Chapter 1
Laura Dray dipped the cloth into the basin of cool water and wrung it out.
She gingerly dabbed the brow of the boy in the bed before her.
Like most of the recent patients, his face was flushed with fever and his body wracked with chills.
This illness had struck the local village of Covington with a vengeance.
It was a dreadful ailment and spread quickly.
There were so many ill that the crops were left unharvested and rotting in the fields.
Only a few had died, but many were badly ill.
Worse, the surgeons did not seem too concerned about the plague sweeping through a tiny village in the countryside.
Only one Dr. Belford seemed to express due concern over the illness, and he was just one man.
Most of the patients were being cared for by the convent, but even they were running out of beds.
The lad mumbled something indistinguishable.
“I know,” Laura murmured, continuing to dab his brow. “I know, dear.”
The poor lad could not be older than four-and-ten years of age. He ought to be happy and healthy, helping his doting parents with their work—whatever their trade was—and running around the moors with all the sunshine and wind to enjoy.
His eyes opened just a little. “My mam has red hair, too.”
In her previous life, Laura had been told that red hair was unfashionable and the sign of an ill-tempered woman, and she had always, for the sake of her dignity, insisted that her hair was really auburn.
Mostly auburn. Laura had been born with a large white streak at her right temple, and it stuck out in all that red hair like the sun rising over a snowdrift.
“Have you seen her?” the boy asked.
“No,” Laura said honestly. “But I can ask around and see if anyone has.”
The boy nodded. His eyes had taken on a glazed look, though, making it difficult to determine if he understood her words.
Laura dropped the cloth back into the bucket and stared at the lad for a moment longer. He seemed to have drifted back to sleep, his condition no worse than it had been before. Laura stood, wiping her hands on her habit.
By chance, she met Mercy’s gaze from across the room.
Out of all the nuns and novices in the convent, Mercy was the one with whom Laura felt the most kinship.
Mercy was a slight woman, one-and-twenty, with pale blonde hair and an angelic face.
That fair countenance should have made Mercy, the Earl of Sefton’s only child, exceedingly popular among the gentlemen of the ton; it had not.
For all her beauty, Mercy had found herself in the convent, too.
Laura carefully edged between two beds. She had always been a large woman, and the sickbeds had all been placed too closely together. Still, she managed to awkwardly move into the aisle without disturbing either of the patients.
“Laura! Mercy!” Before Laura could say a word to her friend, the Mother Superior’s sharp voice cut through the air. “Dr. Belford says we need more chamomile and willow bark tea. Brew some for him.”
“Yes, Mother Superior,” Laura said.
As she and Mercy left the room, Laura could not withhold a deep sigh of relief as her lungs inhaled the crisp air that drifted in from the open windows lining the corridor.
The tea would be made in the kitchens, the herb garden already picked to pieces by nuns, who had stripped it of anything that might be made into a medicine.
“Springtime,” Mercy said, as they walked to the kitchen.
“Yes,” Laura said.
There was a pause between them, as if the world itself held its breath. It was the London Season, and they both knew it.
“Do you ever miss the ton?” Mercy asked quietly.
She missed it so much. Every spring, Laura thought of the Season and its festivities, and a surge of longing swept over her so swiftly that it took her breath away. If her father had not abandoned her, she might have been married and happy. Stable. The darling of the ton.
“Sometimes.” Laura paused, considering the answer more carefully.
The convent emphasized simple living, and Laura did not like to admit that she missed the excess of the Season just a little.
Not even to Mercy. “I was always a wallflower. My figure is simply not suitable for most evening gowns. I always looked like a cake.”
Even if she had looked like a cake, Laura had still delighted in wearing the gowns—the springtime greens, the petal pinks, the blissful blues, and the soft dove-whites.
She had loved to smooth her fingers over silks and muslin, had adored the way that pearls and gems shone and twinkled in the candlelight.
Simple, homespun nun’s habits simply could not compare with that.
Mercy snorted in laughter. “You did not look like a cake.”
“I did,” Laura insisted. “And someone would always make a remark about how strange my hair is, as if I did not already know.”
That was true, but Laura had been quick to dismiss such insults with a smirk and a wave of her fan. She had been as fiery as her hair.
“Oh, Laura.”
“But,” Laura said, echoing her friend’s emphasis. “I did not enjoy the rules. Society always had so many demands for me. I much prefer convent life.”
If she insisted that she preferred convent life enough, she might manage to believe it.
Most of the time, Laura did believe it; it was only that there were—sometimes—those dark, creeping moments when she longed for more.
Sometimes, she imagined it was how Lucifer must have felt after falling from grace, doomed to gaze at the Heavens, always wanting and unable to reach them.
“Isn’t convent life more demanding?” Mercy asked. “I would be lost if it were not for you! And Mother Superior…”
Laura shook her head. “No. There are rules, but I still find convent life to be very freeing. I am better suited to the convent than the ton.”
They reached the door, which led downstairs to the kitchen. Laura pulled it open and gestured for Mercy to go ahead of her. The young lady did, and Laura followed, closing the door behind them.
“What about you?” Laura asked.
Mercy gave Laura a wry smile. “God might strike me dead if I say.”
“Somehow, I doubt that. Despite what the Mother Superior may claim, I do not think God is quite in the habit of striking people with lightning,” Laura said, “or else, he would have already expressed His displeasure with me.”
They walked down the stairs and into the large kitchen.
It was a modest place with a long, wooden table for preparing food, a small stove, and a fireplace on the opposite wall, in which sat a massive pot suspended over the hearth.
Dried herbs, bound in pieces of twine, hung from a large beam above their heads.
