Why would she choose you over her livelihood? It’s been well established no one would. You assumed. You were wrong.
Andromeda hadn’t said she wasn’t to be married—she’d said she didn’t want to. Was that what this had been? A lark before taking her vows?
She thought of Jane again and a thousand horrid memories assailed her at once. She stumbled out of the kitchen and back to the room. When she opened the door, Andromeda’s gravelly morning voice called out to her. “Mercy?”
“Yes?” She was surprised at how calm she sounded. She wanted to rage, to scream at the unfairness of it all, but all of her energy was focused on rebuilding the dam and stopping up the emotions that had flown freely for one night. She’d known Andromeda would ruin her, and that knowledge had been confirmed. Why should she humiliate herself further? Andromeda would leave, taking the illusions of more with her.
“Come back to bed,” Andromeda said and the heat in her voice made Mercy tremble. A tear slipped down her cheek, and she was glad for the darkness.
“I can’t,” she said, managing to hide the pain fairly well, she thought.
“But I was thinking about the boarding house. And how I’ll need someone to run it.” There was the sound of a hand slapping the mattress. “Come back to bed.”
“I said I can’t.” That was sharper than she intended, but she thought of how beautiful Andromeda had been in the candlelight and it hurt. Damn it all, it hurt. “And you should probably get on your way. I’m sure you have to attend to the business of the sale. I know you’ll want to get everything squared away now that you’ve figured out your solution.”
Miss Andromeda Stiel to wed Mr. Martin Shear, her childhood sweetheart…
“What are you on about?” Andromeda had the nerve to ask.
“I have to work. You have to go. That is all,” Mercy replied. She hated the frigidness in her tone, but it was either that or let the weight of what she’d read crush her. Ice was cold, but it was strong if it froze hard enough.
…in an early summer wedding.
“Don’t do this, Mercy,” Andromeda said.
“I’m simply going to work,” she said. She was pulling on her dress with trembling fingers.
“No. You’re putting me in my place,” Andromeda said. “You’re so scared I might hurt you that you’d rather run away than talk about whatever tick has crawled up your arse.”
Mercy cringed at the honest anger in her tone. Perhaps Andromeda should look into taking up with the players at the Grove. But Mercy knew what she’d read. And, more than that, she knew what she deserved—it wasn’t someone like Andromeda. If there wasn’t a husband, there would have been something else eventually. Perhaps she should look on this as a blessing. She was ruined, but she might still be able to preserve some sense of self. To have what she’d had the night before last a few months more and then be snatched away would have killed her for certain.
“I’ll have Sarah gather your papers from the kitchen and the rest of your things. Goodbye.”
She turned toward the door. She’d walk out and it would be over. Just like that.
“You know, you despise people who hold on to love for a reason,” Andromeda said from behind her. There was a sniffle. Was she crying? Surely not. “It’s because you’re jealous. You’re too cowardly to ever show your love and then you wonder why no one gives it to you in return.”
Oh, that would leave a bruise.
Mercy closed the door behind her and walked up the stairs to do her job.
Chapter Eleven
“Are you well, Mercy?”
Mrs. Hamilton clutched the packet of letters and the notes Mercy had taken, but hadn’t turned an eye to them yet. Instead, she looked up at Mercy, the soft wrinkles around her eyes deepening with concern.
“Just feeling poorly,” Mercy said. It wasn’t a lie. “I’ll go open the windows and let some air in.”
“Yes, some spring air will do us all good,” Mrs. Hamilton said.
“I can walk with you in the garden later, if it lifts your spirits,” Angelica offered from the sofa.
“Thank you, miss.”
Mercy went about her work, keeping her mind first on putting one foot in front of the other, then on pulling back the curtains and undoing the latches.
She’d been in a fog since that morning a week ago when she’d hidden in Colonel Hamilton’s office, skulking by the window and not coming down until she’d seen Andromeda trot off on her horse. She’d convinced herself that Andromeda’s stiff posture and the fact that she hadn’t looked back meant that she hadn’t really cared.
