“Oh. Yes. Amber calls her that, as well. Thank you for the correction.” She looked down at her notebook and scribbled a footnote.
Alex held tight to his lighthearted facade, refusing to let it crack. “I had another experience with her. She used to call me the spawn of Satan. Even did it once in the presence of the daughter of a British peer. The name followed me in society from that day until I came to America. Mrs. Trimble apologized after what happened in San Francisco, so all is happy between us.”
Her eyes softened and he could have sworn she lifted her hand as if to touch him in comfort but she let it fall in her lap. “I am so sorry. I know how much it hurts to be misjudged,” she said instead.
Though he wished with all the loneliness inside him that she had found the courage to reach out to him, he shrugged in a purposefully careless gesture. “I didn’t care,” he lied, feeling a bit like a petulant child denying what was true to spite an authority figure. “I had my way to protect Jamie and she had hers. Together, though very separately, we managed.”
She stared at him for a long moment then looked away, withdrawing into her thoughts and leaving him to wish he had admitted that Mrs. Trimble had hurt him with her mistrust.
Keeping his careless facade alive grew more difficult around her than it had ever been. Conversely, he thought he was supposed to be shedding the mask now that he had embarked on his new life, but he couldn’t seem to manage it with Patience there. He could come to care for her and her rebuff might actually hurt. Right then, casting off the mask would be too much like casting off an old friend. It kept him safe and protected from rejection and contempt.
Should he have said a simple yes? That, of course, it had hurt? Should he confess that his own mother had been dead? That though he had taken on an adult’s role in Jamie’s life he’d still been a child himself? That he’d needed comfort and the kind of support only an adult could have provided? He hadn’t understood all that at the time, though. Instead, he’d been alone and had felt as if the weight of his corner of the world rested on his shoulders. Especially since then and now he feared his mother’s death had been his fault.
Determined to get Patience talking again Alex asked a question with a rather obvious answer, but it was the best his tumultuous thoughts allowed. “So were you supposed to have been in California when Jamie arrived there with Amber?”
Patience shook her head. Why was he insisting on this conversation? It might look casual to the Winstons but she saw determination in his gaze. She almost asked but decided answering his queries was the easiest course to take. And he had been helpful adding one or two facts they’d forgotten to account for. “No. We are to say my parents, the Winstons, were hired by Mrs. Miriam Trimble before the earl and Amber arrived just as they truly were. I am to have traveled there later to meet up with my parents after Heddie’s sister, Aunt Esther, passed. I will say I arrived after the fire and became Meara’s governess.”
She resented her father enormously at that moment. It was his fault she had to lie this way. Resentment warred with shame because she lacked the means to fight him openly instead of resorting to deception.
“Something about this doesn’t sit well with you,” Alexander said.
How had he known? “You’re very perceptive. I was taught to abhor liars. And now I am one.”
He looked angry for a moment then his gaze softened. He leaned a bit forward and set his forearms on his thighs. It put him at her eye level.
She wanted to scoot off the sofa and run but forced herself to remain still. She didn’t want him to see her for the coward she was even though she refused to examine why.
“Your father didn’t seem to have the same problem when he began to spread it about that you have gone mad,” he told her. “You mustn’t let the content of a Sunday sermon on lies endanger you, no matter how much you agree with the sentiments.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way. If she didn’t stick to the plan, her father and Howard Bedlow would win. She set her lips together and nodded before notching her chin upward and straightening her back the way her mother had always done when she’d stood up to Patience’s father. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But, still, you cannot argue that I won’t be lying. I’ll be lying to all my new neighbors and even to the children I hope to teach. I’ll be living a complete lie. I’ll be a lie.”
“But you will be keeping yourself safe and you may be giving the Winstons their fondest dream. Did you see Heddie’s face that first night in New York when she tossed me out of your room? She was like a mother bear defending her cub. I have been watching the three of you. There is some sort of instantaneous connection between you. I am quite sure they have in mind an adoption of a sort.”
She found herself chuckling over the vision that prompted. “I am a bit long in the tooth to be adopted, don’t you think?”
“I see no problem with the notion at all.” He grinned and sat back, falling into his usual lazy posture. “And I cannot imagine describing you as long in the tooth. You look like a girl just out of the schoolroom.”
She fought the need to squirm like an untested girl under his direct gaze. He’d said he’d been watching her with the Winstons. Well, she had been watching him, too.
She didn’t think he or his posture were as casual as he pretended. To her, his carelessness seemed studied. As if he, too, had learned to hide who he was. Making her wonder if he was a wolf? Or an ever-protective collie? She frowned at the metaphor, not liking that either made her the pitiful sheep.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
Called back from her thoughts, Patience realized she’d not only strayed from the topic at hand, but she’d also left the conversation altogether. She cleared her throat. “I do find myself comfortable with the Winstons,” she decided to admit. She forced herself to relax into the back of the burgundy brocade sofa. She refused to care if she stepped beyond the strictures of her society. She was no longer a part of all that. And it was just fine with her. It had to be.
“It’s an odd thing,” she continued. “I am suddenly able to let who I am inside show on the outside. And I am growing to like the feeling. They are wonderful people and it is an honor to be called their child.”
“Good.” He tilted his head, his eyes so intent she felt exposed. She nearly stood to go and join the Winstons. “Consider this,” he went on and she settled back against the seat again. “The Winstons lost a girl child. Judging from their age it was probably about the time of your birth. You must be the fulfillment of their every dream. You have the capacity to give back to them what fate took and be a great joy to them in the gift of yourself.”
“I think it is perhaps the other way around. They have become very dear to me in a very short time. So I suppose it is settled.” She put a hand to her chest. “I am Patience Winston, late of San Francisco and points east.”
He grinned and inclined his head. “Miss Winston.”
Relieved, she smiled at him. “Now that you have salved my conscience, perhaps you could fill me in a bit on your niece. I know from Amber that she is a sweet, lively and bright child. I believe Amber said she is fair with blond hair and blue eyes. Do you know her very well?”
He pulled out the watch and stared down at it for a long moment before detaching it from the chain. “Jamie gave me this the day before he sailed. Set in the cover is a miniature of Meara.” Opening it, Alexander smiled. His expression looked a tad wistful and entirely enchanted.
She reached out for the watch when he held it out, careful not to allow any contact when she took it from him. She was sure she’d never want a man to touch her in any way ever again.
The child smiling up at her from the watch’s cover was indeed a sweet-looking, blond-haired girl who looked startlingly like her uncle. Patience looked up. “There is a strong family resemblance. Meara could be your child.”
Alexander’s