Vision in Blue

by Nicole Byrd

  “You know about the foundling home?” She glanced at him in surprise, then shook her head at herself. Of course, he must. Someone had delivered her to the school, but she had only a vague memory of the shock of it, being swept up out of that hellhole with no notice at all and taken away by stage on what had seemed an almost endless jolting journey to Yorkshire, not knowing if her next home would be as brutal and uncaring as the one she had left. She had been beyond hope, at an age when no child should have such feelings. “Where is it? What is the name?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “You were there—do you not remember?”

  “I was barely six years old when I left, Mr. Peevey, and although some memories will remain with me for a lifetime—the worst memories, I fear—for the home itself I retain only an impression of a large, dingy building.” She could not repress a shiver. The people in charge, those faces she would never forget, but she would not tell him that.

  She could see him ponder the question, following her own thoughts as they ran in rapid circles. She might find more information at the home itself, but if she did, it would not, strictly speaking, be Mr. Peevey’s fault.

  “I shall locate it anyhow, in time,” she added, hoping to encourage him. “But you might at least spare me some effort in searching it out.”

  He seemed to make up his mind. He drew a piece of paper toward him and dipped a pen into an inkwell.

  She held her breath while he scratched out a few lines, then he blotted the ink and pushed the paper toward her. “There. I can tell you no more.”

  Rising, she took two steps toward him, snatching up the scrap of paper before he changed his mind. “Thank you.”

  She turned toward the door, but his dry voice made her hesitate. “Have you left the school, Miss Smith? Where shall I forward your next quarter’s allowance?”

  So the money was to continue? She had not even considered that question. In three months’ time, she hoped devoutly to have found her mother, to have a home, but still, the thought of something to fall back upon was comforting.

  “I’m not sure. I am staying with a friend—a respectable lady—just now. I shall let you know my direction before the next quarter arrives,” she told him. She took another step, then, her hand on the doorknob, paused again to look back at him. “Thank you for your care in the choice of my school, Mr. Peevey. I was indeed happy there.”

  And then she turned to hide the fact that she had to swallow hard against the lump in her throat, and shut the door quietly behind her.

  Lily was waiting, and the clerk, his expression inquisitive, stared at them from his perch on the high stool.

  Gemma nodded to the maid and they left, making their way as rapidly as possible out of the cramped confines of the Inn’s neighborhood and back to the wider streets of the west side. This time, Gemma did not lose her way, and she was just as happy to have the time that it took to go by foot so that she could think.

  Several times she glanced at the paper before she tucked it carefully into her reticule. She must have something to do while she waited for her brother to arrive in London, or she would have screaming fits simply from frustration. So she would go to the home, which by the directions she’d been given was not far outside of London, even though the idea of revisiting it made her shiver. But she must see what facts she could uncover.

  By the time they reached Louisa’s rented house, Gemma found that her hostess and her companion had returned. Gemma washed the dust of the street off her hands and face and changed into the dress Lily had pressed for her. Louisa, too, had changed, and even Miss Pomshack had donned a dress of severe gray silk. Presently, the three women went into dinner together. As they sat around the table, Louisa extolled the beauties of several new gowns that she had ordered.

  Gemma tried to appear interested in the litany of millinery delights that her new friend related, but her own thoughts kept returning to the journey she must make, and the trepidation she felt over the destination that lay at the end of it. She shared nothing of her own day, somehow not ready to talk about her double disappointments. Besides, she had been so accustomed to not speaking of her doubtful antecedents that it was hard, she found, to break the habit.

  “And the last dress is a nice jonquil hue, as cheerful as morning sunshine, and trimmed with white,” Louisa finished. “Much like the sprigs on the one you are wearing, but a bit deeper in hue.”

  “I’m sure that, with your fair hair, the color will suit you admirably,” Gemma answered as she nibbled at a piece of cake.

  Louisa nodded. “I hope so. And, oh, I saw a length of deep blue that would bring out your eyes wonderfully, Gemma. If you decide to order a new gown, it’s just the right shade—”

  Gemma shook her head with unladylike vigor. “No!”