But…
That was when the fog had set in; it was as if some part of her knew that if she tried to see too far ahead, there would only be the lonely road she’d consigned herself to. If she let her thoughts become too clear, she’d revisit those last moments she’d spent with Andromeda, the horrible words battering her over and over again. Thinking led to feeling, so she’d simply…stopped.
And that worked out well the first time, didn’t it?
Mercy tugged hard at the cord to the curtain and there was a tearing sound.
“Everything all right?” Mrs. Hamilton asked.
“Yes. Sorry, missus.”
Perhaps not quite all right. Mercy had dropped a vase, burnt one of Angelica’s favorite dresses with the iron, and spilled ink on the carpet due to her inattention, but that was better than feeling. Because with feeling came the unvarnished truth: she had erred, and badly so.
She had been a coward. If Andromeda had lied, that would make her a liar, but Mercy hadn’t even done her the courtesy of asking if that was the case. She’d already decided that things would not work out, and she’d jumped at the first proof she had to support it. She’d treated Andromeda like a stranger after sharing a night of passion—more than passion. Simple lust wouldn’t have frightened her as much.
But if she had asked Andromeda about the engagement and been proven right, what then? She couldn’t very well have stopped her from marrying, could she?
You could have tried.
But that would have been ridiculous. To think that she could have fought for love and come out the victor.
“I wasn’t aware that there was a limit on how quickly a person might fall in love. Or on what they’d do to preserve it once they had.”
Mercy pushed at the window, the swollen wood catching on the sill. It was silly, but tears sprang to her eyes at the resistance.
Why does nothing ever go easily for me?
She banged her fist against the wooden frame, but still it didn’t budge.
How could I have hoped for someone like her?
Mercy pushed again, angrily, and the window finally gave. She was suddenly leaning out into the garden, and everything hit her all at once: the singing of the birds, the sunlight on the river, the scent of flower blossoms on cool spring air just verging on warm. The beauty filled her, fast and sharp, and oh, she thought she would burst from it. Had it always been like this?
Yes.
The beauty had been there before Andromeda walked into Mercy’s life, and would be there if she never returned. It was in that moment that Mercy realized she hadn’t stopped herself from feeling for all those long years—she’d stopped herself from living.
Go.
The command was in the flow of the river and rush of the wind through the trees.
GO.
Mercy remembered the way Andromeda had looked at her. Her words. Her touch. She allowed herself, for a moment, to believe that happiness could be hers. Why should she give it up so easily? Engagements were broken every day in America, and for lesser reasons than Mercy Alston loving a woman with her whole heart.
She thought of how she’d felt as she padded to the kitchen that morning she’d last seen Andromeda. She’d accepted that she was in love, and she hadn’t felt lesser for it. She hadn’t given anything up; she hadn’t begun to lose herself. With Andromeda, Mercy had started to find herself. She’d started
to become more than the doubts and the anger and the fear.
Mercy had been wrong once again—great love gave more than it demanded. Great love was what gave Eliza Hamilton a strength of will that was marveled over by men who’d shaped a nation. Great love gave Angelica the hope that each day might bring her grandest wish to fruition. The only thing a great love demanded was trust, and Mercy was ready to pay that cost once again.
She thought she might jump through the window and march downtown, not stopping until she was at Andromeda’s door. But no. She could wait a day, until she was off from work.
Can I?
“You’ve been poorly since Miss Stiel’s visit,” Mrs. Hamilton said in that thoughtful way she had. “Did you catch a grippe from her? I hope it isn’t the fever going about in the wards.”
Mercy’s head whipped back as she looked over her shoulder. “What fever?”
“There’s a sickness about. Some are saying it’s another plague of yellow fever. Oh, just thinking of what my Hamilton and I went through when we were ill with it.” Mrs. Hamilton shook her head. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
Mercy had spent years hiding from her emotions, but she couldn’t force away the worry that gripped her now, thinking of Andromeda shivering and alone. She thought of her parents gone cold and still in that dank basement of her childhood.
