Hugging her neck, I hoped my confusion hadn’t rubbed off. Patience was strong, the strongest person I knew. “You know I’ll do anything for you, for Lionel and the duke.”
“That gives me comfort.” She embraced me so tight I knew something was wrong.
“Patience, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing much, nothing at all. As your friend, I’m telling you to return to Finchely and tell your husband everything.”
My hands dropped to my lap. “You don’t believe me.”
“That’s not it, Jemina. This just feels wrong.”
The sun setting outside burned in the window. It did shine when the rain stopped, and the rays illuminated everything left standing. I had love but no answers.
“Help me reason this out before Ashbrook awakens or Hope wants her bedtime story.”
Patience smoothed her shaking fingers over the front of her mulberry walking gown. “Why don’t you trust the man you just married?”
Shoulders shrugging, fingers tensing, I sipped my chamomile tea. How did I say I crept from Daniel’s arms as he napped in his big bed with his lone pillow? Daniel. He was beautiful and spent. Together, we listened to the rain. He quoted me poetry in a house that was calm and quiet. As a couple, our hearts had found peace.
But my soul had none.
At Finchely, the rain stopped, Daniel snored, and all my hunger for truth returned.
“I need to be sure before I break his heart. How do I tell him he lost everything, that Phoebe’s child is mine?” I handed her the letters again. “Read these. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Jemina, you’ve brought me Ashbrook’s private correspondences from his late wife! I’m fearful to read such personal thoughts.”
“We’ve done so for others, Patience. Every mission we do.”
She frowned from her lips to her topaz eyes. “That is for the Widow’s Grace. There was a culprit who’d wronged a widow. Who’s the culprit here, Jemina? If you are right, Ashbrook lost everything, his wife and stepdaughter. If you are wrong, you’ve violated his trust.”
“I know what I feel inside, and if I go to Ashbrook without proof, he won’t . . .”
“He won’t what, Jemina?”
With my napkin, I wiped my fingers, then pulled the other letters from my cape pocket. “I took these, too. Six notes from the St. Maurs’ solicitor. Each question if I’m of diminished capacity. Ashbrook hasn’t said a word of these. If I tell him I’m Hope’s mother without proof, he won’t trust me. He might think this man is right. He’ll put me in Bedlam.”
“The earl would never do that. He rescued us from there. Have you no faith?”
“Patience, you just said the two outcomes. When I tell him he has nothing of the woman he loved, he’ll be devastated, or I’ll lose the trust he has in me. I can’t lose him.”
My headache felt worse. Shaking, I wanted to be back in Daniel’s bed, hiding in his embrace. “Ashbrook’s one of the best men I know. He’d fight for truth if he were me.”
“Jemina, stop. Breathe.”
I’d twisted my sash about my wrist so tight I’d frayed the edge. “If you tell me I’m wrong, I’ll ride back now. I’ll walk through the front door and beg his forgiveness.”
Patience put her brow to mine, our foreheads merging. “You’re not crazy. Show me how to help you, Jemina. You tell me what we do. You have to drive us to the answers you need.”
“Read Phoebe Dunn’s letters.”
She hesitated, flicking the edges of the worn foolscap. Yellowed and aged foolscap, she held up each. The faded scent of honey surrounded me, then Patience looked up, her eyes locking to mine.
Those lips were a flat indelible line dividing what she’d hoped and the third scenario, that Phoebe Dunn had no child and Daniel knew.
“Say it. Say it so I know I’m not otherworldly, not a loon.”
Patience nodded. “Never mentioning a child in more than two years’ worth of letters to a fiancé is wrong. I don’t think that a woman would leave Jamaica and travel across the world and announce her child to her new husband on the docks of Portsmouth.”
