Someone to Trust
Page 33
Or so she always told herself.
She was content with her life and was only occasionally restless with the feeling that surely there ought to be more, that perhaps she should be making a greater effort to live her life. She had been offered marriage by three different men—the shopkeeper where she went occasionally, when she could afford it, to buy a book; one of the governors of the orphanage, whose wife had recently died and left him with four young children; and Joel Cunningham, her lifelong best friend. She had rejected all three offers for varying reasons and wondered sometimes if it had been foolish to do so, as there were not likely to be many more offers, if any. The prospect of a continuing life of spinsterhood sometimes seemed dreary.
Joel was with her when the letter arrived.
She was tidying the schoolroom after dismissing the children for the day. The monitors for the week—John Davies and Ellen Payne—had collected the slates and chalk and the counting frames. But while John had stacked the slates neatly on the cupboard shelf allotted for them and put all the chalk away in the tin and replaced the lid, Ellen had shoved the counting frames haphazardly on top of paintbrushes and palettes on the bottom shelf instead of arranging them in their appointed place side by side on the shelf above so as not to bend the rods or damage the beads. The reason she had put them in the wrong place was obvious. The second shelf was occupied by the water pots used to swill paint brushes and an untidy heap of paint-stained cleaning rags.
“Joel,” Anna said, a note of long suffering in her voice, “could you at least try to get your pupils to put things away where they belong after an art class? And to clean the water pots first? Look! One of them even still has water in it. Very dirty water.”
Joel was sitting on the corner of the battered teacher’s desk, one booted foot braced on the floor, the other swinging free. His arms were crossed over his chest. He grinned at her.
“But the whole point of being an artist,” he said, “is to be a free spirit, to cast aside restricting rules and draw inspiration from the universe. My job is to teach my pupils to be true artists.”
She straightened up from the cupboard and directed a speaking glance his way. “What utter rot and nonsense,” she said.
He laughed outright. “Anna, Anna,” he said. “Here, let me take that pot from you before you burst with indignation or spill it down your dress.”
But before he could say anything more, the classroom door was flung open without the courtesy of a knock to admit Bertha Reed, a thin, flaxen-haired fourteen-year-old who acted as Miss Ford’s helper now that she was old enough. She was bursting with excitement and waving a folded paper in one raised hand.
“There is a letter for you, Miss Snow,” she half shrieked. “It was delivered by special messenger from London and Miss Ford would have brought it herself but Tommy is bleeding all over her sitting room and no one can find Nurse Jones. Maddie punched him in the nose.”
“It is high time someone did,” Joel said, strolling closer to Anna. “I suppose he was pulling one of her braids again.”
Anna scarcely heard. A letter? From London? By special messenger? For her?
“Whoever can it be from, Miss Snow?” Bertha screeched, apparently not particularly concerned about Tommy and his bleeding nose. “Who do you know in London? No, don’t tell me—that ought to have been whom. Whom do you know in London? I wonder what they are writing about. And it came by special messenger, all that way. It must have cost a fortune. Oh, do open it.”
Her blatant inquisitiveness might have seemed impertinent, but really, it was so rare for any of them to receive a letter that word always spread very quickly and everyone wanted to know all about it. Occasionally someone who had left both the orphanage and Bath to work elsewhere would write, and the recipient would almost invariably share the contents with everyone else. Such missives were kept as prized possessions and read over and over until they were virtually threadbare.
Anna did not recognize the handwriting, which was both bold and precise. It was a masculine hand, she felt sure. The paper felt thick and expensive. It did not look like a personal letter.
“Oliver is in London,” Bertha said wistfully. “But I don’t suppose it can be from him, can it? His writing does not look anything like that, and why would he write to you anyway? The four times he has written since he left here, it was to me. And he is not going to send any letter by special messenger, is he?”
Oliver Jamieson had been apprenticed to a bootmaker in London two years ago at the age of fourteen and had promised to send for Bertha and marry her as soon as he got on his feet. Twice each year since then he had faithfully written a five- or six-line letter in large, careful handwriting. Bertha had shared his sparse news on each occasion and wept over the letters until it was a wonder they were still legible. There were three years left in his apprenticeship before he could hope to be on his feet and able to support a wife. They were both very young, but the separation did seem cruel. Anna always found herself hoping that Oliver would remain faithful to his childhood sweetheart.
“Are you going to turn it over and over in your hands and hope it will divulge its secrets without your having to break the seal?” Joel asked.
Stupidly, Anna’s hands were trembling. “Perhaps there is some mistake,” she said. “Perhaps it is not for me.”
He came up behind her and looked over her shoulder. “Miss Anna Snow,” he said. “It certainly sounds like you. I do not know any other Anna Snows. Do you, Bertha?”
“I do not, Mr. Cunningham,” she said after pausing to think. “But whatever can it be about?”
Anna slid her thumb beneath the seal and broke it. And yes, indeed, the paper was a thick, costly vellum. It was not a long letter. It was from Somebody Brumford—she could not read the first name, though it began with a J. He was a solicitor. She read through the letter once, swallowed, and then read it again more slowly.
“The day after tomorrow,” she murmured.
“In a private chaise,” Joel added. He had been reading over her shoulder.
“What is the day after tomorrow?” Bertha demanded, her voice an agony of suspense. “What chaise?”
Anna looked at her blankly. “I am being summoned to London to discuss my future,” she said. There was a faint buzzing in her ears.
“Oh! By who?” Bertha asked, her eyes as wide as saucers. “By whom, I mean.”
“Mr. J. Brumford, a solicitor,” Anna said.
“Josiah, I think that says,” Joel said. “Josiah Brumford. He is sending a private chaise to fetch you, and you are to pack a bag for at least a few days.”
“To London?” Bertha’s voice was breathless with awe.
“Whatever am I to do?” Anna’s mind seemed to have stopped working. Or, rather, it was working, but it was whirring out of control, like the innards of a broken clock.
“What you are to do, Anna,” Joel said, pushing a chair up behind her knees and setting his hands on her shoulders to press her gently down onto it, “is pack a bag for a few days and then go to London to discuss your future.”
“But what future?” she asked.
“That is what is to be discussed,” he pointed out.
The buzzing in her ears grew louder.
Photo by Sharon Pelletier
Mary Balogh has written more than one hundred historical novels and novellas, more than thirty of which have been New York Times bestsellers. They include the Bedwyn saga, the Simply quartet, the Huxtable quintet, the seven-part Survivors' Club series, and the Westcott series.
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