Maisy hurried across the room and, to everyone’s surprise, crawled onto Leopold Randall’s lap. She moved her head close to Leopold’s and stared into his eyes. Leopold tried to look around her. “Ah… a little help would be nice.”
Mercy stood with a laugh and lifted Maisy away. “Children always know who is kind. It’s your dimples, my love. They reassure everyone you meet.”
The man stood, shaking his head. “So you say. If you would excuse me, I’d better return to work. Lord Grayling, a pleasure to meet you. I’ll leave you two to catch up.”
Mercy’s eyes twinkled as she watched her new husband depart. “He had that same effect on Edwin when they met, and me as well.”
“Are you trying to tell me you fell in love at first sight?”
“Not first sight, no.” Her expression grew guarded. “First touch, perhaps. Let’s go upstairs to the nursery. I think Poppy and Willow are falling asleep where they sit.”
Constantine quickly glanced at the girls. “So they are.”
When he stood, Mercy captured Willow and Maisy’s hands and guided them toward the doors. “How will you manage without your governess?”
“I’m not sure, but it cannot be soon enough for Miss Clark to arrive.” Constantine rubbed his jaw. “You know, Maisy doesn’t usually care for strangers. She’s more likely to remain beneath the table as come out.”
Mercy started up the stairs. “Well, perhaps she saw something in his eyes that was familiar and comforting. Unfortunately, given her age, we’ll always wonder.”
CHAPTER 23
WHEN MEREDITH CLARK had come into existence, there had been no knight to rescue her, no family left to care if she lived or died. She had been alone and frightened and unprepared for life’s hardships. When she assumed the name Calista, it was to protect what was left of her dignity in the face of a terrible choice.
Names were important. Names defined who you were and how far you’d fallen in the world. In all her life, she had fought her identity. Her place in society and its suffocating expectations. With each new name she assumed, a little piece of herself had withered. Yet coming to this place had brought the past rushing back as if it had never been lost.
As night closed in on the rain-washed village, she pushed open the lych-gate and stepped into the graveyard, allowing the gentle hiss to lull her and its whispers to lure her closer to the crumbling grave markers. The thick grass cushioned her sodden footfalls, muffling her passage through the dead. Grizzled gray stone jutted toward the sky, angels and carved granite bestowing identity and position, even in death.
The rows of weeping headstones bore names and benedictions. Much loved. Sadly missed. Too good for this life. The poorer markers were no less poignant than the larger. She passed them all, stopping at one that bore no names. No identity and therefore no position to speak of. A simple stone edifice marked the passing of life.
Together in death was all it said along with a year.
Together but unknown.
Together and dead.
The woman known by many names save her own sank to her knees on the sodden ground, little caring if her carriage dress became as ruined as she was herself.
Names were important.
The couple buried here should have a name carved into their headstone. They deserved to be remembered for the life they had lived, for the sacrifices they had made, the love they had freely offered even as they guided their children to adulthood with determination to succeed and ignorance of the true danger. The headstone should say they had been loved and still were. That they were missed. That they were too vital to be taken away in an act of cold cowardice.
“Did you know them,” asked a woman to Rosemary’s right.
Did she know them? Not enough. No amount of time would be long enough, but she was glad they could not see what she had become. Tears burned her eyes, but she would not let them fall. When she did, she feared the avalanche of feeling would break her. She would not give in to her sorrows. She had already lost so much today. She would be strong, as she had always needed to be. “Did you?”
The gravestones blurred and she hastily wiped at her eyes.
The woman heaved a weary sigh. “I was not so fortunate. But I remember it as if it was yesterday. A sad case, indeed. I’d just moved here after my marriage when these two strangers were brought in for burial. I’ve always thought it sad that their loved ones never came to find them. If their family ever discovered the deaths we never heard, but without any information regarding their identity, there was no chance to write to inform them. I know the vicar did try.”
Strangers? They’d had names. Rosemary surged to her feet and spun about. “Randall. James and Jane Randall.”
Mrs. Lamb, huddled beneath a black umbrella, drew back at the heat in her voice. “So you did know them?”
Denial thickened her tongue. She had lived her life with lies to protect herself from discovery. To forget the nightmare of that day, the deaths she had witnessed, and the plans that had been set in motion for her future, had required many sacrifices. She, who had barely spoken one truthful word to a living human in a decade, did not want to lie. The habits she’d adopted for the sake of self-preservation were hard to break. Honesty had been the first virtue to be dispensed with. She swallowed past the lump forming in her throat. Didn’t the dead deserve honesty? “Yes.”
The woman nodded toward the distant vicarage. “He’ll be happy to sign their names into the register and have the mystery solved. Perhaps it’s not too late to inform their family. Do you know how they died?”
Splintering wood and the world turning over. Voices raised in anger. A woman’s scream and pleas for help. Running fast for help, only to find it and be too late. Pistol shots bringing silence. “Yes,” she whispered to the old woman. “Rosemary was there.”