards expertly, watching Lucinda all the while. “There are newspapers there. Find some bits of scandal to amuse me tonight when you prepare me for bed. See if you can find a novel, a love story, something set in India.” She had regained her color and her voice, but her smile was brittle, her eyes hard. “And David, you are a poor player. Sit at my elbow and learn.”
He sent Lucinda a look of resignation and seated himself beside Rosella.
Lucinda managed to stuff the feelings aroused by knowing that Rosella was her mother, but her movements were too sharp, too quick. She smiled at the right times and answered politely, but she was off-key, like an out-of-tune piano. She could tell David was worried. His eyes were overly bright and, to the detriment of his attention to the card game, he often gazed after her. That made her task more difficult because she wanted to look at him, but she forced herself to concentrate on the black print. In the Peoria Review and Chicago Democrat she found items she thought might interest Rosella. She finished her task, but the card party showed no sign of ending. After building up the fire in the card room’s fireplace, Lucinda again moved to the library and examined the shelves for a novel to fit Rosella’s description. Attracted by the title The Ganges by Moonlight, she drew a volume from its place. As she did so, a leather pouch hidden behind the books slid out, scattering its contents.
Lucinda stood stock-still, staring at the floor. “What is this?” Her heart leaped at the sight.
A handful of cut, unset jewels—emeralds, sapphires, two large rubies, and diamonds of various shapes and sizes—splattered over the Persian carpet. She stooped and was gathering them up when Rosella Tillotson came into the room with David at her heels, his face creased with concern. Rosella’s eyes instantly focused on the sparkling stones in Lucinda’s hand.
The briefest of smiles brushed Rosella’s lips, then the expression vanished and her face became unreadable as s
he walked with firm steps across the room to where Lucinda stood, her trembling hands cupped around the jewels.
“How fortunate that you found my little gems. I had quite given them up for lost.” Rosella’s hands closed like icy claws over Lucinda’s and grasped the stones. Her red mouth smiled, but her eyes were dark and hard.
Chapter 7
It was well past midnight before the guests were bedded and Lucinda was able to light her own candle to carry up to her attic room. The flame flickered in the sudden drafts and sent writhing shadows over the unfamiliar stair walls. She closed the door at the foot of the attic stairs and slid the little lock into place. Her room under the eaves was directly above Rosella’s dressing room.
Though there was a bell to call for service, Rosella insisted on this arrangement because she preferred to rouse her maid during the small hours of the night by throwing a shoe at the ceiling, Lucinda had been told. She was ordered to listen for the thud beneath her bed and consider her position at the mansion to be dependent on her instant response to such a summons.
From kitchen maid to personal servant to the mistress—her mother. So much had happened this day.
Lucinda stumbled with weariness on the last step and pitched the candle forward onto the splintered floor. It guttered out. The storm had passed for now. Through a single dormer window set in the slanted roof over her bed, moonlight flooded into the tiny cubicle and fanned across the tied patchwork quilt. Kneeling on the bed made from a knotty plank, she let the moon bathe her in white light. Warmth from an unseen source seemed to envelop her, bringing with it a longing for the way things were before catastrophe became an almost constant companion.
Thoughts of Rosella tried to rise, but Lucinda forced them away. She was far too weary to examine the latest blow to her life. I never dreamed I would be grateful for such poor lodgings, but tonight I am. I am gifted with my own room. The other maids slept in a long room under the eaves of another wing of the house. There were two rows of beds and no privacy.
Lucinda sat on the bed and caressed the platinum heirloom fastened around her neck. This was her only physical tie to her past. The memories it kindled would help her through the rough places. Surrendering to a consuming weariness, she scarcely managed to hang her apron and hat neatly on the peg beside her coat and cap. She brushed out her hair but chose to sleep in her dress in case she was summoned in the night.
Just when exhaustion should have sent her slipping under the quilt, she became caught up by a strange sensation she could neither capture nor dismiss. In that moonlit moment, Lucinda knew that she would not be a servant all her days. One day she would again have her own mansion filled with servants. And she would be waited on as she had served others tonight. Is this the vision Yarrow Woman had of me?
She eased her aching body under the quilt and onto a harsh covering over a thin horse blanket used for a mattress. The narrow bed might have been as soft as eiderdown for all she noticed. Staring up into the night through the window, her mind drifted away to mingle with the stars that shone like the jewels she had held in her hands. One day she would again have piles of beautiful gemstones. She thought about how Mistress Rosella, her mouth twisted, her eyes hard, had snatched the jewels and clutched them to her bosom. Lucinda would not clutch her jewels. She would have so many she could be, would be, generous.
Her thoughts turned to David Morgan sitting beside Rosella in the card room. He was looking at me, only me.
Lucinda’s mind slipped further into the stars and saw that David stood alone on the veranda of a silver mansion glittering in the noon sun. She advanced toward him, bearing a heavy ornate tray. On it, instead of drinks, was a lumpy sack of silver and a neat stack of papers, stark white with black writing and large official seals. He helped himself to a stack and motioned to her to do the same. She set the tray down and took a few papers. He shook his head and handed her the whole stack. She fanned the sheets. They turned to silver coins falling like snow on the floor until she stood in a knee-deep drift. For no apparent reason, she woke up.
