Almost Yours (Ladies of Scandal Book 3)

by Hilly Mason

  Why did she let that happen?

  A carriage was waiting for them a few blocks away from the harbor, parked in front of a bakery. Jack held the door open to her, waiting for her to enter.

  “Could we wait for just a wee bit?” Isla said. She sniffed the air, and her stomach growled. She could smell the fresh bread wafting from the bakery and she knew there was no way she could leave without buying some. She turned around and stared longingly at the display at the window. Walking up to it, she pressed her hands on the glass and looked at the array of freshly baked breads and pastries. If there was one thing she couldn’t resist, it was baked goods.

  “Are ye going to buy something? Or are you just going to drool all over my window?” Isla looked up at a middle-aged woman standing at the entrance of the bakery. She was tall and lanky, like Isla, but covered in wrinkles, and her hair was a shocking sleet gray, tied back in a severe bun.

  She didn’t look like the friendly bakers she would visit in London. Isla took a hesitant step back. “Sorry, mum,” she muttered, suddenly feeling like she was ten years old again and had been found stealing sweet cakes from the kitchen.

  The woman’s eyes crinkled with laughter. “Oh, I did not mean to scare you off, girl. Come in, will you?”

  Isla glanced back at Jack, who was leaning against the carriage. He shrugged, obviously not in a hurry.

  “Are ye from the England, then?” Isla asked the woman as she entered the shop. Her senses were bombarded with delicious smells of cakes, pies, and bread. Her mouth watered instantly.

  “Yes, I grew up in Liverpool, and fell in love with an American,” the woman said. She then looked pointedly out the window at Jack. “Same for you, then?”

  To her displeasure, Isla blushed. “Och, no. It’s nothing like that,” she insisted. “I’m meeting my parents here in America. He is my chaperone, I suppose.” She assumed their ruse of being married was over now that they were off the ship. “I’m going to help my parents establish a menagerie in Philadelphia.”

  The woman’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows rose high on her forehead. “Is that so? Are you talking about the Murrays, then?”

  “Aye.”

  “I do have an affinity for animals, and keep a few of them myself. Nothing too exotic though, except if you count the black bears.”

  “Black bears,” Isla repeated with a bubble of excitement. “Oh, I would love to see a bear.”

  “Well, you should come by my house sometimes. I take in injured wildlife and allow them to heal before releasing them back into the wild. Some of them, however, seem to want to stay. I also have a red fox and an opossum that have turned themselves into pets.”

  “That sounds amazing. Oh!” Isla glanced back at Jack. “I should probably be leaving.”

  The woman twirled around and began packing a loaf of bread in brown paper. She tied it up with twine and handed it to Isla. “Here you go. It’s on the house. Come back at any time if you would like to chat. My name is Marie Davies.”

  After she left the bakery, Isla walked up to the carriage holding the parcel of bread.

  “What a nice lady,” Isla said as she sat down in the carriage. Jack slid in after her. “She gave me bread without needing me to pay for it!”

  Jack said nothing. He wasn’t even looking in her direction.

  Isla frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  He glanced over at her, surprised. “Why do you still talk to me when you hate me? Like nothing has happened between us?”

  “Hate ye?” Isla shook her head. “I’m angry with you, aye, but I don’t think I have a hating bone in my body. At least, not for ye.” She unwrapped the paper packaging and took a big bite out of the bread.

  Jack shook his head slowly, as though trying to understand her words.

  “Anyway,” Isla said, after taking another bite. “Hating takes too much energy. That’s what Lisabeth always told me. Want a bite?”

  He looked at the bread like he didn’t know what it was. He then shook his head again.

  Isla shrugged and tore another piece off with her teeth. She hoped that he didn’t see the tears in her eyes. It was hard to swallow the bread against the lump in her throat.

  No, Isla did not hate Jack. And honestly, she wasn’t angry with him either. The closer they got to the Murrays, the more her heart sank. She would soon say goodbye to him very soon. She should be relieved, but she most definitely was not.

