“Yes,” the Charlotte-image said. “I found her asleep up the shore. Surrounded by rocks and driftwood.”
“Thank God,” Kendall said. “Daniel! Anne’s all right. She’s alive. Do you hear me?”
Daniel sat mutely as Charlotte walked toward him, tears streaming down her face as her eyes darted to, then away from Lizette’s still form.
She knelt beside him and gently handed Anne to him. Then she rose and stepped back.
Daniel stared down at Anne, who was awake now and seemed pleased to see him. She wriggled and babbled, her little fists moving from her mouth to clasp his nose.
“Yes ... I seem to have lost my spectacles. Do you still recognize me?”
The little girl opened her mouth in a toothless grin.
“Yourmamanis gone. I am so sorry, dear one. She loved you—never think she didn’t. She just ... could not stay. I tried to help her, but I could not... .”
Thomas and Sally returned with blankets, and Kendall wrapped one around Daniel’s shoulders. Then he laid the other one carefully over Lizette. Sally took Anne and headed back toward the cottage.
“Come, my friend,” Kendall urged gently. “Let’s get you into the house and out of those wet clothes.”
Daniel looked over at his wife’s shrouded form. “I cannot leave her.”
“I shall see to her,” Kendall assured.
Together Charlotte and Thomas helped Daniel up and into the cottage.
The day after the funeral, Charlotte found Daniel sitting on the bench, staring out at the sea. Wordlessly, she sat down as well, careful to leave a proper amount of space between them. He acknowledged her presence with the slightest nod before returning his gaze to the sea.
“You never really knew her, Miss Lamb. Not really. Not the woman she once was.”
She asked softly, “How did the two of you meet?”
“She was working as a governess in Edinburgh when I was at university there. I first saw her in the park, swinging her little charge around and around until the sound of their laughter filled the square. I can still see her in her green-striped dress, her dark hair escaping her straw bonnet, her smile so bright—the only brightness to be seen on that grey Scottish day. She told me she had left her home in Normandy, looking for adventure.
“Only later did I find out she was looking for escape, that her mother was afflicted in much the way Lizette was, at the end.” He leaned over, elbows on his knees. “I don’t think she meant to deceive me. I think she truly believed, or at least desperately hoped, that she’d left all of that far behind her, that she could avoid the same fate. We traveled to Caen only once to meet her family. I suspected how it was with her mother, but by then it was too late. I was in love with Lizette. I could not have stopped myself from marrying her, even had I known what was to be.”
After a few minutes of silence, Daniel sighed. “Still, I should have seen it coming. Should have prevented it somehow.”
She glanced over at him, saw him shake his head dolefully.
“I wanted to move her someplace safe, but she begged to stay. She said she loved it here—felt closer to home. Too close, it turns out.”
“How could you know? She was much improved.”
“So we thought. Or so she wanted us to believe. But I should have known better.”
“Mr. Taylor ...” Without intending to, she had slipped back to his former address.
“If only I had found a more effective treatment. Or insisted we return to London a fortnight ago.”
“Mr. Taylor ... do you not remember what you said to me when my mother died?”
“No.”
“I was sure that if only I had been a better daughter, or prayed harder, or insisted she not tire herself in the garden, then she would have lived.”
He shrugged.
“But you told me God does not work that way. Remember?”