“Do you think Androm—Miss Stiel might be ill?” she asked.
Mrs. Hamilton raised her shoulders. “I should hope not. But she would have been rather susceptible after being caught in that storm.”
Mercy threaded her fingers together and tugged with worry. She was a coward, perhaps, but even cowards sometimes found something worth fighting for.
“Mrs. Hamilton, I must ask something of you. I understand if the answer is no, but—”
“Yes, you have my leave to go into town today in addition to your day off tomorrow,” Mrs. Hamilton said. She was going through the notes now, but a smug smile graced her lips. “If there is one thing I know well, it is heartbreak. If you have a chance to mend your heart, or someone else’s, do not wait. If you have a chance to forgive, or be forgiven, do not wait.”
Mrs. Hamilton sighed, and her gaze skipped toward the entry to the hallway, where Hamilton’s bust resided. “No one, not even the best of men, is guaranteed the time to fix all their mistakes. All we can do is attempt to do right by others with the time the good Lord provides us.”
Tears sprang to Mercy’s eyes. Could Mrs. Hamilton know? Could she really be encouraging…? She thought of how kind Eliza had been with John Hunter and his partner. How she listened attentively not only to stories of what had happened on the battlefield with her Hamilton, but of the lives and loves of the people she interviewed. It had been in front of her all this time: not forgiveness, for what was there to forgive about herself, but acceptance. What she’d thought could never be hers.
“Thank you, Mrs. Hamilton. Miss Angelica, I’ll see you soon.”
She turned to go.
“Mercy?” Angelica called out.
Mercy stopped and looked back. The woman had a bright smile on her face. She flapped her arms playfully as she had in the garden. “Good luck.”
Mercy thanked her, and was off. She hadn’t allowed herself to fly on hope’s wings for years. She needed all the luck she could get.
Mercy didn’t come and go three times before knocking this time. She marched straight up to the door and rapped like a redcoat in search of patriots.
She had thought she’d be able to figure out what to say on the way down from Harlem, but she’d been scared out of her wits that the dress shop would be closed for the evening, or that Andromeda would be ill, or that she would have moved up the wedding date. Now Mercy was in front the shop and still had no idea what to say. Well, she had one thing to say, but it would have to wait, for the sake of fairness and propriety.
She knocked again and there was the thump of heels on floorboards before the door was pulled open. Mercy had already suspected it wasn’t Andromeda from the graceless cadence of the footsteps, but her stomach sank and panic rose in her when the door opened to reveal a young woman with frizzy hair and an annoyed expression on her face. It was the same who had rushed out from the back and handed Andromeda coins the last time Mercy had been at the shop.
“Sorry, miss, but we’re closed now,” she said, already pushing the door shut again. Mercy threw an arm out, stopping the door before the latch could be pulled down.
“I’m here to see Miss Stiel,” she said.
“She ain’t here,” the girl said. “I have a lot of work to do, miss. I been holding down the shop for three days now and it seems everyone in the world needs a new spring dress.”
“Three days? Where is she?” Mercy asked. What could keep her away for so long? Illness? Her hand went to the wall beside the door.
Andromeda couldn’t really be sick. She had to be all right. She had to—
“Is there a reason you’re haranguing my apprentice?”
Relief flowed through Mercy so fast that she didn’t remember to panic as she spun and grabbed Andromeda by the shoulders.
“You’re all right!” she exclaimed.
One side of Andromeda’s mouth lifted in what could barely be called a grin. “I suppose you could say that.” She pointedly took a step back, pulling herself away from Mercy’s grip.
Mercy didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she tugged at the sleeves of her dress.
Right. I must say something.
“What do you want, Mercy?” Andromeda asked. Her tone was as hard as her eyes. The vibrancy and cocksureness that had both irked and enthralled Mercy were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps Andromeda was ill. Perhaps—
A sudden realization hit Mercy: she’d been so busy comparing Andromeda to Jane, searching for the method by which Andromeda would finally fail her, that she’d failed to see that she, Mercy, was the Jane in this situation. The cold words she’d spoken to Andromeda had been a most artless parry; she’d meant to do more than deflect. She’d meant to hurt Andromeda, to sever the link between them. She hadn’t thought that she could hurt Andromeda, which may have been worse than actually succeeding.
