by Jill Cooper
“She took those with her.” Robert’s voice shook with grief as he took a deep breath. “She didn’t want us to get in trouble.”
Tears rimmed Sandra’s eyes as she pictured her daughter’s face. “She’s stronger than both of us put together.”
Robert squeezed her hand. “Then let’s do this for her, not us. Let’s protect her secret no matter the cost to us. No matter, Sandra.”
She nodded. “You go. I’ll stoke the fire and get…ready.” She hurried to the fireplace against the back wall. Throwing in another log, she grabbed the matches and tossed in some kindling. With any luck, Robert’s plan would work, no matter how misguided he had been. She watched the fire flicker and hoped Abby’s secrets would die in its amber flames.
Run girl, run. Travel as quickly as you can.
****
Sandra fixed her hair, using the reflection on the side of the building to make sure that her appearance was just so. In the polished chrome, Sandra wore a brown hat tilted to the side and her exhaled breath flittered about in the cold.
Nerves, Sandra reminded herself. It was just nerves. Who wouldn’t be nervous? Over her shoulder was the very thing she had sought to avoid all her life. The home of the ministers.
Her heavy wool overcoat was buttoned right up to her neck and while it may have given her an air of decorum, it made breathing difficult, if not entirely unpleasant.
She stood on the front step of the Richardsons’ shop and with a slight pause, she rang their bell and stepped back, her hands folded in front.
It was the servant who pulled the door open, a broom in one hand and her face tilted down to the ground, a bruise shining on her cheek. Sandra held in her contempt for what had been done to the servant and steadied her voice.
“Calling for Mrs. Richardson, if she’s in.”
The servant stepped out of the way. “I’ll fetch her for you, Madam Taylor. She’s just powdering her nose after seeing a client.”
“Thank you,” Sandra said and stepped inside into the waiting area of the seamstress’ shop. She thought to take a seat in the black, overstuffed chair, but the dress in the center of the room caught her eye.
“No need to thank me, mum. It’s my job, no thanks required.” The servant hurried off and Sandra barely noticed her exit or her meek words.
No, instead she was transfixed on the black dress with lace trim and white satin cuffs. She stroked the heavy fabric and ran her hand up the corset, extended up the mannequin’s chest until her fingers stroked the broach at the center of the neck. A beautiful and elegant dress by all accounts, and based on its petite frame, Sandra knew what it was.
Her mouth went dry; this was to be Abby’s wedding dress. Even the black veil was elegant and perfect in every way, but this dress wasn’t fit for Sandra’s daughter—a fierce independent young woman, who did things her way. A woman not to be controlled, but instead, a woman who one day would change the world.
If only Sandra had been able to protect her.
Sandra thought she could do it. She thought she could stick Abby in a dress like this and try to crush her spirit to keep her safe, but by the workmen, she had been wrong to even attempt it. If her daughter had put this dress on, if she stopped being Abby and became Abbigail Richardson, Sandra couldn’t imagine a more tragic turn of events. She’d thought hiding her daughter was the best possible thing for her.
How had Sandra been so wrong?
“Mrs. Taylor, what a pleasant surprise.”
Caught off guard and with her emotions high and vulnerable, Sandra startled. “Mrs. Richardson, the pleasure is all mine.” Sandra dipped down briefly, twinging with the pain in her left leg. “I do hope it’s not too early to come calling.”
“Not too early for future family. Do you like the dress? I caught you admiring it as I came in.” Mrs. Richardson smiled tepidly. “Not that I can blame you.”
“It’s beautiful. The work you put into it, well, we can only thank you.”
“It’ll be a celebration worthy of the whole town and the ministers themselves.” Mrs. Richardson practically glowed at the compliments as she spoke them.
Sandra held her own hands firmly to keep herself in line. “You said it better than I could have which brings me to why I’m here.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Richardson’s face fell. “Is there a…problem?”
