LITMIR.BIZ

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hair, until she saw his great scarred shoulders sag into the pillows, as though he was letting go of some oppressive weight. It was only then that the import of his words struck her. He had another sister. One with whom he was on intimate terms. One that he went to, when he was ill.

      ‘My sister,’ he had said. Not ‘my other sister.’

      She stopped working on his scalp, imagining a girl who looked just like him. For somehow, she knew this other sister of whom he spoke came from his mother’s people. The people he felt he belonged to. Else why would he take such pains to emphasize his origins? He could easily have cut his hair fashionably short. Nor was there any need to sport such a large, showy gold hoop in his left ear. Or wear clothes that were so colourful and cut in such an exotic style.

      Stephen carried on breathing steadily, and she saw that the furrow between his brows was gone. He was asleep. She pulled his shirt from his slackened grasp, shook it out and draped it over the back of a chair, wondering if there had been anyone to do as much for Gerry in his last days.

      The thought of Gerry sent an immense wave of grief crashing over her. And now that there was nothing more for her to do and nowhere else to run, she found the urge to break down and weep impossible to withstand any longer. She clenched her fists, and went over to the window which had a broad sill, upon which several frayed and rather greasy cushions were scattered. She took one and sat down, drew up her knees and buried her face in it. If she could no longer contain herself, the least she could do was muffle the sound of her sobs, so that she did not disturb Stephen. From time to time, she raised her head long enough to glance across at him. But nothing roused him. Not even the return of the chambermaid with the coffee, though not the lavender oil. Midge shrugged fatalistically. Sleep was probably the best remedy for whatever ailed him anyway.

      She gulped down the coffee herself, between sobs, then drooped her way back to the window seat. She meant to keep watch over Stephen, but she could hardly keep her eyes open. Though that was not surprising considering she had hardly slept a wink the night before. And today, instead of taking her customary nap to make up for it, she had spent the afternoon smashing pottery, hiking across country and providing landlords and chambermaids food for gossip. And the bout of weeping had drained her of what little energy she’d had left.

      She rearranged one or two of the cushions to pillow her head, and settled into a more comfortable position, feeling like a dish rag wrung out and hung limply over a line.

      And woke with a start when Stephen reached over her, to yank the curtains open.

      ‘Good morning,’ he said dryly.

      Midge rubbed her eyes, then winced at the pain that shot down her neck when she tried to move her head. The cushions she had so carefully arranged the night before were scattered all over the floor, and she had woken with her face wedged against the windowsill.

      ‘Morning?’ she repeated groggily. It seemed impossible, yet the sluggish grey light of a new day was definitely oozing through the grimy windows.

      Stephen stalked to the washstand, poured water into a basin, and nonchalantly began to wash himself. Her shocked eyes roamed his naked torso, her heart welling up with pity. She had seen battle scars on her husband’s body, so she recognized the suffering that all those criss-crossed silvery lines represented. If she had not known better, she would have thought he had been a soldier. A bullet had most definitely caused the ragged wound on his shoulder. It was so very like the one that Monty bore.

      ‘Why did you come?’ said Stephen, his back still towards her as he reached for a silver-handled razor.

      Midge did not pause to think about her answer. She had been bereft and alone, and he had sent for her. ‘I have nobody else.’

      ‘What of your wealthy husband?’ Stephen sneered, wielding the razor with frighteningly lethal speed.

      ‘Gone to London.’

      He dipped the razor in the water, rinsing away the soap.

      ‘And what now?’

      ‘I suppose,’ she said hesitantly, ‘you wish me to leave now you are well again. Though…’ she pushed at one of the cushions with her toes ‘…you came down here to see me. Did you not? You must have had some reason for seeking me out.’

      Oh, how she wished he would say he had regretted causing trouble for her at the wedding. And that, because he was her brother, he wanted them to be on good terms again!

      But his face, as he turned to her, was harsh, not repentant.

      ‘I wanted to know about what was said at the wedding.’ When she frowned in confusion, he said impatiently, ‘About your mother. That she told your stepfather to search for me. That when she heard I had died in the fire…’ He turned abruptly, snatched up his shirt and dragged it over his head.

      ‘She made me think she cared for me,’ he snarled, jerkily doing up his shirt. ‘That she thought of me as her son. And then she tossed me out like a piece of rubbish as soon as my father died!’

      Midge leapt to her feet. ‘She did not! When our father was murdered, she became very ill. Her father, my Grandpapa Herriard, came and took her back to his house to look after her. He was the one who sent you away. By the time she was well enough to come to the nursery to see us all, it was too late. You weren’t there any more.’

      She sat back down abruptly, her head spinning alarmingly.

      ‘She begged him to tell her where you were,’ she said quietly, leaning back and drawing in deep breaths to try to stave off the faintness. ‘But he would not!’

      ‘You remember all that, do you?’ He sneered. ‘What were you, about four years old?’

      She shook her head, closing her eyes. ‘I only remember flashes of things from back then. Being lifted out of my bed in the middle of the night, mother weeping, and then the misery of the nursery at Mount Street. Missing my mother, and—’ she opened her eyes and looked straight at him ‘—you.’ Stephen’s absence had left a great gap in her life. A gap that nobody else had really ever been able to fill ever since.

      ‘You were the one I always ran to,’ she said sadly. ‘I remember that.’ She also remembered trotting after Hugh Bredon’s sons in the same way she had used to follow after her adored Stephen. And being shocked to find her new big brothers did not automatically pick her up and cuddle her until she felt better. It had seemed like a long time before Rick had gradually begun to respond to her need for affection. Gerry had followed his oldest brother’s example, eventually. Though Nick…

      She pushed those unfavourable comparisons away, returning to the matter at hand. ‘And then you were gone. And father was gone. And I was not allowed to go near mother—’

      ‘At least she kept you!’ he spat. ‘Have you any idea what it was like for me, being sent to that place for children nobody wants? They told me I should be grateful for being taken in and fed, since my parents and friends had deserted me. Grateful! And every time I ran away and tried to get home, somebody would drag me back, and they would whip me in front of all the other boys and make me wear a red letter R pinned to my jacket!’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Midge whispered, horror struck. How could anyone have been so cruel to a child that clearly needed love and reassurance? A boy who had just been ripped from the place he had been taught to believe he belonged? The scars on his body were as nothing compared to the scars that experience must have seared into his soul.

      ‘There was a fire,’ he said. ‘You said, outside your fancy church, that you wondered if that had been a lie, too. Well, it was not! The chaos it caused gave me the chance I needed to escape.’ He held out his hands and looked at the open palms for a brief second, before clenching them into fists and raising his dark head to glare at her again.

      ‘Where did you go?’ She looked at the hoop in his ear and the silver bracelet that adorned his wrist, and thought she knew the answer. ‘You found your way back to your real mother’s people.’

      Something flashed

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