“You love him,” Mrs. Silver said.
“I do,” Sophie said proudly. “Though how would I ever know if he loved me?”
“You could ask him,” Mrs. Silver said.
Sophie’s cheeks burned. She felt like shuffling from foot to foot.
“He is honest, isn’t he?” Mrs. Silver said. “But I think he would never…impose.”
“I am more worried about imposing upon him.”
Mrs. Silver smiled. “I think you will know when the time is right.”
“Did you?” Sophie asked.
Mrs. Silver blinked. “Did I what?”
“Know when the time was right? You are going to marry Mr. Grey, are you not?”
“We are engaged,” came the slightly wary reply.
Sophie placed the last pin from her reticule into the soft strawberry-blonde hair. “Don’t you want him here with you now?”
“Not quite now. I… There are reasons I don’t want him to know about this incident. Will you promise me your discretion, Sophie?”
“If you promise me yours.”
Mrs. Silver smiled. “Of course I do.”
“Then I’ll confess to you that I have been so angry and confused, it even crossed my mind that my mother wrote that letter to herself, just to get my father’s attention. It must be terrible sometimes to know he belongs to the whole village and not just to us, to her. I know she feels that sometimes and is ashamed. She does so much, you know, and I don’t take nearly enough off her shoulders.”
“You do well enough. Perhaps what Dr. Chadwick needs is a proper assistant. An apprentice.”
“That,” said Sophie, much struck, “is an excellent idea. And I don’t really mean that my motherdidsend those letters.”
“Of course you did not,” Mrs. Silver soothed. She rose from the chair, flexed her sore arm, and walked unaided up and down the room. A little more color had seeped into her lips and cheeks. “I believe I am ready to go back now. I have a shawl in the drawing room that will cover this tear at the shoulder of my gown. Sophie? Who do you thinkdidsend the letters?”
Sophie shrugged. “Someone too scared or powerless to risk offending anyone? But I have no idea who that might be.”
*
“Where did youvanish to?” Solomon asked Constance when they were finally alone, walking back to the village. The Chadwicks had left half an hour before, the doctor being summoned by a patient, and the vicar’s carriage had just passed them bearing Miss Fernie as well. “You were gone so long I began to worry.”
“I just went to the cloakroom, but I ran into Sophie Chadwick, and we had a little private talk, which was enlightening in some ways.” She told Solomon what Sophie had said about Ogden and Mortimer and her parents. It took her mind off the severe ache in her shoulder and arm, which seemed to have borne the brunt of her fall.
“Interesting,” he said, though in discontented tones because still all they had was possibility. “And according to Miss Mortimer, Miss Fernie was forced out of her position as teacher because she was embezzling the school funds. No one knows this, apart from Miss Mortimer and the vicar, who managed her removal and her pension between them without scandal.”
“Then she surely bears a grudge against them,” Constance said, gripping Solomon’s arm tighter in her excitement. “Which would explain Miss Mortimer’s letter, in a spirit ofhow dare you judge me?”
“But the vicar didn’t get one.”
“The vicar didn’tsayhe got one. Perhaps I shall speak to him again tomorrow. Perhaps she’s saving Mr. Raeburn for a particularly nasty letter.”
“Or perhaps he doesn’t matter to her,” Solomon said thoughtfully. “It’s Miss Mortimer she must feel betrayed her, because they grew up together as friends of a sort.”
“Then why Mrs. Chadwick? The Keatons? Nolan the blacksmith?”
Solomon shrugged. “Perhaps she got a taste for the letters after sending Miss Mortimer’s. She is very much the judging sort, from what you have said.”