“No, certainly not. We had a shop emergency and were in desperate need of some supplies in Barnstable. I’m sure that Abby will be back shortly, but we had little choice but to send her—”
Mrs. Richardson stepped up and her eyes widened as if steam was coming out of her ears. “You mean to tell me you sent Abbigail away on an errand with less than a month to the nuptials?”
“We had little choice and she’ll be back in a week. Two, tops.”
“Tops?” Mrs. Richardson’s voice squeaked. “Why didn’t you go? Why send the girl we need here to prepare? She is the one wedding my son, Mrs. Taylor. You should have gone in her place!” Her cheeks fumed red and if Sandra didn’t miss her guess, the elder stately woman broke out into a sweat along her brow.
“It’s not my place to go on trips, as woman of the house.” Sandra smiled gently. “It’s my place in the kitchen, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure we nailed that all down at dinner.” She paused to delight in Mrs. Richardson’s reaction.
“I tell you this, Mrs. Taylor,” she leaned forward and whispered, “if she’s not around for the rehearsal dinner, if she isn’t here for the coming out ceremony that the Minister of City Affairs will personally be attending, heads will roll—and it will not be mine.”
Sandra held her ground, but she felt her heart skip a beat as she saw the woman’s true colors. To think of how ready she had been to entrust Abby and her heart to this woman and her family. “Abby will return in plenty of time. I’d stake my life on that.” She smiled sweetly, holding in the venom she felt for the Richardsons.
Every single one of them.
“Mother, is there a problem?” Timothy’s voice rang out behind them.
“No problem,” Mrs. Richardson smiled coolly. “I was just showing Sandra out, wasn’t I?”
“At once. I do apologize for disturbing you so early in the workman’s day. Please forgive me for any…transgressions.” Sandra bowed again and showed herself to the door, which Mrs. Richardson promptly opened for her.
Once outside, Sandra adjusted her hat and closed the door carefully behind her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, so grateful that was finally over. With hope she had bought Abby more time to get where she needed to go.
She stepped off the curb into the misty morning air and started on her way home, but for once felt no great rush to get to her destination. Sandra gazed at the wares carts on her journey up the road, she said hello to those she knew, and she studied how the grey clouds rolled above the buildings. Sandra had, of course, lied to Mrs. Richardson when she said Abby would be back. If Abby survived, if Abby was alive, she’d most assuredly not be back.
But Sandra had won her daughter a head start and that was something to be proud of, even if it meant in two weeks’ time it’d be Sandra’s head on the chopping block. You did what you could for your children—even if it meant your own death.
Chapter Nineteen
The Richardsons
Evelyn Richardson drew the shades down on the front windows and the door, peering out to watch that witch Sandra Taylor. She walked with the posture of a regal, so proud of the merchant status that she had married into. Evelyn’s eyes narrowed at the thought that she even had to settle to have commoners like the Taylors in her house to begin with. And that mouse Abbigail—why it made her blood boil.
“Mother—”
“Not now, Timothy!” she snapped and turned around, her finger pointed at him. The anger with which she’d addressed him drove back as though she had slapped him. “Fetch your father. We have much to plan for. Much to do.”
“What did Mrs. Taylor want, Mother? Don’t tell me that her d
aughter wants an audience with me before the wedding?”
“Speak out of turn again and I will cut your tongue. If you hate the Taylors so much, you have no one but yourself to blame, vile boy.” Evelyn couldn’t control her temper even as Timothy’s face fell and he sunk against the corner of the room, as though the wallpaper could swallow him whole.
“Your behavior caused all the finest families of Rottenwood to black ball you from wedding their daughters. Beautiful women, all set for life. We would’ve been set for prestige.” She slapped her hips in frustration. “Instead, we’re forced to take the scraps cast out by the Tippins. Mere bricklayers.”
Just saying it caused Evelyn to gag.
“Now we’ll be joined with merchants and your rugrag child will be as cursed as a simple merchant—if we’re lucky.”
