“Don’t tell me,” Grandmother said in disgust.
Priscilla’s cheeks flushed. Her face had given her away.
“He’s coming back,” she said firmly. “And even if he doesn’t, I’m still going.”
Her new life, her exciting, fabulous, adventurous life, was waiting for her. She just had to get there.
“He’s not coming back,” Grandmother said flatly.
“He is,” Priscilla said. “They both are. They promised.”
Mother and Grandmother had both been perfect as a portrait, and they had been left behind. Priscilla had been a curious, exuberant child, and she had been left behind. But that was then. Things were different. She wasn’t a baby anymore.
The thought that Papa and Grandfather weren’t waiting for her, weren’t hoping to see her, weren’t anxiously awaiting her arrival was too awful to consider.
But even if Grandmother was right, it didn’t matter. Priscilla was an adult. Once her inheritance was in hand, she wouldn’t need anyone. She could become an intrepid adventurer with or without her father and grandfather.
Once they saw her bravery and mettle, they would be the ones who were sorry they’d ever left her behind.
“What do you have that they want?” Grandmother asked with a sigh.
Perhaps very little. But at the least, she would not be a cross to bear.
She’d been managing her pin money since she started receiving it at fifteen. The accounts at the linen-drapers and other shops were in Grandfather’s name, and she supposed her annual fifty guinea allowance was meant for pleasures and fripperies. It was twice what the lead housekeeper earned and equal to the butler, but far more than Priscilla required.
Instead, she’d been saving half of her allowance every year. It was now up to two hundred pounds—about half what she’d earn per year from the interest on her trust. Not riches, although she believed Papa and Grandfather would be proud of her resourcefulness.
But she didn’t do it for them. Those two hundred pounds had been set aside to send letters and gifts home to Grandmother, once Priscilla finally could set out for her real life.
“You think too hard,” Grandmother said as if there could be no worse flaw. “You concentrate, concentrate, concentrate, but on all the wrong things.”
Priscilla shook her head. Grandmother didn’t know her. Never had.
And yet Priscilla could not deny a niggling worm of truth in the accusation. She longed to believe she was an open, happy-go-lucky wild thing who couldn’t wait to break out of the strictures of society.
Truth was, she excelled at its game. So much so, she’d woven an even more intricate game on top, just to have more rules.
Minus a thousand points, she told herself sourly.
“Your father and your grandfather are never coming back,” Grandmother said, without heat this time. “They don’t think about us. It’s time you think for yourself.”
Priscilla had been thinking. Thinking was the only thing she could do, for most of her long, lonely life. Sit in her room and think-think-think about what she would do and where she would go the moment she was free of it.
But Grandmother was all she had left, and Priscilla didn’t want to argue.
“Have a good night, Grandmother.”
Priscilla plucked the brown-paper parcel from the tea table and swept from the parlor without waiting for a response.
Experience told her it would not have been forthcoming.
She stalked to her bedchamber and sat on the first stool with stiff legs. Hands shaking, she pushed the twine off the corners and unwrapped the package. A wistful smile touched her lips. Thaddeus understood her more than any other.
Two travel books on Africa. Three different maps. And a small, scuffed journal.
Frowning, she lifted the journal and opened it to the first page:
* * *