  Louisa looked up at her in surprise. “But why? You have not even seen it.”

  “I just—I do not wear blue,” Gemma said, bringing her voice under control with some effort. “It—it’s a long story. I do not care for the color.”

  “It’s your choice, of course,” Louisa agreed, though she raised her brows for a moment at the vehemence of Gemma’s tone. But then Louisa seemed at last to lose interest in the topic of dresses. Her expression dreamy, she dipped her spoon into a plate of blancmange. “And I met a man in one of the shops. . . .”

  Relieved not to be pressed to explain herself further, Gemma said, “Really? Someone of import?”

  Louisa blushed. “Oh, no, just a Lieutenant McGregor, but he did have a way about him.” Her voice faded, and her thoughts seemed far away.

  So they finished the meal in a companionable silence. Gemma thought of the high-pitched chatter of female voices at Miss Maysham’s Academy, where mealtimes had never been silent, and how pleasant this was, in contrast. She felt a rush of gratitude for the new friend who had, with such trust, taken Gemma into her home.

  Gemma only hoped that someday she could repay Louisa properly, and that, in the meantime, she would give her friend no reason to regret her hospitality.

  When Louisa rose from the table, Gemma and Miss Pomshack followed suit, and they all returned to the drawing room where they chatted until they went up to bed. And although Gemma found her guest chamber pleasant and the bed comfortable, it seemed a long time before she could drop off to sleep.

  To Gemma’s chagrin, she slept later than she’d intended. When she opened her eyes to stare at the unfamiliar rose-colored hangings around her bed, she saw bright sunshine peeking round the corners of the draperies. She had to struggle for a moment to remember where she was.

  As memory rushed back, along with a surge of both excitement and dread as she recalled her planned journey, Gemma sat up at once. Pushing aside the bedclothes, she rose, washed, and dressed, with some help from Lily, who entered the room in time to help her hook her gown.

  “Is your mistress up and about?” Gemma asked.

  “Oh, yes, Miss Louisa is downstairs, miss,” the maid told her. “Breakfast is laid out in the dining room.”

  Gemma hurried down the staircase. When she entered the dining room, she found the other two women at the table. The post had come, and Louisa was examining a note.

  “It’s from my fiancé,” she explained, adding to the footman who hovered in the background, “Smelters, tell Cook that Sir Lucas will be joining us for dinner tonight. And I have a question for you about the carriage. Lucas tells me that by the time we reached the city, he noticed a slight wobble in the right front wheel. He tells me it may need to be examined by a wheelwright before we use the chaise again. Do you know of a qualified craftsman?”

  “Indeed, miss,” the footman assured her. “Leave it to me. I shall go round and fetch Mr. Titmus at once.”

  While the two conferred, Miss Pomshack placidly chewed on a slice of lamb, and Gemma took a bite of toast. Louisa finished her coddled egg, then announced that she was ready to depart on another shopping excursion.

  Again, Gemma begged off. When the other two women had left th
e house, and Smelters had departed to see about the carriage wheel, she was able to slip out the front door without being noticed. For this journey, she had no wish for witnesses. It was bad enough that the household knew her to be of limited resources and small wardrobe. She had no wish for Lily to witness the wretched institution in which Gemma had spent a part of her childhood.

  So she hailed a cab herself and, wincing at the fee he demanded to take her to the village a few miles outside of London, set off on her journey, trying to quell the nervous tremors that made her stomach hollow and her head ache.

  The trip was longer than the last, but because she dreaded the arrival, it still seemed too short. She clutched the side of the dirty seat as the hackney bounced over holes in the road and watched as the outskirts of the city fell away. They passed fields and greens where cows grazed, then the hackney slowed as it ascended a small hill, and suddenly she recalled this last mile before the home came into view. Gemma felt herself tense as memories flooded back.