Timothy’s head tilted to the floor and he didn’t say anything. Good, if he spoke, Evelyn would cut out his tongue and she might feed it to the servant.
“What is the commotion, darling?” Her husband, the ever-absent Mitchell Richardson, entered the room, a pipe in his hand.
“Those Taylors. They sent their daughter away on a fool’s errand, three weeks and six days before the wedding to our poor Timmy. They’re up to something, I just know it.”
Mitchell scowled. “What could that possibly be?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea, but we’ll find out. It’d be just like Sandra with her mouth to humiliate us. Turn our son into a bachelor? So he’d live a life of a servant? Well, I won’t have it. If they’ve hidden their daughter away somewhere, we’ll find her. I’d bet my life as a seamstress on it.”
“A servant?” Timothy whispered. “Mother, I can’t. Father…I’d rather die.”
“We’d see to that, don’t worry, boy.”
Mitchell sighed loudly. “Evelyn, really. Don’t you think you’re being dramatic? Three weeks is a long time. The life of a merchant does take you far and wide. If they needed Miss Abby—”
Evelyn wouldn’t listen to her husband go on about that little brat and using such polite terms about her as well. She left them and went into the kitchen where her servant was brewing a pot of tea. “You there,” Evelyn said with distain, “fetch the Minister of City Affairs. Go to his office and you tell his people that Evelyn Richardson needs to see him immediately. Immediately!”
Her servant wiped her hands on her apron and turned around much too slowly for Evelyn’s taste. She grabbed the broom in the corner of the kitchen and used it to jam into the servant’s side. Groaning, the servant crumbled forward.
“Yes, Ma’am. I’m sorry, Ma’am.”
“As you should be,” Evelyn whispered, her eyebrows arching. “Use the back entrance so no one will see you leave my shop. You’d curse it, just as you do everything. I’d rather have a rat seen here than the likes of you.”
The servant rushed off and Evelyn gave her husband the stink-eye as he grabbed her arm. “You’re pushing this too far, Evie.”
She snorted and gave him a shove. “I’ll push it as far as I need to. Perhaps I wouldn’t hurt her so much, if you could keep your hands to yourself.”
Evelyn had been testing the waters but when Mitchell dropped his eyes to the ground, she knew it was the truth and she hollowed inside and felt flat. Her cheeks flamed with humiliation. “If others found out that my husband would rather touch a spinster than me… As if my body grotesques you?”
“A lot about you repulses me, Evelyn, but your body is last on the list.” Mitchell turned and headed to the stairs, leaving her to stare after him.
How dare he. How dare they both.
They’d both suffer. They would both pay, but first she was going to start with little Miss Abby Taylor.
Timothy stepped forward and spoke sincerely. “I will help, Mother. I will find what they’ve done to Abby. Let me speak to the minister when he arrives. Let me talk to her friends.”
“Do what you must, but you remember it’s your head, or it’s Abby’s.”
Timothy nodded deep at the waist. “I’ll do whatever is necessary. I won’t have your reputation hurt on my account any further, Mother.”
“Pity,” Evelyn whispered, “you couldn’t have learned this lesson before you ruined me, boy.”
Chapter Twenty
Tarnish Rose
I awoke with a crick in my neck; sleeping up against a series of crates did that to a person. George still slept soundly beside me and I stroked his face for a moment before popping a book open and reading silently to myself.
Lost somewhere in the pages, the words faded away. Instead I stood with my feet planted firmly on the yellow brick road, the sun shining bright on my face, and I had my stalwart friends with me, always at my side. Off in the distance, the emerald city shone brightly.
Everything was as it should be.
“How long have you been able to do that?”
George’s voice jarred me out of the book. I felt as if I had zipped through time and space, my consciousness returning to the real world. I was again able to smell the boxes and the food they contained, and feel the pain running down my neck.
“Read?” George prompted me for an answer.
