Odd for this time of night, well past ten.
Odd for me to be out too, but I needed to learn about him. I’d sent him notes all week. He didn’t reply. He knew more. I needed to find out what. My dreams had become too vivid.
The nightmares were getting worse. This time I saw things so clearly, I felt a chill in my bones. I struggled to stay afloat, twisting up the bedsheets and blankets.
The crackle of a leaf, a snap of a twig—I wasn’t alone. I crouched lower in the hedgerow and waited.
A leather glove covered my mouth. My heart seized.
“Shhh, Jemina. It’s me.”
Readying to fight, I lifted my gaze, my hands.
Patience had me.
“You scared me.” It was all I could muster. Too many lumps in my throat.
She squatted down beside me. “You scared me first. Jemina, you accompanied the duke and me to Town. You said it would be a change of pace from the country. You didn’t say you’d be running out in the night. What if we had a mission?”
“I have a mission.”
“The countess told you to come by yourself?”
“Not a Widow’s Grace mission, a Jemina St. Maur mission.”
“I don’t understand. Help me understand.”
Her whispers sunk into my skull, but my caution was spent. I held her tight, my fingers tangling into her thick cape, knocking off the hood. “Help me. I’m dying inside.”
“I will, Jemina. I will.”
She rocked me, embracing me, anchoring me to now, the present. “Talk to me.”
“Patience, I’m in a dray going down a street. The street, King Street runs North and South. Two-story houses with wide verandas line the view. Green and yellow structures with green and white shutters. It’s peaceful with palm trees and purply lignum vitae in yards.”
“You remember Jamaica?”
“Kingston, I think. The streets are dirt, pounded flat by all the travel. The air is hot, the wind whips the palms and wide guango trees. The sky is red and blue, magnificent. Then I’m boarding a boat.”
Patience rubbed my shoulders. “You’re remembering.”
“That’s it. I can’t see anyone else. I can’t see . . .”
“See what, your husband? That’s fine, Jemina. Remembering a little—”
“That day Ashbrook brought us here. You and I ate pheasant and shortbread. Such a treat. Then he left us with Lady Shrewsbury when a baby cried. That shriek was so loud.”
“Yes, Jemina, that must have been his daughter.”
“Nothing felt true or lasting until that moment. That child’s wail, that little voice was like a trumpet heralding to me that things were going to be different.”
“Yes. It made me ache for my Lionel. When I saw him again—”
“It made me remember that I lost my child.”
“Jemina! On theMinerva?”
I pounded my head. “I don’t have all the pieces. I didn’t see a child’s name on the list, but maybe in Jamaica. Maybe I left the babe in Kingston. Could that be possible? Why does it have to mean disaster? Does my babe have to die like Cecil?”
