“Amelia came to live here when Mr. West went to India, didn’t she?”
Winnie retrieved Eleanor’s bonnet from the bed and began to brush the dust off it. “That’s right. Mr. Reginald didn’t like it, but Mrs. Mary insisted. Put her foot down, she did. Never seen her do the like before, but she was right to do it.”
“Yes, of course she was. Anyone would have done the same, I’m sure.” Eleanor let just a thread of doubt enter her voice.
A dark look passed over Winnie’s broad face. “Not anyone.”
Eleanor gave a little laugh. “Surely no one at Lindenhurst would refuse a home to a newborn infant, and Amelia their own family, too.”
She waited.
There was a brief pause, then Winnie said, “There’s those that could, depend upon that, my lady.”
“Why Winnie, you say that as if you have someone in mind.” Eleanor slid her gloves off her fingers, looking down at her hands to hide her expression. “But who? Who could be so cruel?”
Winnie frowned. “I don’t like to say, but I’ll tell you this, my lady. It’s not right, closing the door on your own kin.” The last was said with a dark frown and a rather forceful blow to Eleanor’s bonnet.
“I should say not.” She waited, but Winnie didn’t elaborate.
A littlenudge, perhaps.
“I think you said before Mr. Reginald West didn’t like it when Amelia came to Lindenhurst. Surely you don’t mean to sayhewould turn his back on his family?”
Winnie’s frown grew fiercer. “I don’t see why not. He done it before.”
Eleanor’s heart began to pound. “Before? When was that?”
Winnie wrinkled her brow as she thought back through the years. “Way back, before Amelia was born, and Mr. Camden not yet thirteen when Mr. Reginald done it. An awful business, it was.”
“Yes. I imagine it was.”
“Shameful. Poor Mr. Camden still a child, and innocent.” Winnie tutted disapprovingly. “Then poor Mr. Julian, so heartbroken over his cousin. Like brothers, they were. Still are, come to that.”
Eleanor held her breath and kept quiet. So it was true. Reginald West had tossed Cam and his mother out of their home, because of . . . some dreadful business in which Cam had been innocent. But what? She focused all her energy on Winnie to will her into revealing it.
Winnie’s frown faded a little as she thought about Cam and his cousin. “Rascals, of course, the both of them, as boys are. Into everything, but they had good hearts, for all that. Well, of course we hardly ever saw Mr. Julian after Mr. Camden left, always off with his cousin as he was.”
Camden West, a good heart? A damaged heart, perhaps, but then she’d have a damaged heart herself if she’d been tossed out of her home by her own uncle.
Winnie thrust out her chin. “A fit punishment for Mr. Reginald, for no matter what else one might say of him, he always loved Mr. Julian more than anything—too much, maybe, and Mr. Julian hardly even able look at his father after Mr. Reginald told Mr. Camden and his mother to leave.”
Lindenhurst was my home until I was thirteen, and then things changed, and itwasn’t anymore.
Eleanor’s knees began to shake and an odd, hollow feeling lodged in her chest. He’d been so young—a boy. Just a boy, and his own uncle, a man who should have protected him, had instead snatched his childhood home out from underneath him. “But why would they agree to leave? Mr. West couldn’t throw them out of their own house. Could he?”
Foolish question. He could. He had.
Winnie sighed. “Mr. Camden was only a boy, and Mrs. Sarah . . . well, maybe she believed she deserved it, poor lady.”
“Deserved it?” Eleanor cried.No one deserved that. “Dear God. How could she have deserved it?”
She bit her tongue as soon as she heard the urgency in her voice, but it was too late.
Her cry alerted Winnie, and the maid remembered her duty at last. She flushed and didn’t answer the question, saying instead, “Would you listen to me go on? You looked peaked, my lady.”
“Yes,” Eleanor murmured. “I am rather tired.”
Winnie gathered up the bonnet. “I’ll just take this down for a good brushing then, shall I? Please rest, my lady. Someone will come up with tea for you in a few hours.”