“Far back as I can remember,” I said and closed the book. “As a child, I read things I shouldn’t have, but I knew from a young age that no one could know.”
“Fascinating that something so magical would need to be hidden and kept secret. Maybe the ministers just like to keep the knowledge all to themselves.”
Maybe, it wouldn’t be the first time the thought crossed my mind.
“Do you think you could teach me?” George asked.
I held back a snicker at the idea I could teach anyone anything. “Well…I don’t know. I mean, maybe.”
“You think I can’t learn?”
“No, I think I can’t teach.”
“Try me.” George sat up straighter and poked the book with his finger. “Start with something simple.”
“Okay, well,” I flipped the book open to the beginning, “each letter has a sound and each combination goes together. Some sounds are long or short, but this combination T-H-E is ‘the.’ And this combination is wizard.”
George scowled, as if I had tried to give him the most complicated bit of directions he had ever heard. “And you just knew this? Instinctually?”
“I guess so. I never thought about it too closely. I went from wanting to hide my gift, to reading everything I could get my hands on.”
“What is this story about?”
“About a girl who travels to another world and all she wants more than anything is to get back home.” My voice turned wistful on me, even though we had only been gone a few hours.
George’s face fell. “I’m sorry I’ve taken you from home and your family.”
“It needed to be done. What we’re doing is right, but not everything that is right is easy.” I took a deep breath. “I knew for a long time that if I kept collecting books, where it’d lead. I just didn’t think I’d be doing it side by side with you.”
George smiled at me and leaned forward, planting a kiss on my cheek. It felt nice to be able to show each other affection. I rested my head onto his shoulder. “Tell me more about the story,” George said, just as the train lurched. I held a finger up to quiet him and hopped up to my feet and ran to the door, peering through the window. One of the conductors headed our way and if I didn’t miss my guess, he was going to inspect the compartments.
“Quick,” I said as I gathered my belongings, “we have to slide the door open and get out of here.”
George rushed the door and together we slid it open. The train was moving so fast that the landscape was a blur. We’d never survive a jump, and town was so close that I could see the smoke in the distance coming from the coal-burning stacks. I slid my satchel over my head. “Follow my lead.” I gripped the outer box car and stepped out onto the edge, barely big enough for the tip of my toe.
George followed close behind me as I rounded
to the side of the car. I gripped the ladder and pulled myself up to the roof. I lay flat on my belly and held on for dear life, trying to disappear into the top of the train.
Praying no one would find us.
****
It wasn’t long before we arrived in Effletown, the train pulling into the long station. The black and gray station had a partition and rows of people waited for a passenger car. Our train pulled in and the brakes squealed as it came to a stop.
Gripping George’s hands, we jumped down from the roof. I pulled him along, blending in with the groups of people that moved to the north part of the platform. I hid my hair tight under my hood and instructed George to do the same. “Put on your hood, keep your head down low.”
I didn’t know who might see us and when, but we were wanted by the ministers. Anything could happen at any time. I kept a close eye on the conductors and the guards with patches on their arms. They were the ones who served the Dark Lord Creighton and his house. No one could be trusted when it came to them.
We rounded down a set of stairs and town was before us—grim and dark, not as cheerful as Rottenwood. The cobblestones were chipped and puddles had taken root on the street. Dank laundry hung from lines strung from building to building, and the cry of a baby tugged at my heart. An old woman sat on the steps of two narrow dwellings too close together, her brown dress ripped, her eyes staring off as though she had nothing left to care for. Her head rested against the brick, her vision fixed on the sky.
Something about her called to me. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew she needed help. She needed words of kindness, compassion.
“Abby?” He whispered as I went straight over to her, extending my fingers to stroke at her chin.
A tear sprang from her eye and her lips parted. “Thirsty. There’s not much left in my home. Rations are two days late.”
Quickly I opened the canteen I carried and gave her some to drink. “Bless you child,” she whispered, “maybe the workmen look down favorably upon you…more than they do to me.”
