by Merry Farmer
“Yes,” Lawrence answered. His grin said so much more. “We’d better get a move on, hadn’t we.”
Flossie nodded, and the two of them headed down the path and out through the hotel’s front gate together. Once in the street, Lawrence took the road that led out of town, while Flossie picked up her pace and headed to the hospital.
As soon as she entered the hospital, it was clear that the entire staff knew the Pycroft girls were missing.
“I’ll sent Simon around to the constable, but I’m not certain that will help,” Mrs. Garforth was shouting over a pair of coughing patients in the waiting room.
“Send for the constable, the sheriff, and the lord high executioner, as long as they’re found,” a stiff woman in London finery that Flossie recognized as Aunt Eileen bellowed over the din in the waiting room. “This is disgraceful. A man losing his own children. I won’t have it, do you hear? I simply won’t have it.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Pycroft?” Flossie pushed through the noise, sending a wary glance Aunt Eileen’s way.
“What?” Marshall snapped. He appeared to be trying to look in three directions at once. Aunt Eileen was intent on catching his attention, but most of said attention was directed back down the hall.
Alexandra Dyson stood near the far end, looking pale and wan. “If you need to go search for them, I believe I will be able to handle things here,” she said, faint and tired. Perhaps the influenza Betsy had written about had come to Brynthwaite after all.
“I don’t want to leave you in a state like this,” Marshall said.
Flossie assumed he was referring to the chaotic waiting room.
“Dr. Pycroft,” she repeated, elbowing her way into the hall and around Aunt Eileen. She made it to his side and whispered, “Mr. Throckmorton has the girls. He’s taken them to Mother Grace’s.”
Marshall snapped around and glared at her. “He’s what?”
Flossie didn’t repeat her information. Aunt Eileen and Alexandra both took notice of her and began twin marches down the hall to converge on her and Marshall.
“Who is this woman?” Aunt Eileen demanded.
Without missing a beat or letting on what Flossie had said, Marshall told her, “She works for the hotel, for my friend, Jason Throckmorton. It seems Jason is in a bit of trouble.”
“What do I care if a man like that is in trouble?” Aunt Eileen sneered.
Flossie raised a sharp eyebrow. A man like that? So this Eileen character thought she knew something about Jason, did she?
“Yes,” Marshall barked, visibly angry. “It seems he’s about to find himself on the wrong end of a fistfight. If you’ll excuse me.”
Marshall pushed past Flossie and Eileen both, leaving the two of them and Alexandra alone in the hall.
“This is insufferable,” Eileen barked. “The man’s girls have gone missing and he runs off to aid a reprobate friend? Well, he’ll live to regret this, that’s for certain.”
Without another glance to Flossie or Alexandra, Aunt Eileen blustered down the hall and out through the waiting room, muttering curses as she went.
The noise level in the hall dropped dramatically as soon as she was gone.
“Well,” Flossie breathed.
“Well indeed,” Alexandra echoed. She moved to stand side-by-side with Flossie as they watched the other end of the hall, then darted a sideways glance at her. “Mr. Throckmorton has the girls, doesn’t he?”
Flossie nodded, lips pressed shut to keep the secret.
Alexandra let out a shaking breath of relief. “At least they’re in good hands.”
The way she said it, the misplaced emotion that contorted the woman’s face, was enough to shock Flossie into turning toward her.
“My lady, are you well?” she asked. Nothing indicated that Lady Alexandra wasn’t well except for the unerring sense one woman had for another’s emotional state.
As soon as Alexandra looked at her and saw that recognition in Flossie’s eyes, her face pinched in tears.
“Oh dear.” Flossie took Alexandra’s arm and steered her into the nearest room. It was filled with glass-fronted cabinets that held a variety of bottles of pills and tinctures. A table rested against one wall, as did a row of hooks containing aprons, and a bank of sinks lined the other. “You aren’t well. Please tell me what I can do for you, my lady.”
“It’s nothing,” Alexandra insisted, sniffing and forcing herself to stand straight. Her efforts didn’t work. She was slumping and weeping again in no time. “I’m such a fool,” she wailed.