  When the cab rolled to a stop, the horse stamping its feet and making its harness jingle, she had to take a deep breath before she could force herself to climb down from the cab and face her memories. On the ground, she handed several coins up to the surly-looking driver, then looked about her.

  The house was large and shabby. Its windows had panes streaked with dust, and some sickly looking ivy clung to the outer walls. Some of the leaves were brown, and the stringy vines seemed reluctant to take firm hold of the building. Gemma had every sympathy for such an aversion. Still, the structure was not as enormous as it had seemed to a five-year-old’s terrified gaze when she’d first been delivered into the clutches of the woman who’d waited inside.

  Was the matron she remembered still here? It had been more than a dozen years since Gemma had left. Perhaps there would be a new woman in charge of the foundling hospital, in which case Gemma could deal with a less formidable opponent.

  Anyhow, she was a child no longer, she told herself. There was no reason to cower here before she had even knocked on the door.

  “Wait for me. I shall not be long,” she told the driver. He frowned as he clutched the driving reins and looked about him at the deserted road.

  Gemma wanted nothing more than to climb into the shabby conveyance and hurry back to the relative sanctuary of Louisa’s London home. But she might find some answers here, so she forced herself to take one step forward, then another, until she made her way up the short path to the wooden door with its peeling paint.

  She clutched the knocker, and, to disguise her rapidly fading confidence, rapped smartly against the panel.

  Waiting, she heard nothing. Was no one at home? That was impossible. And she would not be ignored. She had not suffered through the long drive and all her nervous qualms to be turned away unseen.

  She knocked again.

  At last, Gemma heard a faint rustle of sound, and presently, the door creaked open. For a moment, gazing toward the empty-looking hall, Gemma saw no one. Then she lowered her gaze and found a small girl peeping around the heavy door.

  “No one is ’ome to visitors today,” she chanted, as if this was a phrase she had learned by rote.

  “I wish”—Gemma had to clear her throat before she could finish the sentence—“to see the matron. I have important business with her. Is Mrs. Craigmore still in charge here?”

  Putting a thumb in her mouth, the girl nodded.

  Looking down at the tangled dirty hair that needed washing and brushing, the faded dress of indeterminate color and the pinafore still faintly blue, both also in need of laundering, Gemma took a deep breath, then wished she had not. The hall still smelled strongly of cooked cabbage and half-rotten potatoes. That, and thin gruel for the morning meal, had made up the bulk of their sustenance during the year and more that Gemma had stayed at the foundling home. She recalled standing at the long table before each meal while all the girls chorused, “Thank’u, Miz Craigmore.” And she remembered as well the ache of hunger in her belly and wished now she had thought to bring a sugar drop for the child standing before her.

  “You’d better go,” the little girl whispered. “Nothing ’ere for a pretty lady like yourself. Lest you want to hire a kitchen maid? I’d like to work for you, miss.”

  Gemma bent to touch the girl’s cheek. “I was once just like you,” she said, her voice very low. “And you can be much more than a scullery maid, you know.”

  Looking bewildered, the child shook her head.

  Gemma heard a firmer tread, and she straightened quickly. The child, with fear again in her eyes, looked over her shoulder.

  “Who is it, Polly?” The nasal voice made Gemma’s mouth go dry. But no, it was not the matron, but another woman, thin instead of stout. “If it’s the butcher, tell him—” The woman paused when she saw Gemma.

  “Yes, madam? How may I be of assistance?” she demanded, her tone polite but her dark eyes suspicious. She made a motion of dismissal to the girl.

  “Yes, Miz Bushnard.” The youngster ran up the stairs and disappeared from view.

  Had Miss Bushnard been here during Gemma’s stay? She wasn’t sure. Gemma braced herself, waiting for the woman to say, “Gemma Smith!” and order her, no doubt, back to scrubbing pots.

  But Miss Bushnard did not seem to know her. The woman’s expression was closed, and no gleam of recognition lit up her thin face.

  “Are you looking for a servant girl, miss—?”

