Prologue #2
Lucy could not keep still. She fiddled with her skirts and kept glancing toward the window, wondering if Uncle Henry was already turning in at the gates and telling the post-boys to hurry because he had a birthday girl waiting.
“Bessy, the ribbon—”
“The ribbon is right here in my hand, Miss Lucy. I have not forgotten which one.”
“Faster!”
“Not on your life. If I go faster, you will have tangles and I will be an hour working them out.”
That threat worked. Lucy sat still after that.
Bessy pinned the knot at the top of her head and threaded the green ribbon through it. Lucy looked at herself in the glass. The knot was more than she would usually wear for a morning at home, but a visit from Uncle Henry was worth the effort.
She was ordinary, as Mama said with regret and Papa said with satisfaction. Neither tall nor graceful, hair neither black nor gold but the plain brown painters did not like, hazel eyes that could not decide on a color, and a chin that set stubborn when someone told her she could not do something.
But the moss-green suited her, and her cheeks were still pink from the wash. When Uncle Henry came, he would say she was a beauty, and she would blush at the compliment and pretend to believe him, and Papa would clear his throat and Mama would sigh, and everything would be the way it always was.
A door closed below, and she heard voices in the hall.
“There now,” Bessy said. “You are fit for company.”
Lucy stood. Her legs would not stay still. She skipped once, twice, and pressed her cold hands to her hot face.
“He is here, Bessy. He must be. Did you hear the door?”
Bessy’s mouth pulled a little at the corner. “I heard the door, aye.”
Lucy caught up her shawl, the soft cream one from Bath, and threw it around her shoulders and went out into the gallery.
The house was cold in the mornings until the fires had been going a while. She liked the feel of the worn carpet under her slippers as she went to the stair-head. Anticipation fizzed under her skin like a kettle coming to boil.
She put her hand on the balustrade and leaned over to listen.
Voices below. Papa’s voice. Raised. Papa never raised his voice.
“—at this hour? Are you certain?”
“I am, sir. He rode up not a quarter hour past. He says it is official business.”
Whitby the butler sounded as calm as ever.
“Show him into the study. At once. Have Cook send hot coffee.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And rouse your mistress. Ask her to come to me.”
A rustle of garments and the click of a door and then silence.
Lucy stood at the top of the stairs with her hand tight on the rail and thought.
An official messenger.
Papa was a barrister at the King’s Bench in London.
London did not send official messengers to a country house at eight in the morning unless something bad had happened.
She knew that from years of listening at doors when she should not.
Messengers came for wills and injuries and lawsuits and sudden deaths and business failures.
Her stomach went tight and cold.
Then she remembered. Papa had told her only last week that a client was sending important papers about the Yorkshire estate that was in dispute.
The courier might come any day. That must be it.
Papa was startled, that was all. Uncle Henry would still come.
He always came for her birthday. Uncle Henry could not be stopped by a messenger with papers.
Whitby returned to the study with the messenger, then left again.
Lucy went down the stairs.
The back study door was shut. The house felt too quiet.
She thought about putting her ear to the door and then decided against it.
Not on her birthday. Not with her hair up and the moss-green gown on and Uncle Henry due any minute.
She would not be caught listening like a child of eight.
She was grown now, even if her stomach did little flips thinking about what gift Uncle Henry would bring her today.
She turned in to the drawing room instead. A fire was burning up nicely there. She sat by the window that looked out on the front lawn and the drive curving away through the trees. From here, she would see any carriage long before it reached the house.
Her mother’s light footsteps moved swiftly down the hall, then the study door opened and clicked shut once more.
Lucy smoothed her skirts. Adjusted her shawl. Sat as if she had not been waiting at a window since before dawn.
The fire crackled. A clock struck somewhere. Nine.
Where are you, Uncle Henry?
The study door opened.
She heard the latch and the hinge and then footsteps in the hall.
Two sets. Slower than usual. She half rose from the chair and then made herself sit back and fuss with the tassels on her shawl instead.
It would not do to appear too eager. Papa always said a lady did not show eagerness, though Mama said a lady could do as she pleased in her own drawing room.
The drawing room door opened.
“Lucy?” Papa’s voice sounded hollow.
She turned.
Papa stood in the doorway and Mama stood just behind him, and their faces were wrong.
She had never seen expressions like that on them.
Papa’s face was drained white, so his mouth looked painted on and his eyes looked through her and past her to something only he could see.
Mama’s face was the face of someone trying hard to remember how she had come to be standing there.
Lucy’s heart folded itself up small and tight inside her chest.
“What is it?” The words came out rough. “What has happened?”
“Come, dearest,” Mama said. Her voice was thin and not her own at all. “Come and sit with us.”
Lucy stood. Her legs did it without her telling them to.
She let Mama take her arm and lead her to the settee in front of the fire.
She sat where she always sat. She looked up at Papa, who did not sit but stood staring into the fire with his hands clasped so tight behind his back that his knuckles had gone the color of old wax.
“Papa, what has happened?”
He drew in a breath and let it out. He turned and his eyes met hers. She saw that he did not know how to say what he had to say, but he was going to say it anyway because he had said harder things in courtrooms and would not be beaten by his own hearth.
“There has been an accident, Lucy. At sea.”
The fire made a small sound as a coal shifted. Somewhere at the back of the house someone was cutting onions, and the smell reached her all at once, sharp and strong and too big for the room.
“A ship went down. Off the coast of Cornwall. A week ago last Thursday. There was a storm.”
She could hear every word, but they would not come together to make sense.
“Lucy, my love.” Mama’s arm came around her, warm and heavy. “The ship was the Lady’s Grace. Uncle Henry was aboard her. Uncle Henry and Captain Belafonte and all the crew.”
“He was traveling with the captain,” Papa said. His voice cracked on the word, and he cleared his throat and went on. “From Falmouth to Bristol. They never reached Bristol. The storm was terrible. Witnesses on the coast saw her strike the rocks. There are no …”
He did not finish. She waited. He was staring into the fire again. She wanted to shake him, but her arms would not move.