“Certainly not, my lady.” Without a defined relationship between them, Flossie felt awkward comforting the woman. She rested a friendly hand on her arm nonetheless, rubbing it for support. “It can’t be all that bad.”
“Oh, but it is,” Alexandra cried.
Flossie swallowed. It certainly was a day for odd behavior. “Would you…would you care to tell me about it, my lady? I can promise you that I am the soul of discretion.”
Alexandra began by shaking her head, a strangled moan squeezing from her throat. All at once, that stopped. She caught her breath and grabbed Flossie’s arm.
“Yes,” she said, eyes popping wide as though she’d just been struck with an idea. “Yes, of course. You would know.”
“What would I know, my lady?”
“You would know how to keep and please a man.”
Flossie’s heart stopped cold. Prickles broke out along her back, and the world took on a tipped, dreamy feel. “P-please a man?”
“Yes,” Alexandra nodded, absolute certainty in her red-rimmed eyes. “You’re Jason Throckmorton’s mistress after all. You must know what it is men want, what keeps them coming back.”
Flossie’s mouth dropped open. She wasn’t certain if she made a sound or not. She wasn’t even certain Alexandra had continued to speak. Her arms and legs went numb, and her face burned hot with shame. Lady Alexandra Dyson knew about her and Jason. She knew.
Good Lord, did that mean that Lady E. knew as well? Was that why the woman had fired questions at her that afternoon?
But if Lady E. knew, then that must mean that Polly knew. Polly was her friend. She wouldn’t have given away secrets like that. Polly didn’t know anything in the first place. Flossie hadn’t told a soul, not a single soul. Jason hadn’t told anyone either, she was certain of it.
Then again, Lawrence Smith had seemed to know. Did the whole world know about her and Jason’s affair? Were they all laughing behind their hands at the two of them?
“Can it, Flossie? Can it?” Alexandra pleaded with her.
At last, Flossie closed her mouth, desperate to catch up to where she thought she should be. What had Alexandra asked her?
“I’m sorry, my lady, can what?”
“Can love find a way to cross the bounds of class and propriety and profession?”
Alexandra gripped Flossie’s upper arms with both hands, shaking her slightly in her desperation for an answer.
“I don’t know, my lady,” Flossie said.
“But you do,” Alexandra insisted. “You must. You and Mr. Throckmorton have made it work. How? How?”
It would do no good to deny the truth, not with Alexandra so distressed. Flossie’s denial would do nothing to ease whatever pain Alexandra was in.
“We’ve become close while working together,” she scrambled to say something that Alexandra might take comfort from. “We are well-suited, have similar temperaments, similar goals and needs.”
Yes, Jason needed someone to warm his bed and she needed money to pay off her nagging sister. That was it. At least, that’s what had started the whole thing. Where it had gone from there was so complex that no words would ever be able to sort it out or provide comfort for another soul. She and Jason were well-suited, all right. They were each as mad as each other.
“I have to make him love me again, I have to,” Alexandra went on. Her tears began anew.
In a flash, Flossie found her footing, calibrated where they were
in the conversation. Polly had told her Alexandra was involved with George Fretwell, but that that relationship would come to no good. It must have ended. Alexandra was a jilted woman. Pray God Flossie never found herself in the woman’s place.
“There, there, my lady,” she said, feeling free enough to embrace Alexandra as if they were friends, equals. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but for now it wasn’t the truth that was needed. “It will be all right.”
Sure enough, Lady Alexandra clung to her as though they were the last two women on earth. “But what if it isn’t? What if he never takes me back?”
From what Polly had told her, Alexandra would be far better off if George Fretwell never darkened her door again.
“My lady, you have friends. Good friends. Friends who will see you through this. That’s all that matters.”
Alexandra drew in a sharp breath. Whatever Flossie had said, it hit a cord. Alexandra straightened.
“Yes, I do have friends.”
Her face was red, though whether from crying or from some inner revelation, Flossie couldn’t tell. “Look to your friends,” she said. “They will carry you through the hardest troubles.”
