Chapter 2
"You are pulling too hard."
Yvette laughed, her fingers still moving through Thelma's hair, working out a tangle with the kind of patience that Thelma had never possessed. "I am barely touching you."
"You are scalping me."
"You are being dramatic." Yvette's hands gentled anyway, the way they always did. "There. Better?"
The garden was warm around them, the roses heavy and blooming, the kind of summer afternoon that seemed to stretch on forever.
Thelma could smell the lavender Yvette had planted along the wall.
She could feel the sun on her face and Yvette's hands in her hair and the particular peace of being exactly where she was supposed to be.
"I have something to tell you," Yvette said.
"You are finally admitting that you scalped me."
"I am pregnant."
Thelma's breath caught. She turned, twisting around on the bench to look at her sister's face. Yvette was smiling, that wide, unguarded smile that she only ever wore when she was truly happy.
"A baby," Thelma said.
"A baby." Yvette's hand moved to her stomach, though there was nothing to see yet. "You are going to be an aunt."
"You are going to be a mother."
They looked at each other, and then Yvette laughed again, and Thelma reached for her hand—
Thelma woke up reaching for her sister's arm and found the sheet instead.
The bed was cold, and the room was gray with early morning light. Of course Yvette was not there, had not been there for three months, would never be there again. The dream was already fading at the edges, the sound of Yvette's laugh slipping away like water through her fingers.
Thelma pressed her palm against the empty mattress and tried to hold onto it, just for a moment longer, just long enough to remember the way her sister had looked when she said you are going to be an aunt.
But the dream was gone, and Yvette was gone, and Thelma was alone.
I miss you Yvette, but at least I have Liliana now.
Liliana was eleven months old now. She had been eight months old when the carriage went over the embankment on the Bristol road, and that’s when Yvette and Ralph had died and left her behind.
Thelma had been holding her when the messenger came to the door and gave her the message that split her life into two.
She had not let go of Liliana for three days after that. Not for meals, not for sleep, not for anything. She had held her until her arms ached and her eyes burned, until her father had to pry the baby out of her hands because she was shaking too hard to stand.
Three months and the grief is so fresh that it feels like a wound that will never close.
Thelma sighed. “I have to be strong for Liliana…”
She pushed herself up, dressed quickly, and moved down the corridor toward the nursery.
Liliana would be awake soon. She would need breakfast, a clean nappy, and that wooden rattle Yvette had bought before she was born, the one with the little bells that always made her squeal with delight.
Thelma smiled at that.
The nursery was at the end of the corridor, the little room that had once been hers. Now it belonged to Liliana.
She pushed the door open.
The crib was empty.
For a second, she couldn’t move. She stood in the doorway, staring at the bare mattress, the naked shelves, the floor where the basket of toys should have been.
Everything was gone, the blankets, the clothes, even the wooden rattle Yvette had bought before Liliana was born. The one with the tiny bells inside that Liliana loved to shake until she laughed herself breathless.
“No,” Thelma whispered.
She crossed the room in three strides and pressed her palm to the mattress. Cold. The sheets had been stripped hours ago.
She spun toward the wardrobe and yanked it open. Empty. The drawer under the table she used to change her clout… empty. The shelf that held the extra clouts… empty.
Someone had come in and wiped the room clean. Someone had taken her baby.
A floorboard creaked behind her.
She whirled around.
Her father stood in the corridor, already dressed for the day: coat buttoned, cravat neat, silver hair combed back with military precision.
“Where is she?” The words came out sharper than she meant them to.
“Liliana is somewhere safe.”
“Where?”
“It’s better this way, Thelma.”
She walked toward him without thinking, bare feet silent on the cold floorboards, hands curled into fists at her sides. “Where is my niece?”
Mr. Albert Preston didn’t retreat. He never did. He simply stood there, tall and unyielding, the way he always stood when he was about to deliver a blow he considered necessary.
“You’re twenty-six years old. Unmarried. A baby that isn’t yours will keep you that way. You know this.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will.” His voice was calm, almost gentle. “In five years, in ten, when every decent man looks at you and sees a woman dragging another woman’s child behind her, you will care. And you’ll remember this morning and thank me.”
Thelma stared at him. The air felt too thin.
“You sent her away.”