“Well,” Mercy said. “It is not exactly the Season that I miss, but the gentlemen. I miss the dancing, the dresses, and—and the touch of a gentleman. Now, I have resigned myself to a life of chastity, and there is not a gentleman to be found.”
Warmth rushed to Laura’s face, for she herself had spent too many hours imagining the gentleman who might desire her. “Strike you dead, indeed.”
Mercy smiled, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “I will get the water from the pump.”
While she did, Laura lit the hearth and took down the bundles of chamomile and willow bark, carefully laying out the herbs on the table.
The kitchen was usually cool and damp, but her face was as hot as a furnace.
Mercy had left before Laura could say anything.
That was fortunate. Laura was uncertain that she would be able to hide her embarrassment—or was it her shame?
—when she thought of gentlemen. Laura also ached for the touch of some dashing gentleman.
She had lain awake in bed for countless nights, thinking about the heat between her thighs and fighting the temptation to soothe it.
She would never feel that, not in the convent, and the thought made life seem dull and bleak, as if all the color had been leeched from the world.
The door slammed back against the bricks as Mercy returned with a bucket of water.
Her arms strained with the weight, water splashing and sloshing against her skirts.
Laura hurried across the floor and took the bucket handles.
Together, the two women poured the water into the pot.
It made a faint popping sound as the fire warmed it.
“Thank you,” Mercy said, laughing breathlessly. “It is such a long walk! You would think someone would have built the convent a little closer to the water.”
Laura shrugged and added the herbs to the water, watching as it began to boil.. It would take some time for the tea to finish. She wondered if there was anything else that the surgeon might appreciate having done while they waited.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs as the Mother Superior entered the kitchen. Laura blinked, taken aback by the woman’s appearance. The Mother Superior usually had matters to attend to, and Laura had never seen her in the kitchen, much less observing tea being made.
“It should be ready soon,” Mercy said.
If the Mother Superior heard Mercy, the woman chose to ignore her. Instead, her cold, blue eyes remained fixed on Laura’s face. “Follow me.”
Laura glanced at Mercy, seeing her surprise reflected on her friend’s face.
“Of course, Mother Superior,” Laura said.
The Mother Superior turned on her heels and walked up the stairs without waiting to see if Laura would follow, but of course, she did. For some indiscernible reason, Laura had always suspected that the Mother Superior held a deep-seated dislike for her.
“There has been a rather unfortunate turn of events,” the Mother Superior said. “Regrettably, you can no longer remain at the convent.”
All the air left Laura’s lungs, and ice sank into her veins in a sudden wave of cold. She must have misheard.
“Excuse me?”
As they rounded the corner, the Mother Superior gave Laura a sharp look. “You heard me.”
Laura’s mind raced. She tried to think of any transgression that she might have committed, any sin that warranted being cast out from the place that had become her home.
“Wh—what have I—I don’t understand.”
“You will soon enough.”
The Mother Superior quickened her pace, as if to make that time come even more quickly. Laura clenched her jaw, struggling to keep pace with the woman.
“I cannot leave,” Laura argued. “I have nowhere else to go. My parents are not living in England, and I do not have any other living relatives.”
“You will find somewhere to go,” insisted the Mother Superior. “You must take it and go.”
It? Mother Superior had spat the word as if it were poison. Laura’s stomach churned as she tried to figure out what this terrible it must be.
They turned another corner, and Laura quickly recognized where they were going. It was to her own cell. Was it inside?
“I have taken the liberty of having your possessions packed for you,” the Mother Superior continued. “I trust that you will not linger.”
Laura wrung her hands in her skirt, her pulse leaping. “I cannot leave,” she said, her voice quivering. “I cannot.”
The Mother Superior halted before the door to Laura’s room and fixed her with a cold, unsympathetic look. “You have no choice. I will not tolerate sin in my convent.”
“Sin?” Laura exclaimed. “What sin have I committed?”
The Mother Superior heaved open the bedroom door and jerked her head toward the modest room.
Laura stared at the woman, her emotions a tangled mess of anger and despair.
What could she say? Her mind raced, desperately searching for an argument to appease the Mother Superior, to make her realize that Laura had to stay.
A baby’s cry split the air. Any clever words that Laura might have pieced together fell away at the sound. Heart in her throat, she stepped inside her bedroom. There was a baby on her bed, swaddled in blankets.
Was this the it? Laura’s jaw nearly dropped.
How could anyone refer so cruelly to a child?
He was the most perfect baby she had ever seen, with his pale, pudgy body and wispy, black hair.
He stared at her with large, brown eyes; it seemed as though her presence was novel enough to calm him for just a moment.
“You will take him with you,” the Mother Superior said.
“Why?” Laura asked.
The Mother Superior withdrew a piece of paper from the folds of her habit. “You were asked for by name.”
Laura frowned. “Why would anyone…?”
She unfolded the paper and read it quickly, disbelief growing with every word: This is my son with Lord Dudley. I cannot take care of him, so I have put him in your care. Please, give him the life he deserves.
“I—I do not know any man named Lord Dudley!” Laura exclaimed. “Or why anyone would leave a child for me.”
The Mother Superior’s face did not show even a spark of regret or sympathy. “You no longer have a home here. I expect to see you gone within the hour.”
With those words, the Mother Superior left. Laura stared at the empty space where the older woman had stood. Her heart raced, and her blood roared in her ears. She swallowed hard and counted to ten inside her head.
Laura’s life had fallen to pieces yet again, and she did not even know why. But she worked to bury everything deep inside her, all the anger and fear and despair, because this baby needed her. Her hands shook as she knelt beside the bed and stroked his head. “Sweet boy,” she murmured.
Her fingers brushed the embroidery at the edge of his blanket and smoothed it out, revealing the name Edmund.
Laura managed a watery smile. “Edmund, let’s find your father.”