Her heart altered its pace and pounded a different rhythm in her ears. Her eyelids would not stay closed, fluttering instead like insistent moths. Nothing in the house below suggested an intruder, yet she believed someone to be about. She thought of the door at the bottom of her stairs. The simple lock would keep no determined soul out, but it would sound its own rattling alarm were someone to set hand to it.
Lucinda tensed and listened and knew with an unexplainable certainty that somewhere in the bowels of the sleeping house someone was awake and abroad. She slid from beneath the quilt and rose to her knees, searching for the latch on the slanted window over her head. Her fingers found and flipped open the latch. She broke the seal on the frame and tried to avoid the shower of dislodged grit and dead flies. Standing on her bed, she thrust back the window and straightened into the opening.
The air, tinged with the smell of evergreens, hung unmoving. Chimney pots belching occasional wisps of smoke stood over the house in rigid ranks like guards. Yes, she could climb out onto the roof and escape if it became necessary.
Relieved, she slid back through the window. Her feet, freezing now, found the bed below. She pulled the window closed and twisted the latch shut. Brushing off the debris and curling into the quilt, she shivered, not so much from cold as from the disturbing feeling that would not leave. At last, exhaustion overtook her and she slept.
For the second time that night, Lucinda sat bolt upright. A thud beneath her bed had wakened her. She struggled to remember where she was and finally realized Rosella had summoned her. Still caught in the web of a dream she could not remember, she moved as if in a trance across the cold, splintery floorboards toward the stairs. In the blackness of the stairway, her bare feet found their footing.
Loosed from its efficient knot, her curly hair tumbled over her shoulders and down her back. At the foot of the stairs, she twisted the lock, tripped the cold latch, and pushed open the door. Her bare feet sank into the oriental carpet runner along the hall leading to Mistress Tillotson’s bedroom suite. Her hair blew across her face as air currents from the hallways below rose past her and into the attic.
A beam of moonlight struck the face of a floor clock. The time stood at three.
Lucinda turned the corner and entered an unlit hallway. She moved slowly along the corridor until she felt the door frame and realized that she faced Mistress Tillotson’s sitting room door. Her heart pounded in her throat, and her mouth dried with fear. She reached for the knob.
Someone came unheard from behind, and a hand gripped her shoulder. Lucinda’s mouth opened to scream, but only a pitiful whimper escaped. I shall be murdered, she thought with terrifying clarity as the soft hand with fingers like steel bands tightened on her shoulder near her throat.
The black hallway seemed rent by screams, but when the man spun her around, she realized the sounds were all in her head. The dam in her throat prevented any communication. His hand easily held both of hers in a vise behind her back, and he pulled her to him, half-smothering her against his chest.
The sleeve against her throat was silky, and he smelled of sweet pipe tobacco. His cheek rested against her temple. “Oh, my beautiful one,” he whispered. “Please don’t fight me. I only want to hold you. I would never hurt you. Never. I will protect you. Care for you. Love you.” A hand closed behind her neck, beneath her flowing hair. “Such magnificent hair, such perfect features.” He caressed the flowing strands. “Do not be afraid. No one will hurt you. I promise.”
Who was this man? Lucinda could not force her eyes open to look, shut tight in terror as they were. None of this is happening. Her exhausted mind and body refused to function further. She sank into a stupor, too stunned for thought or prayer, too frightened to call for help.
Then, as suddenly as he came, he vanished without a sound.
Tears flooded her cheeks. Lucinda’s shaking hand gripped the chair molding along the hallway, and soundlessly she started back alo
ng the corridor. Before she turned the corner, she looked back. In the deep shadows, she watched a short man open the door to Rosella’s bedroom. He stood for several seconds silhouetted in the glow cast by fire from the hearth of the bedroom fireplace. Then, as though having been invited, he stepped across the threshold into Rosella Tillotson’s bedroom and carefully shut the door.
Lucinda fled up the narrow stairs to her attic and curled into her bed. With cold, trembling fingers she sought the comfort of her necklace.
It was gone.
A sob escaped, and a stupefying emptiness swept over her. Yarrow Woman’s words drummed in her head, “Never take it off or let anyone else take it from you.” Yet Lucinda could not bring herself to go back down those stairs. Even though her mistress summoned her, she could not go. A deep moaning sob escaped, shook her body. She knotted her fist at her throat and cried over her loss until she fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 8
Lucinda woke with a startled cry, roused violently from more violent dreams. Strong hands muffled her mouth as someone ripped the quilt from her trembling body. She struggled against her assailant and fought for breath. “Hush, Lucinda!” a strong, deep voice pleaded urgently. “It’s David Morgan come to save you. Stay still!” The hovering form removed his hand from her mouth.
Shouts and the clatter of the bolted door at the foot of the stairs rent the night.
“What are you doing here?” she gasped. “What do I need to be saved from?” It was then that the scene in the hallway spun up through her exhaustion-fogged brain. Was that awful person trying to get at her again? How would David know?
The sound of wood splintering meant the door was giving way under the assault. He shoved her feet into the brogans. “Hurry! Up through the window. Those shoes are bound to be slick. Watch your footing on the roof.”
Tracie Peterson, Tracey V. Bateman, Pamela Griffin, JoAnn A. Grote Page 25