Last night she had sat inside a dark closet giving her heart to a child that wasn’t even part of her. Kirsty wasn’t her own flesh and blood. But blood ties didn’t keep Georgina from feeling something for Kirsty. She did. She felt as if Kirsty needed her right then, as much as the little girl needed her father.
There was a freedom in knowing that. It was as if she were finally turned loose to be what she wanted to be. She realized that, no matter what she had done, her parents would have never loved her. Who she was didn’t matter and if she had become a Cabot or a Lowell or nothing at all it wouldn’t change the fact that her parents were the ones who had the problem.
Whatever Georgina chose to be—maybe only a nursemaid to two lonely children on an isolated island—that choice wouldn’t change her value as a person. It wouldn’t make her more accepted.
She didn’t have to be a Bayard. She didn’t have to be a wealthy woman with the right name. She didn’t have to live in a mansion to be someone.
Maybe being someone was nothing more than sitting in a dark closet with a little girl every time there was a wild storm.
Georgina felt a sudden sense of freedom, as if she had just learned the secret to happiness, something that had been hidden from her for the longest time.
She smiled and turned around, then stopped.
Hanging on the back of her bedroom door was a shimmery green silk dress, the one that had belonged to Kirsty’s mother.
Georgina went over to the dress and touched it. It wasn’t a Worth. It wasn’t from Paris and it wasn’t particularly spectacular. But that dress meant more to her than all the clothes and all the possessions she had lost. She closed her eyes and stood there for a moment. She bit her lip and took deep breaths. But it didn’t do any good. The tears came anyway.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Kirsty hopped the last few feet to the stable. Making wishes every time she landed sure—with her ankles still pressed together. It was a game she played all the time, because it helped her forget that deep inside she was scared, so scared that sometimes she wanted to go and hide in a closet.
Her first thought when she opened the door and snuck inside was that it smelled like she thought a stable should smell, like hay and horses and dirt.
It was darker inside than she imagined, but she didn’t let it worry her. This darkness was different. It wasn’t the scary kind. She was inside her father’s special workplace, a place where he spent too much time, too much time with his horses instead of time with her.
Her shoes crackled on the straw and she walked past the stalls where the horses were kept when they weren’t in the field near the goose pond. There was an open door just ahead and she moved toward it, holding her breath because she thought her father might be inside.
She didn’t know how he would react to her being there. He had never once asked her to come with him, so she thought he didn’t want her in the stable.
Maybe he thought she would get in the way. She wouldn’t get in the way. She’d even promised herself she wouldn’t ask too many questions either. Sometimes adults got tired of her questions. But she knew why. She knew they only got tired of them when they didn’t know the answers.
She slowed her steps the closer she came to the open door. She took a deep breath and peered around the door. There was no one on the inside. Nothing but a jumble of saddles and harnesses, bridles and other tack stuff.
The room was a mess. She just bet Uncle Calum would love to fix this room all up. She was glad Uncle Calum was home and she liked Aunt Amy. She liked her because she never treated them like children. She listened to them. Really listened, as if what they had to say was important.
She heard a horse whicker in one of the rear stalls and she went back there. She could see the horse tossing its head as if it were calling her to come over there.
So she did.
She went into the stall next to it and climbed up on the sideboards, stood on her toes, and rested her arms on the stall wall.
“Hello, Horse.”
The horse turned its head and looked at her from the softest eyes. She was a pretty horse. She had a lovely gray mane and tail, but the rest of her was white. She knew from listening to her father that you didn’t call this a white horse. Only horses with all-white manes and tails and pink skin were called white horses.
Two stalls down was a white horse just like Jack. Kirsty ran down to it.
White horses were supposed to mean good luck. She remembered a poem and recited it aloud: “White horse, white horse, lucky lucky me. White horse, white horse, bring my wish to me.”She closed her eyes real tight and made a wish.
“Kirsty!”
Her eyes shot open and she whistled.That was fast. She gave the white horse a thank-you pat and jumped down from the stall, landing with her ankles together and her arms out for luck. “Hello, Father!”