“I want—” She swallowed, the panic finally rising in her. She said the first thing that came to mind. “I want a dress.”
Andromeda’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You can visit the Widow Murphy down the street if you need a dress.”
“But I want a dress from you,” Mercy said. “You know very well that no other dress can compare to the loveliness of yours. The sleek lines, the sharp contours.” Heat rose to Mercy’s neck, and she choked out the words. “No other dress will do.”
“We’re closed, miss,” the girl repeated from the doorway of the shop.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter, Tara,” Andromeda said, and Mercy felt a sliver of hope, like the sun cresting the horizon. Then a storm cloud passed before it, obliterating it from view. “Some customers want everything on their terms. They can only see that which conveniences them, and everyone else must accommodate their capricious nature.”
The certainty that had driven Mercy to the shop was eroding quickly, but though the words were harsh, they were not unfair.
“Your mistress is quite right, Tara.” She looked at Andromeda and took a deep breath. “Hang the dress. I would like to talk. I once trusted you enough not to jump out of a moving coach when you spirited me off, and while I can’t guarantee that what I say will bring you pleasure, I do not wish to cause you distress.”
Andromeda stared at her, and Mercy really looked at her. The dark circles under her eyes. The way her shoulders were hunched, her dress was wilted, and her hair was flat. She was no less beautiful, but she was sad. Mercy had seen that same sadness reflected back in her looking glass, but now she was the cause of it.
“Please,” she said.
Andromeda whirled and entered the dress shop, waving a hand over her shoulder to indicate that Mercy should follow. “Tara, take your work
home with you. I’ll see you in the morning.”
The girl gathered up a basket of dresses and scurried out, throwing a curious glance back over her shoulder.
Mercy walked into the shop and looked around. “I see your apprentice has cleaned up a bit.”
“She wouldn’t know how to clean if her life depended on it. She can barely manage a needle, let alone a broom.”
“Oh.” So it had been Andromeda, then? Mercy regretted having said anything that first day. The spotless shop lacked the character it had when she’d walked in and looked upon everything Andromeda had created for herself.
“Come on, then.” Andromeda’s voice was still rough, and she was motioning Mercy to the back, where measurements were taken. Mercy swallowed.
“I don’t really need a dress.”
Andromeda let out a hearty laugh at that. “Oh, but you do. If anything good comes of this mess, I hope it will be the improvement of your wardrobe.”
Mercy was taken aback at the sharp words. Perhaps she had been wrong; there might be no way to make things right.
“I beg your pardon. That was rude,” Andromeda said, rubbing her hands over her skirt.
“I deserve no better,” Mercy replied in a low voice, and was met with Andromeda’s exasperated sigh.
“Truly, Mercy, have you learned nothing?” she asked.
“What—”
“Come.” Andromeda went into the back room, the heels of her boots hitting the floorboards with enough pressure to declare her annoyance, and Mercy followed after her.
Chapter Twelve
Andromeda had long fantasized about having Mercy on her pedestal, but not like this. Not after days of working her hands raw alongside hired workers making repairs to her newly purchased building to get it fit for boarders. Days spent trying to avoid thoughts of Mercy, followed by sleepless nights where thinking was the only thing she could do.
Night after night of lying in the darkness, remembering the shock of Mercy’s cold words, like a pan of icy water thrown into the bed that they’d shared. Andromeda had been confused, taken aback by the cruelty of Mercy’s withdrawal, and had lashed out instead of being patient. She’d had every right to, of course, but her anger hadn’t solved anything. She’d ridden her horse hard away from The Grange, the tears freezing on her cheeks in the bizarre cold of the spring morning. She’d given up. Perhaps it had been for the best, but perhaps not.
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