“Sophie,” he repeated, one of his eyebrows kicking up. “Why Sophie?”
“I am fairly certain that is her name.”
“And you know this because…?”
Jane shrugged. “It is of no account. In fact, it is a ridiculous notion.”
“I’m not laughing.”
He wasn’t, Jane realized. There was some skepticism, but there was also curiosity. “Well, when I ran outside after you were injured, she was already turning away and going to the far side of the corral, but when I got there, she turned back. It seemed as if she was looking directly at me. Scared, you know. But sorrowful, too. And in my mind, I thought, ‘Oh, Sophie, how could you?’ It just came to me to call her Sophie, and that was when she shook her head. I don’t mean that she tossed it as if she did not care. She shook it as if she did but couldn’t explain it to her own satisfaction.”
“Huh.” Morgan said nothing while he searched her face. Finally, “You know she really doesn’t think like that, don’t you?”
Jane nodded. “I know. It just seemed as if she did. I told you it was a ridiculous notion.”
“What it is, is a nice story, but probably better if it just stays between us.”
“I am sure you are right.”
“So when Jem or his brothers or Max ask why we’re calling her Sophie, we’re going to say it was your great-grandmother’s name.”
“Sophie? She’s really going to be Sophie?”
Her pleasure was arresting, and Morgan felt his breath seize when she smiled without inhibition. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “As a remembrance of your great-grandmother.”
“No, she was Frances,” said Jane. “Like my mother’s cousin.”
“All right, then we’ll say she was my great-grandmother.”
“Yes, let us do that.”
“Oh, good,” Morgan said with a touch of sarcasm. “That’s settled.”
Jane nodded agreeably, her smile only slightly less fulsome than it had been seconds earlier. “What was your great-grandmother’s name? On your mother’s side first.”
“I have no idea. Before you ask, it’s the same on my father’s side.”
“I suppose not knowing makes it easier to repeat the story, doesn’t it? The devil is in the details. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Umeh.”
“Yes, that’s so.” Jane smoothed the quilt over her knees. “What about your grandmothers’ names?”
Morgan shrugged. “I didn’t know them. Is it important?”
“No, not important. I was merely wondering. Your letters contained nothing about family. I think I might have written too much about mine.”
“Broad strokes,” he said. “For instance, I know your parents died when you were young. Of cholera, I believe, but you never explained how you came to live with the Ewings.”
“Did I write that my parents were missionaries?”
“No. You did not write that. I would remember.”
“Yes, I imagine you would. I also imagine I would not be here if I’d told you, although that had nothing to do with my omission. I did not know you were a godless man then.” Jane was not certain that he was now, but she kept that thought close. “I did not write about their missionary work because as a child I did not fully understand it, and it was a bone of contention growing up in Cousin Franny’s house. My mother was ‘in a bad way’ when she married my father. That is how my mother’s ‘delicate condition’ was explained to me until Alex explained it better when we were twelve. There is also some disagreement in the family as to whether or not Robert Middlebourne is my father.”
Jane tilted her head to one side, raised her hands in a helpless, but uncomplaining, gesture. “I think you can appreciate why I did not put this tawdry tale to paper. My father accepted a mission in India sometime before my second birthday. I traveled with my parents, but I have no memory of the voyage, and few memories of India except for the heat and the animals. What I recall is the return to New York, alone this time. My parents sent me away when they heard the sickness was coming. I do not know what they understood about cholera, but they meant to protect me. I lived with my mother’s mother for a short time, not out of graciousness on her part, but out of duty. When word came that my parents were dead, she would not have me any longer. My father’s parents did not claim me as one of their own so there was no room for me there. I am not certain how it happened, but I eventually came to the attention of Samuel Ewing, Esquire.”
Morgan removed the supper plate from his lap and placed it on the nightstand. Only crumbs remained. “Samuel Ewing,” he said. “That would be Cousin Frances’s husband. He took you in?”