  Her heart was incredibly unsettled. She didn’t know whether to fall into his arms or to never look him in the eye again. What would be the outcome, either way? He was going far away. Her heart would then heal, and she would move on with her life. She should never had fallen in love with Patrick, just as she should never had fallen for Jack. What good comes from love but heartbreak?

  Slowly, her hand crept nearer to Jack’s, and then rested on top of his. He glanced over at her in surprise, but her gaze was firmly directed towards her lap. She dared not move her eyes, for fear she would break down completely. But she wanted this one last connection before he left her forever.

  Jack turned his hand so that their palms were touching. Slowly, he weaved his fingers in between hers and gently squeezed her hand. Isla closed her eyes and let out a quiet breath. It was like they were back to being children, when they would sit by the river near Cameron, dangling their legs over the riverbed, holding hands like sweethearts. She hadn’t thought about the memory in so many years. In fact, she found that many of her old memories had come to the surface since Jack revealed who he was. Would she remember more of her childhood once she met her parents?

  The carriage began to roll down the street, jolting their bodies and making Isla retrieve her hand back to her lap. Jack gave her a brief smile and turned his head away before she could return it.

  The city rolled past them and soon the buildings were replaced by trees and rolling hills.

  “I thought the Murrays lived in Philadelphia?” Isla asked. “Not in the middle of nowhere.”

  “It’s not too far now,” Jack reassured her. The carriage continued up a hill, alongside a bubbling creek. They reached a break in the trees and Isla finally saw the Murrays’ estate.

  It was, of course, not as massive as Ramsbury back in England, but it held its own. Built at the center of the hill was one large manor, three stories, and painted dark red. Surrounding the manor was a flower and vegetable garden, and further down the hill were smaller buildings that Isla assumed housed the servants. And to Isla’s pleasure, in the distance she could hear the steady rush of a river.

  The carriage pulled up to the front of the manor. “I can’t believe we finally made it,” Isla told Jack as their driver handed them their belongings. “At one point I thought I would just end up as fish food in the Atlantic.”

  “And I thought I was the pessimistic one.”

  Isla snorted with laughter and quickly composed herself. She didn’t mean to be so chummy with Jack.

  At least we won’t leave on terrible terms, she thought.

  The massive red door to the house suddenly opened as they approached. A woman of middle years approached them. She was tall (a good sign, Isla thought, that this could really be my mother), with gray hair and a thin, sunken face covered in deep wrinkles, although she didn’t appear to be much over fifty. She held herself in an elegant manner and wore an expensive silk dress. Jewels adorned her neck and dangled from her ears. Her face broke into a wide smile, and she held her arms out in welcome.

  Isla wasn’t receptive to the embrace. She folded her hands across her abdomen and stared back at the stranger. The woman noticed Isla’s hesitation and immediately dropped her arms.

  “Isla, my dear. It’s your mother.” Mrs. Murray had a faded Scottish accent, higher pitched than Isla’s low, somewhat husky voice. Isla eyed the woman warily. Was she really expecting to jump into Mrs. Murray’s arms like she was a wee lass?

  “Hello, Mrs. Murray,” Isla said instead. The woman firmed her lips for a few brief seconds before smil
ing again.

  “Oh, of course, you must be tired. Come inside. We have lunch waiting.” She flashed a glanced at Jack. “You can go to your quarters,” she told him with a little bit less warmth in her voice.

  Isla turned towards at Jack. He wasn’t going to come eat with us?

  Jack gave Isla a quick glance and then turned around. Without saying a word to her, he lumbered down the hill to the row of buildings housing the servants.

  “He was a great help in getting me over here. Shouldn’t he have lunch with us?” Isla asked the woman as they walked up the steps to the front door.

  Mrs. Murray laughed like she had just said a joke. “That brute in my dining hall? He would only break my chairs if he sat in them—if he’d be able to fit in the first place. Those chairs are from Persia and are very expensive.”

  So? Isla thought. Am I supposed to be impressed? She quickly curbed her thoughts. She didn’t want to judge her mother so quickly.

  Once they stepped inside the house Isla whistled softly.

