A Lady by Midnight

Truly, she could not complain. Margate had provided for her every need, save one.

Love.

In all her years there, she’d never known real love. Just some pale, thrice-washed dilution of it. Another girl might have grown bitter. But Kate just wasn’t formed for misery. Even if her mind could not recall it, her heart remembered a time before Margate. Some distant memory of happiness echoed in its every beat.

She’d been loved once. She just knew it. She couldn’t put a name or face to the emotion, but that didn’t make it any less real. Once upon a time, she’d belonged—to someone, somewhere. This woman might be her last hope of finding the connection.

“Do you remember the day I arrived at Margate, Miss Paringham? I must have been such a little thing.”

The old woman’s mouth pursed. “Five years at the oldest. We had no way to be certain.”

“No. Of course you wouldn’t.”

No one knew Kate’s true birthday, least of all Kate herself. As schoolmistress, Miss Paringham had decided all wards of the school would share the Lord’s birthday, December 25. Supposedly they were to take comfort from this reminder of their heavenly family on the day when all the other girls had gone home to their own flesh-and-blood relations.

However, Kate always suspected there’d been a more practical motive behind the choice. If their birthdays were on Christmas, there was never any need to celebrate them. No extra gifts were warranted. Wards of the school made do with the same Christmas package every year: an orange, a ribbon, and a neatly folded length of patterned muslin. Miss Paringham did not believe in sweets.

Apparently she still didn’t. Kate bit a tiny corner off the dry, tasteless biscuit she’d been offered, then set it back on the plate.

On the mantel, the clock’s ticking seemed to accelerate. Only twenty minutes before the last stagecoach left for Spindle Cove. If she missed the stage, she would be stranded in Hastings all night.

She steeled her nerve. No more dithering.

“Who were they?” she asked. “Do you know?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“My parents.”

Miss Paringham sniffed. “You were a ward of the school. You have no parents.”

“I do understand that.” Kate smiled, trying to inject some levity. “But I wasn’t hatched from an egg, was I? I didn’t turn up under a cabbage leaf. I had a mother and father once. Perhaps I had them for as many as five years. I’ve tried so hard to remember. All my memories are so vague, so jumbled. I remember feeling safe. I have this impression of blue. A room with blue walls, perhaps, but I can’t be certain.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and frowned at the knotted carpet fringe. “Maybe I just want to remember so desperately, I’m imagining things.”

“Miss Taylor—”

“I remember sounds, mostly.” She shut her eyes, delving inward. “Sounds with no pictures. Someone saying to me, ‘Be brave, my Katie.’ Was it my mother? My father? The words are burned into my memory, but I can’t put a face to them, no matter how I try. And then there’s the music. Endless pianoforte music, and that same little song—”

“Miss Taylor.”

As she repeated Kate’s name, the old schoolmistress’s voice cracked. Not cracked like brittle china, but cracked like a whip.

In a reflexive motion, Kate snapped tall in her chair.

Sharp eyes regarded her. “Miss Taylor, I advise you to abandon this line of inquiry at once.”

“How can I? You must understand. I’ve lived with these questions all my life, Miss Paringham. I’ve tried to do as you always advised and be happy for what good fortune life has given me. I have friends. I have a living. I have music. But I still don’t have the truth. I want to know where I came from, even if it’s difficult to hear. I know my parents are dead now, but perhaps there is some hope of contacting my relations. There has to be someone, somewhere. The smallest detail might prove useful. A name, a town, a—”

The old woman rapped her cane against the floorboards. “Miss Taylor. Even if I had some information to impart, I would never share it. I would take it to my grave.”

Kate sat back in her chair. “But . . . why?”

Miss Paringham didn’t answer, merely pressed her papery lips into a thin slash of disapproval.

“You never liked me,” Kate whispered. “I knew it. You always made it clear, in small, unspoken ways, that any kindness you showed me was begrudged.”

“Very well. You are correct. I never liked you.”

They regarded one another. There, now the truth was out.

Kate struggled not to reveal any sign of disappointment or hurt. But her wrapped bundle of sheet music slipped to the floor—and as it did, a smug little smile curved Miss Paringham’s lips.

“May I ask on what basis was I so reviled? I was appropriately grateful for every small thing I was given. I didn’t cause mischief. I never complained. I minded my lessons and earned high marks.”

“Precisely. You showed no humility. You behaved as though you had as much claim to joy as any other girl at Margate. Always singing. Always smiling.”

The idea was so absurd, Kate couldn’t help but laugh. “You disliked me because I smiled too much? Should I have been melancholy and brooding?”

“Ashamed!” Miss Paringham barked the word. “A child of shame ought to live ashamed.”

Kate was momentarily stunned silent. A child of shame? “What can you mean? I always thought I was orphaned. You never said—”

“Wicked thing. Your shame goes without saying. God Himself has marked you.” Miss Paringham pointed with a bony finger.

Kate couldn’t even reply. She raised her own trembling hand to her temple.

With her fingertips, she began to idly rub the mark, the same way she’d done as a young girl—as if she might erase it from her skin. Her whole life, she’d believed herself to be a loved child whose parents met an untimely demise. How horrid, to think that she’d been cast away, unwanted.