  “No, not today. I come in search of information,” Gemma said, trying to sound assured. “I wish to know some particulars about a young girl who was given into your care sixteen years ago.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I regret that we have no records dating back to that time.”

  Gemma gazed at her in disbelief. “But the foundling home has been here for much longer than—”

  Miss Bushnard shook her head. “We had a fire two years ago. It destroyed any records dating prior to that time. I’m sorry we cannot help you.”

  Gemma hesitated, trying to think of some way to refute the woman’s statement. The words were too pat, she thought, and she did not believe them for a moment. Fire? Everything in this hallway was just as it had been those many years ago.

  “If you will excuse me,” the other woman added. “As you must understand, with all the children here to look out for, my duties leave me no time for idle chatter.”

  Gemma stopped herself just in time from blurting out that, as she remembered it, the staff’s duties were mostly confined to caning children who fell asleep over their scrubbing brushes.

  Before she could conjure up further argument, she found herself being ushered back over the threshold. The door shut behind her with a thud.

  It was a lie—she knew it was a lie! Gemma studied the facade of the building and saw no sign of smoke damage, no recent repairs, and certainly, no repainting of the dingy outer walls. Nor had she smelled any lingering odor of smoke inside the hall. Fire, indeed. The matron here wanted no one to look at her records. Why? How could such scrutiny harm her?

  Gemma climbed reluctantly back into the hackney, and the driver clucked to his horse and twitched the reins to circle back the way they had come. The cab rolled forward. Gemma felt the ache of unshed tears in her throat. The matron must know something about Gemma’s background before she had been sent here. Someone had brought her—had it been the same solicitor who had taken her away again later? Gemma wished she could remember. Had her mother had any contact with her while Gemma was here? Had her unknown father visited, or at least paid for her support here, too? If so, there might be, must be, something in the home’s ledgers that might give her a name, an address, some way she could seek out her parents.

  “Stop!” Gemma called to the driver. They had passed out of sight of the foundling home as the road dipped behind a cluster of trees. “Let me out here.”

  “You gonna walk back to town?” the driver demanded.

  “No, just wait here a few minutes,” she told him, ign
oring his frown. “I—I forgot something. I shall be back momentarily.”

  She hoped. As she hurried back up the narrow lane, Gemma knew she was being foolish. Most likely, Lord Gabriel would arrive in London within a few days. Most likely, he would be willing to help her set up a meeting with her mother. Her mother wished a reunion—the note said so.

  Yet, her brother did not know that Gemma awaited his arrival. What if, despite the newspaper item, it was a week, a month before he came to town? What if, for some reason, he changed his mind and did not come at all this Season? And worst of all, what if he did not feel as her mother did, and he refused to help her?

  Gemma would be left as ignorant, and as alone, as she had ever been. The day of reckoning had been delayed for so long that suddenly it seemed impossible to be patient for another hour. Inside that grim building, she felt with a sudden intuition, lay information that would be of value to her. Gemma would have bet her life upon it.

  She would not be put off so easily. She was not a frightened child any longer, Gemma told herself. There was no reason for the matron to be so taciturn. Had she been sworn to secrecy, too, like Mr. Peevey?

  Gemma was sick to death of questions with no answers. She had to make one more try. If those in charge here did not want to help her, she would help herself. God knew, she remembered the inside layout of the house all too vividly. On her hands and knees, she had scrubbed the bleached oak floorboards of every room on the first two floors. She knew the office in the back where Mrs. Craigmore kept a shelf full of ledgers and notebooks. It had not occurred to the young Gemma to wonder what was inside them, but the grownup Gemma did, and the hidden contents seemed to call to her. Her name might be written inside one of them, and could it also spell out the names of her antecedents?

  The mere possibility spurred her on. Keeping herself screened by the trees, Gemma slipped around to the back of the building where a few sad-looking hens, as dispirited in appearance as the children inside the big edifice, pecked at the sparse greenery. The sun had dipped past its zenith, and the shadows were growing longer. Gemma looked about her, but she saw no one.