“Lovely. I’ll have the carriage prepared.”
“No need. We’ll stop by Della’s first and get a few things, then we’ll take hers.”
Della and Jane lived on the same street, so close they were practically neighbors. They were in the habit of dropping in on one another this way.
She shot her friend a look, trusting her to understand. The excuse would satisfy Bertie and give them the freedom to continue their work undisturbed.
Her uncle looked so pleased, Jane almost felt guilty. She didn’t like to lie to him, but how else was she supposed to accomplish anything? Their plans were too important to put off.
The ladies stood to go, when Bertie suddenly produced an envelope from his coat pocket. “I almost forgot. There was a letter for you.” Jane glanced down as she took it. Her name and address were scrawled in the center by a neat hand, but the sender’s name was absent. Odd.
She gently tore open one edge, unfolded the short missive, and read.
Dearest Jane,
I am alive and recently returned to England. Allow me to come to you to explain things in person. I am so very sorry for the grief I have caused.
Eli Williams
Jane’s heart was pounding by the end as her eyes struggled to make sense of the words. It was impossible. Eli had died nearly two years ago; everyone knew that. Was this someone’s idea of a cruel joke?
Unbidden, her mind flashed back to his funeral service. Cecily wailing dramatically over an empty coffin, drowning out his mother and sister. Jane hadn’t felt it was her place to weep openly in the face of all that. What was she but a friend? Instead, she’d swallowed the lump in her throat a hundred times and held herself together by force of will until she was back in the privacy of her bedroom, at last free to indulge in her own grief.
She read the letter a second time, but it refused to transform into anything like a coherent explanation under her gaze. She felt sick to her stomach.
Everyone was staring at her.
“Well, Jane, is it a billet-doux from Mr. MacPherson? What’s the matter? You’re frowning again.”
“No.” She folded up the letter and assumed a neutral expression for Uncle Bertie, who was watching her expectantly, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. She couldn’t share this with him; it was too vile. “No, it’s just a letter from…” She searched for something plausible and uninspiring, dropping her attention to the envelope. The only clue of its origin was in the postmark, indicating it had been paid for in Plymouth. “From Cousin Henrietta. She writes that everyone is well and the weather is very fair in Devon.” There, that was good. It was from the right part of the country. The Williamses and their cousins were neighbors. Although she may have been pressing her luck to say the weather was fair in Devon.
Uncle Bertie gasped. “Has Mrs. Bishop had heraccouchement?”
Drat.
Not such a good fib after all. She hadn’t been thinking.
“Not that they mention. I must presume she is still unaccouched.”
“It should be soon now,” he continued, a crease marring his brow.
The subject of his older brother’s offspring was a sensitive one. While John Bishop was blessed with the whole of the family fortune and an entailed country estate, he had never been blessed with a son. Every few years, he attempted to remedy this, and Bertie waited on pins and needles to learn if another girl would join the ranks of her sisters.
The whole business was of no concern to Jane, of course, but Edmund stood to be a good deal richer one day if the much-anticipated baby turned out to be the right sex.
Or the wrong one, depending on one’s point of view.
“Anyway, we must be off,” Jane said briskly. If she’d been eager to escape before, the letter had lit a fire beneath her.
Bertie saw them on their way down the road before he bid them farewell and went to attend his own errands. They had only to walk five minutes past the series of white stucco town houses—identical save for the curtains on their sash windows or the contents of their flower boxes—and then they were at the Danbys’. It was considerably larger inside and more richly furnished than the rest, a reminder of her family’s fortune.
Still, Jane didn’t suffer any pangs of envy. She and Edmund were extremely fortunate to have a relation willing to take them in and look to their comfort after their parents’ deaths. Though Uncle Bertie’s income was limited, he treated them like his own, and Uncle John supplemented their welfare with the occasional gift or invitation for a summer visit when he was feeling charitable. She was lucky to have this much.
“We’re not really going to the modiste, I expect,” Della said the moment they were safely indoors.
“Of course not.”
“Good. Let’s go upstairs. My rooms are the only place we’re sure not to be disturbed.” This was most likely true, as they could already hear her siblings quarreling somewhere down the hall.
