LITMIR.BIZ

      “What a good girl you are, Nora.” Sarah smiled approval. “You ate all of your lunch.”

      “Soup.”

      “Yes, you liked the soup, didn’t you?”

      Nora’s answering nod set her golden curls bouncing. “Cookie?”

      Sarah shook her head, wet a cloth and washed the toddler’s face and hands. “No cookie today. You had pudding for dessert.”

      “Cookie!”

      Sarah looked at the toddler’s determined expression. It seemed a battle of wills was about to ensue. At least the sound of the storm would cover Nora’s squalls. She lifted her charge into her arms. “No cookie. It is time for your nap.”

      Nora let out an irate wail. Sarah lifted the yelling, kicking toddler into her arms and walked to the rocker on the hearth.

      “Cookie!” Nora howled the word, pushed and twisted, trying to free herself.

      “No cookie. Not today.” Sarah tightened her grip enough so the child would not hurt herself and began to rock. She hummed softly, ignoring the fighting, crying toddler. Nora’s storm was as furious as the one outside, but she lacked the strength to sustain her effort to get her own way. After a few minutes of futile exertion, she gave up the fight, stuck her thumb in her mouth and began to suck.

      Sarah watched the tiny eyelids drift closed as the toddler succumbed to the rhythmic motion, the steady whisper of the wood rockers against the floor. She wiped away Nora’s tears, studied the dainty brown brows, the tiny nose and soft contours of her baby face. She was a beautiful child. Spoiled but beautiful. Why did Clayton Bainbridge refuse to allow her in his presence? Refuse to even acknowledge her by name? Was she not his?

      Sarah’s pulse quickened. She stared down at Nora, thinking, remembering, drawing a parallel between her childhood and Nora’s. Even if Nora was Clayton’s natural child, it could be that he didn’t know how to be a father. Perhaps he only needed to be encouraged in his relationship with his daughter—the way Elizabeth had encouraged her father to love her and Mary.

      Her father.

      Sarah leaned her head against the chair back and closed her eyes. She had never told anyone, including Mary, that she knew Justin Randolph was not their real father. Justin, his servants, everyone thought she had been too young to remember, but the day that man had come to Randolph Court and taken her mother away was indelibly etched in her memory. And she remembered how the servants had gossiped about how Justin Randolph had gone after them and found the man dead and her mother severely injured from a carriage accident.

      She had been only three years old, but she vividly recalled Justin bringing her mother back home, and the horrible whispering when she died. She remembered it well because her nanny had taunted her by telling her the man who died was her real father, and that he and her mother were both evil and that’s why they had died, that she would die, too, if she wasn’t good. She had been so terrified she had decided not to talk for fear she would say something wrong that would make her die. But when Justin Randolph had married Elizabeth, everything had changed.

      Sarah opened her eyes and looked down at Nora asleep in her lap. She had never thought it through before, but Elizabeth had changed everything because she had brought love into their house. Elizabeth had taken her and Mary—two orphans forced upon Justin’s care by the death of their mother and real father—into her heart. She had loved them and treated them as daughters. And Justin Randolph had followed her example.

      Her example. Excitement tingled along Sarah’s nerves. The situations were entirely different, of course. Elizabeth had married Justin Randolph. And she had no intention of ever marrying. Aaron had been her dream, her love; she would not betray his memory. But still…If she could only bring Nora into Clayton Bainbridge’s presence…Resolve replaced the excitement. There had to be a way. And she would find it. Or she would make a way.

      Sarah hugged Nora close, kissed her soft baby cheek, put her in the crib and hummed her way to her bedroom. The brilliance of a lightning flash flickered through the small cracks between the window shutters. Thunder boomed. She flinched, started to back out of her room, then squared her shoulders, marched to the writing desk and pulled it into the center of the room, turning it so her back was to the windows. She was ready to write her parents now, and no storm was going to stop her. Determination brought her inspiration. She opened the clothing cupboard, pulled her green-velvet coal-scuttle bonnet off its hook and put it on, letting the wide silk ties dangle free. There was a loud thunderclap.

      Sarah flinched, then smiled. It worked. The deep brim shielding her face prevented her from seeing the lightning flashes from the corners of her eyes. Feeling both cowardly and clever, not to mention a little like a horse with blinders on, she seated herself and took up paper and pen.