  The woman had refined tastes, reminding her of Diana MacNevin, who owned many fine furnishings before a fire destroyed their house.

  But the difference between Diana and Mrs. Murray was that the older woman was extremely disorganized. It was like she had walked into a disorderly museum. Under her feet was a long, Persian rug. And as she glanced down the foyer she noticed the hall lined with old portraits and landscapes in no particular sequence. Under the paintings were a multitude of small tables, holding anything from vases from Greece to tiny statues and trinkets that looked to be from India and China. Everywhere Isla turned her head, there was something to look at.

  “We are collectors,” Mrs. Murray explained, noticing Isla’s bewildered look. “However, I suppose we’ve transitioned more into animal collecting. I will show you what animals we have so far after we have finished lunch.”

  Somehow, Isla wasn’t very comfortable with the phrase “animal collecting.” But again, she tried not to pass judgment without getting to know the Murrays a little bit more. She followed Mrs. Murray to the dining room, where a row of servants waited for them. One servant, a girl no older than fifteen, pulled out two chairs for Mrs. Murray and Isla to sit in.

  “Thank you,” Isla said to the servant.

  “No need to speak to them,” Mrs. Murray remarked.

  Isla turned sharply. “At Ramsbury we always thank our servants,” she told her.

  “Well, we do things a bit differently here in Philadelphia.” She waved her hand dismissively, as though the topic was of no importance. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, my dear.”

  Isla shook her head as though to clear it. “Och, I do.” Another servant came in and served them a plate consisting of baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and seasoned green beans. She scooped a mouthful of potatoes into her mouth and chewed, relishing the buttery goodness. “Where the devil do I start?”

  The older woman winced at her words with just the slightest twitch of her mouth and eyebrow. “It’s remarkable how your speech is so unrefined, even after going to that boarding school in England.”

  Isla pursed her lips and thought of some satisfying things to say to her, but ultimately swallowed the words down. Instead, she asked the woman the one question that had been plaguing her mind for the entire journey over to America.

  “Why can’t I remember you? Why do I only remember being at an orphanage?”

  Mrs. Murray set her fork down and sighed. “Well, to be quite clear, Isla, you ran away.”

  Well, that didn’t seem to out of the ordinary for a woman like Isla. She wanted to run away from situations all throughout her life. If she remembered correctly, she had ran away from Ramsbury School at least five times. The last time, Lady Sophia, bless her kind heart, traveled all the way to York to find her and bring her back to Ramsbury. Isla had it in her mind that she would travel back to Scotland, after having a silly fight with one of her friends.

  “You can leave if you want,” Sophia had told her. “But we will miss you very much. You have become part of the family, you know.”

  Isla had adopted the surname St. George since she did not remember her own. But she never thought herself as part of the family until Sophia had said those words to her. Isla had gone home with Sophia that day and never tried to escape again.

  Until recently.

  Isla swallowed against a lump in your throat.

  “Since you said you don’t remember your memories of your time before the orphanage, I would hazard a guess that you hit your head sometime during your escape,” Mrs. Murray continued.

  Was it that simple? Isla absentmindedly swirled her mashed potatoes with her fork.

  “Can ye tell me what my childhood was like, then? I verra much would like to remember. I ken of someone’s father who had amnesia,” she explained, thinking of Diana’s father. “When she talked about stories of their past, he slowly started to remember.”

  Mrs. Murray took a sip of her lemonade and then cleared her throat. “Och, my dear. You were the sweetest bairn. Red hair with cheeks to match. You loved playing outside with our chickens and our horses. I should have known to keep a better eye on you. You had a taste for adventure, you did.”

  Those were all well-known things about Isla that anyone could figure out with a bit of sleuthing. Suddenly, the food tasted like ash in her mouth, and her stomach revolted. She set her fork down and sipped on the water the servant girl had poured for her.

  “You, uh… had a pet chicken. You named him Filbert, and the thing would follow you around everywhere,” her mother continued.

  Lord, how she wanted to remember. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine it and was met with an ache so terribly real that she choked on sudden tears. Slowly, she started to let down the defensive wall she put up since arriving at the estate. She didn’t want to fight it any more.