Just as Jason had carried her through hers. She’d been in a bad position and he’d hired her. She’d needed money for home, and he’d allowed her to do what she needed to obtain that. Heavens above, perhaps they weren’t as mad as she thought at all. After all, if friends could be lovers, then it stood to reason that lovers could be friends. Best of friends. That’s what Jason was to her.
“Thank you, Flossie,” Alexandra said. She straightened and wiped her eyes. “Your friends are lucky to have you.”
Flossie smiled, big and bold. She couldn’t help it. “And I am lucky to have them, my lady. Very lucky.”
Matty
“Yes, yes, dear. Those purple ones,” Mother Grace directed Matty as they swept through the garden in back of her hidden forest house.
“This one?” Matty asked, brushing a long stalk of purple blooms. They were beautiful, but Matty was at a complete loss. She’d never lived in the woods before, never been around flowers and growing things.
“No, dear, that is delphinium. We want to pick verbena,” Mother Grace corrected her. She crossed the rows of haphazardly planted herbs and flowers to reach for the shorter stalks with more cone-like tops above smaller purple flowers. Halfway through laying a stalk in her basket, she paused. “Though midsummer is the day to pick delphinium for spells too. Might as well pick a bunch for the whole.”
Matty smiled and cut a few stalks of the lovely purple flowers with the silver knife Mother Grace had given her. She didn’t believe in magic and spells for a moment, but there was something soothing about the rich garden scents, the purpose that every plant seemed to serve, and the tenderness with which Mother Grace cared for it all. When Lawrence had left her alone with the older woman a week ago, Matty had been terrified. It had taken less than one night for her fears to be soothed, though. Something about Mother Grace’s house filled her with a sense of safety and comfort like nothing in her life ever had.
She may not have believed in spells, but she did believe that the moss-covered cottage with its thatched roof filled with living plants blended so well with its surroundings that it was next to impossible for anyone who didn’t know with absolute certainty that it was there to find it. The gardens were so cleverly planted—in long lines that melded with the natural hills and curves of the woods and the stream that ran through it—that they too were impossible to see unless you knew what you were looking at. Lawrence believed in Mother Grace’s magic with his whole heart, but Matty was more inclined to think that Mother Grace was just a brilliantly clever old woman who knew how to tease men’s minds.
“You’ll need some of this as your babe grows inside of you.” Mother Grace shook Matty out of her thoughts. She stood before a thriving raspberry bush, but rather than picking fruit—which wasn’t ripe yet—she nipped several leaves.
“Raspberry leaves?” Matty asked, stepping forward to take a bundle from Mother Grace.
“Raspberry leaf tea,” Mother Grace nodded. “Very useful for expectant mothers, for women in general. I will show you how to brew it later. Picking the leaves today, of all days, will ensure its potency.”
Spell lore aside, the herbal knowledge that Mother Grace had begun to share with her was invaluable. “When should we—”
Mother Grace held up a hand, cutting Matty off. Matty froze, watching as the older woman tilted her head to the side. She too listened, but it wasn’t until a smile spread across Mother Grace’s face that Matty heard what the older woman heard. Children’s voices.
“Well,” Mother Grace said. “Isn’t this a treat?”
She started forward, heading for the house, Matty behind her. The two women crossed through the open back door of the house, leaving their cuttings and tools on the table, then headed out the front. By the time they reached the overgrown front yard where the tea table was set up, the young voices had grown more distinct, and with them a man’s voice.
“But where are we?” one child fretted.
“We’re almost there,” the man answered. “Just as I promised.”
“There’s nothing here,” a slightly younger voice said. Matty would recognize the voice anywhere. Molly Pycroft.
“I’m frightened,” the tiny voice of Martha followed.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, my sweet. In fact, you’ll never be safer in your life.”
They rounded the corner, slipping between deep green bushes and trees. Mary, Molly, and Martha Pycroft. But it was not Dr. Pycroft who escorted them, it was Mr. Throckmorton. Matty started.
“He’s right, you know,” Mother Grace said, opening her arms to the children as they slipped into view as if they visited her every day. “Dear me, look at these beautiful girls.”