Her fingers stilled on her birthmark. Perhaps cast away because of this.

“You fool girl.” The old woman’s laugh was a caustic rasp. “Been dreaming of a fairy tale, have you? Thinking someday a messenger will knock on your door and declare you a long-lost princess?”

Kate told herself to stay calm. Clearly, Miss Paringham was a lonely, warped old woman who now lived to make others miserable. She would not give the beastly crone the satisfaction of seeing her rattled.

But she would not stay here a moment longer, either.

She reached to gather her wrapped parcel of music from the floor. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Miss Paringham. I will leave. You needn’t say any more.”

“Oh, I will say more. Ignorant thing that you are, you’ve reached the age of three-and-twenty without understanding this. I see I must take it upon myself to teach you one last lesson.”

“Please, don’t strain yourself.” Rising from her chair, Kate curtsied. She lifted her chin and pasted a defiant smile on her face. “Thank you for the tea. I really must be going if I’m to catch the stagecoach. I’ll see myself out.”

“Impertinent girl!”

The old woman lashed out with her cane, striking Kate in the back of the knees.

Kate stumbled, catching herself in the drawing room entryway. “You struck me. I can’t believe you just struck me.”

“Should have done it years ago. I might have knocked that smile straight from your face.”

Kate braced her shoulder on the doorjamb. The sting of humiliation was far greater than the physical pain. Part of her wanted to crumple into a tiny ball on the floor, but she knew she had to flee this place. More than that, she had to flee these words. These horrible, unthinkable notions that could leave her marked inside, as well as out.

“Good day, Miss Paringham.” She placed weight on her smarting knee and drew a quick breath. The front door was just paces away.

“No one wanted you.” Venom dripped from the old woman’s voice. “No one wanted you then. Who on earth do you think will want you now?”

Someone, Kate’s heart insisted. Someone, somewhere.

“No one.” Malice twisted the old woman’s face as she swung the cane again.

Kate heard its crisp whack against the doorjamb, but by then she was already wrestling open the front latch. She picked up her skirts and darted out into the cobbled street. Her low-heeled boots were worn thin on the soles, and she slipped and stumbled as she ran. The streets of Hastings were narrow and curved, lined with busy shops and inns. There was no possible way the sour-faced woman could have followed her.

Still, she ran.

She ran with hardly a care for which direction she was going, so long as it was away. Perhaps if she kept running fast enough, the truth would never catch up.

As she turned in the direction of the mews, the booming toll of a church bell struck dread in her gut.

One, two, three, four . . .

Oh no. Stop there. Please don’t toll again.

Five.

Her heart flopped. Miss Paringham’s clock must have been slow. She was too late. The coach would have already departed without her. There wouldn’t be another until morning.

Summer had stretched daylight to its greatest length, but in a few hours, night would fall. She’d spent most of her funds at the music shop, leaving only enough money for her passage back to Spindle Cove—no extra coin for an inn or a meal.

Kate came to a standstill in the crowded lane. People jostled and streamed about her on all sides. But she didn’t belong to any of them. None of them would help. Despair crawled its way through her veins, cold and black.

Her worst fears had been realized. She was alone. Not just tonight, but forever. Her own relations had abandoned her years ago. No one wanted her now. She would die alone. Living in some cramped pensioner’s apartment like Miss Paringham’s, drinking thrice-washed tea and chewing on her own bitterness.

Be brave, my Katie.

Her whole life she’d clung to the memory of those words. She’d held fast to the belief that they meant someone, somewhere cared. She wouldn’t let that voice down. This sort of panic wasn’t like her, and it wouldn’t do a bit of good.

She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and took a silent inventory. She had her wits. She had her talent. She had a young, healthy body. No one could take these things from her. Not even that cruel, shriveled wench with her cane and weak tea.

There had to be some solution. Did she have anything she could sell? Her pink muslin frock was rather fine—a handed-down gift from one of her pupils, trimmed with ribbon and lace—but she couldn’t sell the clothes off her back. She’d left her best summer bonnet at Miss Paringham’s, and she’d rather sleep in the streets than retrieve it.

If she hadn’t cut it so short last summer, she might have tried to sell her hair. But the locks barely reached below her shoulders now, and they were an unremarkable shade of brown. No wig maker would want it.

Her best chance was the music shop. Perhaps if she explained her predicament and asked very nicely, the proprietor would accept his music back and return her money. That would afford her enough for a room at a somewhat respectable inn. Staying alone was never advisable, and she didn’t even have her pistol. But she could prop a chair beneath her door and stay awake all night, clutching the fireplace poker and keeping her voice primed to scream.

There. She had a plan.

As Kate started to cross the street, an elbow knocked her off balance.

“Oy,” its owner said. “Watch yerself, miss.”

She whirled away, apologizing. The twine on her parcel snapped. White pages flapped and fluttered into the gusty summer afternoon, like a covey of startled doves.

“Oh no. The music.”

She made wild sweeps with both hands. A few pages disappeared down the street, and others fell to the cobblestones, quickly trampled by passersby. But the bulk of the parcel landed in the middle of the lane, still wrapped in brown paper.