“I placed her somewhere she’ll be looked after properly. Somewhere she’ll want for nothing.”
“Where?”
He held her gaze for a long moment, then turned and walked back down the corridor toward his study. His footsteps were steady, unhurried. The door clicked shut behind him with a soft, final sound.
He wouldn’t tell her. She knew that tone. Once her father made up his mind, mountains could crumble before he changed it.
Thelma stood alone in the empty corridor. After a while, she went back to her own room and sat down hard on the edge of the bed.
Somewhere safe. As if “safe” was a place. As if it meant anything without knowing who was holding her, whether they understood the difference in her cries, whether they knew she needed the rattle with the bells to settle at night. Whether they cared enough to learn any of it.
She did not remember going downstairs. She remembered the kitchen window, the November light falling through it flat and gray, and the kettle in her hand, and standing there holding it without putting it down for what must have been quite some time, because when Bessie came in from the scullery she stopped and looked at her the way you look at someone you are not sure about.
"Miss Thelma," Bessie said carefully. "Are you all right?"
"No." There was no point in saying otherwise. "Did you know? Last night. Did you hear anything?"
Bessie set down the bowl she was carrying. She was seventeen, with a round face and opinions she was still learning to keep to herself. She glanced at the kitchen door, then back at Thelma. "I wasn't trying to listen," she said, which meant she had been listening.
"I know." Thelma set the kettle down. "Bessie. Please."
Bessie wrapped her hands together. Looked at the floor. "He spoke to the coachman. Last night, late, when he thought the house was asleep. I had come down for water." She said this with the slightly over-specific quality of someone adding an alibi to a statement. "I only heard part of it."
"What part?"
"A name." Bessie looked up. "The Duke of Langley. He said to take her to the Duke of Langley."
Thelma went very still. "Are you certain that was the name?"
"Yes, miss. He said it twice."
She sat down at the kitchen table because her legs had decided they were done with the conversation. The Duke of Langley. She turned the name over. She had never heard it.
Her father had never spoken it, never received a letter bearing it, never given any indication that he knew a duke, had a duke, had any business with anyone of that rank.
Her father's world was Somerset, the local magistrate, a solicitor in Bristol he'd known for twenty years, and the memory of a business that had been quietly declining for longer than Thelma had understood.
"Why would he send her to a duke?" she said, mostly to herself.
Bessie sat down across from her, which was not what kitchen maids did, and Thelma found she did not care. "I don't know," Bessie said. "But he seemed… certain. Like he had been thinking about it for a while." She paused. "Like he knew the man."
Thelma looked at her. "My father has never mentioned knowing a duke."
"No." Bessie picked at a thread on her apron. "But he knew to send her there. He knew the name. He knew the address." She looked up. "Men don't usually know those things unless they've had reason to think about them."
She was seventeen, and she was not wrong.
Thelma sat in the kitchen with the flat grey light on the table between them and tried to assemble something that made sense. Her father knew this duke. Had sent Liliana to him deliberately.
She did not cry. She had cried enough. She had cried until crying stopped doing anything useful, and now it just sat behind her eyes like pressure, and she had learned to let it sit there.
"Thank you, Bessie," she said. "Don't tell him I asked."
Bessie nodded. She picked up her bowl and went back to the scullery without another word. She understood, apparently, exactly what came next.
***
Thelma packed before dawn, moving quietly so she wouldn’t wake the whole house.
She folded two practical dresses, a nightgown, warm stockings, and a spare pair of gloves into her small bag.
At the very bottom, she tucked Yvette’s locket, letting her thumb rest on the smooth metal for a long moment before covering it again.
Liliana would have it one day.
A soft knock made her jump. Bessie slipped into the room, still in her night things with a shawl thrown over her shoulders. She carried a small cloth bundle and a worried frown.
“I thought you might leave without saying anything,” the girl whispered. She pushed the bundle into Thelma’s hands, two thick slices of bread, a wedge of cheese, and an apple. “It’s not much, but it’ll keep you going on the coach.”
Thelma’s throat tightened. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Bessie shrugged, shifting from foot to foot. “You shouldn’t go alone, miss. Not all that way. But since you’re set on it…” She hesitated, then added fiercely, “Just be careful. Dukes and big houses and all that… they’re not like us. Don’t let them bully you.”