All three of the girls gasped in surprise, gaping at Mother Grace, the sudden house, and Matty. Mr. Throckmorton carried Martha, who buried her face against his shoulder.
“Matty!” The moment Mary recognized Matty, her shoulders dropped in relief, and she ran to her. The two of them met in a tight hug. Matty was as relieved to see Mary as she could feel Mary was to see her. “I was so worried about you. You didn’t come one day, and I didn’t know where you were.”
“I was here,” Matty said.
“Yes,” Mother Grace added. “Here, safe with me, just as you are now.” She turned to Mr. Throckmorton, meeting him with a hug that took in him and Martha both. “Jason, Jason. It’s been far too long since you’ve visited.”
Right before Matty’s eyes, at least twenty years rolled off of Jason Throckmorton’s shoulders. He smiled, suddenly appearing more like a mischievous boy than a man. The stress and strain he had always seemed to carry when Matty was around melted.
“Mother Grace,” he said, hugging her in return. “It has been too long. I’m so sorry.”
“Not to worry, not to worry,” Mother Grace replied, ushering him into the circle of comfort that made up her home. “You’ve been busy carrying the weight of your conscience on your shoulders. Far be it from me to interrupt such important work.”
Jason Throckmorton blushed as though she’d tweaked his nose and paddled his backside. “Yes, well, my conscience weighs quite a lot,” he said.
Mother Grace—who had veered to the side to fetch a kettle of cooled tea from a shelf against the wall of her house—leaned to the side to study him. “Yes,” she hummed, raking him with a glance from head to toe. “But not so much as it used to. Take off your coat,” she ordered.
Mr. Throckmorton hesitated. His smile faltered. Then it returned, calm and comforted. He set Martha down—she ran straight to Matty, grabbing hold of her leg—then unbuttoned his heavy black coat and shrugged it off. Matty tilted her head to the side and stared at him. Only then did she realize that she’d never, ever seen him with his coat off. Bless him, but he was a fine, fit specimen of a man. He wore a crisp white
shirt and an elegant, red brocade waistcoat that accented his narrow waist.
“Ha,” Mother Grace exclaimed. “It’s exactly as I thought.”
“What is?” Mr. Throckmorton asked, mock suspicion in his expression as he draped his coat over the back of one of the chairs at the table.
“You’ve found your center.”
“Have I?” he answered. The question sounded glib, but Mr. Throckmorton’s eyes were serious.
“Yes,” Mother Grace answered. She stepped closer to him, taking his face in her hands and turning his head this way and that. She hummed. Mother Grace was tall for a woman, but she still had to look up to Mr. Throckmorton. Everyone had to look up to Mr. Throckmorton. “Your head it turning two ways, my boy,” she said.
“Yes, well, that is what necks allow heads to do,” he replied, teasing.
Mother Grace turned his head this way and that once more. “You’re at a fork in your road, sweet boy. Whichever way you choose, the choice will be with you forever.”
Matty was certain she saw Mr. Throckmorton blush like a girl at her first ball.
“Care to tell me which choice I should make?” he asked. His tone was teasing, but the question was not.
Mother Grace laughed and patted his cheeks. “You tell me, my boy, you tell me.”
She left Mr. Throckmorton standing there, blushing furiously, almost terrified for a moment. At length, he cleared his throat, tugged at his waistcoat, and turned on his heel to face Matty and the girls, who were now clustered around them.
“I’ve brought you Marshall’s daughters,” he said. “Their aunt Eileen is up from London, threatening to take them back. It seems Clara’s family is intent on gaining custody.”
“Yes, I know,” Mother Grace said, setting up tea for them all. “Lawrence has kept me informed.”
“He has?” Mr. Throckmorton’s shoulders dropped, as if he was disappointed he wasn’t the one to deliver the news.
“Of course. Lawrence continues to visit me, while certain other of my boys do not,” Mother Grace admonished him.
“True, but….” Mr. Throckmorton floundered. In the end, he settled into a chair at Mother Grace’s table and reached for a cup of cold tea.