  “Oh, my dear. Don’t cry.” Mrs. Murray rose from her seat and walked around the table to Isla. She knelt down and wrapped her slender arms around Isla’s shoulders. “Leave us,” she ordered the servants. They fled.

  She may not be what she imagined her mother to be, but she was her mother nonetheless. Isla breathed in deeply. Mrs. Murray smelled of expensive perfume, the same kind Isla could catch a whiff of whenever a wealthy woman came into the gaming hells to gamble away their fortune.

  The door to the dining room opened as a man entered. Mrs. Murray pulled away from Isla as though caught doing something wrong. She straightened her skirts and cleared her throat.

  “Mr. Murray, this is your daughter, Isla.”

  Isla looked up at the man. A similar age to Mrs. Murray, Mr. Murray had graying blonde hair and sky blue eyes. His face was clean-shaven save for his sideburns. His thin lips formed into a smile as Isla let him embrace her.

  “My daughter, I have missed you. I never thought I would see you again. When we saw the article about you in the newspaper, it seemed too good to be true. But your mother knew right away to contact you. A women’s intuition, I suppose.”

  “I cannot believe that people are reading about me all the way over here!” Isla exclaimed, bristling with pride.

  “You’ve been the talk of Philadelphia,” Mrs. Murray told her. “And everyone is excited for you to join our troupe.”

  “Everyone?” Isla repeated. “How many people are there going to be in this troupe?”

  The Murrays glanced at one another. “Why don’t we give you a tour,” Mrs. Murray suggested.

  “Oh,” Isla looked at her half-eaten food with a bit of disappointment, but she realized food would not be scarce at a place like this as it was on the ship. “All right, then.”

  As they walked back through the foyer, a servant handed both Mrs. Murray and Isla a parasol. Isla couldn’t remember the last time she had used such a thing, and never liked them much, not wanting her hands to be bound up by holding such a frilly thing. But she took it without remark and stepped outside.

  She almost forgot about how hot it was ou
tside, and was quickly thankful for the parasol blocking the sun. As she followed the Murrays towards the back of the estate, she glanced over to the servants’ quarters, where she assumed Jack was resting. Maybe he was already getting ready to leave, to go liberate his brother and start a new adventure.

  Her breath stopped in her throat as she saw a door to one of the rooms open. Jack’s large form materialized in the opening before he stepped outside. He shielded his eyes as he looked across the hill towards the main house. Their eyes locked for a brief moment before Jack turned around and walked out of sight.

  “What is it, Isla?” Mrs. Murray asked, following her gaze. “Was Jack a bother to you during your journey?”

  She paused for a moment. “No, he wasn’t,” she finally said. “Don’t you normally have him around you, since he is your bodyguard?”

  “Bodyguard?” Mrs. Murray repeated, her brows furrowed in confusion. She then laughed. “He is not my bodyguard.”

  “What is he then?”

  “An errands boy, mostly,” she said dismissively.

  An errands boy? Why then did he say that he had killed someone for these people? Did he lie about that as well?

  As they walked down the hill, Isla started to notice not just the usual livestock of horses and sheep, but another horse-like creature with black and white stripes, as well as monkeys and colorful, exotic birds in cages. She watched as a group of men rolled Golden’s crate over to a cage no larger than the crate she was already in.

  “Is that where Golden is going to stay?” she asked her mother.

  “Golden? You mean that lion? Of course. Where else would she go?”

  “I think she would fare better in a pen, like the horses.”

  Mrs. Murray laughed loudly. “You do know that lions jump, right? I wouldn’t want her to kill all of my other animals and leave me out of business.”

  “Golden is tame…”

  “She is a wild animal. And she’s staying in her cage.” Mrs. Murray said firmly. “Come on, now.”

  She took Isla by her arm and steered her away from Golden and towards the other animals. “So we have our menagerie with a wide variety of animals, including some exotic birds from South America, and a couple of wolves from Canada. We decided that the menagerie would be rather dull if we kept it the way it is, so we decided to add human wonders to the show.”