Genova settled back, but this time sleep eluded her. She shifted, trying to find a comfortable position on the pillow. She needed sleep if she was to have her wits tomorrow, and she would need all her wits to deal with Lord Ashart.
A distant clock struck three—the goblin hour, when dark monsters invade even the most tranquil mind, and her mind was not tranquil. Her fretting bounced from journey to baby to marquess, then with a leaden thud to her deeper problem, her life now her father had remarried.
She tried to smother it, but goblins have no mercy.
If only her mother had lived.
Mary Smith had been carried from health to death in a day by a sudden internal bleeding. It had happened in the middle of the Atlantic and she’d been buried at sea, which had been a particularly painful blow. Genova was practical by nature, but even so, pain burst in her every time she remembered her mother’s bundled body hitting the water with a splash.
Thrown away. Like bad food and waste.
She’d give anything to have a grave that she could tend. She’d been waiting for the right moment to suggesta headstone for her mother in Tunbridge Wells, or a memorial plaque in the parish church. It seemed simple enough, but she’d sensed it would be awkward, though how her stepmother could object she couldn’t imagine.
Her stepmother. Hester Poole as was, Hester Smith now.
If Genova could dislike Hester it might be easier, but she recognized a kind and gracious woman. Captain Smith would choose no less. Hester and Genova were simply different.
It was a puzzle why her father had chosen a woman so unlike his free-spirited, lively Mary, but perhaps that was the point. A complete break, just as he’d broken from the past by first retiring, then moving to Hester’s house in Tunbridge Wells, far from the sea.
Genova hadn’t thought the move would be so very difficult, but after three months she was ready to gnaw through walls to escape. Hester’s house was a very conventional house; her family and friends a very conventional circle. If not for the Trayce ladies, Genova felt she might already be stark, staring mad.
It had all come to a head on December 13 over a superficially simple matter—thepresepe.
The Italian Nativity scene was a family tradition. All Genova’s life it had been set up on December 13 to wait for the Christ child on Christmas Eve. Perhaps it was particularly important to Genova because Christmas Eve was her birthday. She’d not realized how important, however, until Hester had gently refused to have thepresepeon display in her drawing room.
“Forgive me, Genova dear, but it is a littlepopish, don’t you think? And a littleshabby?Some of the finest people in the Wells pass through my house at Christmas.”
Shabby?Genova could still feel the sting of that, especially as she’d seen it was true. Thepresepewas gilded for her by a lifetime’s memories, but the paint on the wooden figures had faded, and the gold wasflaking in places. The embroidered white linen it sat on, which her mother had called the flowers-in-the-snow, had yellowed with age, and even become spotted with mildew. Some of the embroidery had frayed into tufts.
She’d touched up the paint and was making a new cloth, but Hester’s words still hurt.
She’d bundled it away, fighting tears, but the deepest hurt had been because her father had made no protest at all. He’d helped her, and even apologized after a fashion, but she’d known then that thepresepewas something else he’d like to leave behind. And that the same thing might apply to her. He still loved her—she didn’t doubt that—but she was a cuckoo in his new nest….
Genova jerked out of a restless sleep and sat up.
The flowers-in-the-snow! The new one. She’d left it in the parlor.
Before turning Thalia toward the bedroom, she’d dropped everything in her hands on the table, close by the washing bowl. What if it was already stained? She couldn’t lie here and wonder. She had to go and retrieve it. It was still dark, still the middle of the night.
When she slipped out through the bed-curtains, however, she found that the fire had been started. It was only just beginning to catch the logs, so someone had crept in to light it not long ago. Perhaps that had woken her.
Though dark, it was almost morning.
She pushed her feet into her slippers and pulled her woolen robe from under the eiderdown, where she’d put it to keep it warm. Once wrapped in it, she found her timepiece and tilted it to catch the firelight. Ten minutes past eight! An hour later than they’d risen the other two days. Someone must have ordered a later start.
She’d like to blame the marquess for doing it out of laziness, but in fact it was sensible. In these short winter days, they’d had less than eight hours of travellight and had been forced to rise early. Today would be a short day, so they could afford to lie in.
She peeped through the window curtains, and scraped a clear spot through the frost on a pane. The pale light of dawn glinted off white on the ground. Heavy frost, not snow, thank heavens, but it promised another harsh day.
She turned to look at the adjoining door. If she was up, the marquess might be up. She was not a highly skilled needlewoman, however, and the newpresepecloth had taken weeks of work. There was certainly no time to do it over again.
It would do no harm to check. He might still be asleep.
She crept over to the door, listened, then eased it open. By the light of the new fire, she saw a still figure on the mattress, covers pulled high against the cold. It looked as if he’d added his wolf cloak on top for extra warmth.
Being a fair woman, she granted that he’d made little fuss over his situation. Whatever else he was, the Marquess of Ashart was not a pampered fop.
Moving carefully, she eased into the room. The fire gave enough light to show her embroidery frame, still on the table, still next to the washbowl and jug. It looked unharmed, but it would be safer in her possession.
