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‘Be honest. They are not children.’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps they can understand it better than I. Thessa, my middle sister, has already said we should forget him. Bellona, the youngest, truly hates him. She doesn’t remember when he was kind, only the way he was at the last. And she’ll not forgive him for leaving our mother when she was ill.’
She wanted the statue—whether it was worth all she imagined, or nothing. She’d found it and she wished to have an expert examine it. To tell her that her eyes were right.
The dowry—she’d thought it her only reason to care for the statue. But, no. The stone woman had something in her eyes telling Melina she must be freed. Melina had to get her from the dirt. The woman had to be rescued in the same way a living, breathing person would. The same way Melina would have saved her mother if she could have.
The carriage stopped.
‘Leave the painting on the seat. I’ll make sure the hackney waits for us, Melina.’
‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘The British Museum. I wanted you to have a chance to talk with the man about what you’ve found.’
Chapter Fourteen
When they left the museum to return to Warrington’s home, Melina fought waves of despair. The curator could promise her nothing. He could form no opinion. Of course, he would like to be the first to see the find, but he must inspect it and have the statue examined by others before he could even guess at its worth.
She stepped back into the carriage, Warrington following behind. Pulling the painting into her arms, she rested her chin on the gilt edge of the frame. ‘I want to get London behind me. To forget my father’s ways and find a way to take care of my sisters. I fear that when I go back, Stephanos will have already noticed them because I have left. I warned them many times not to go near him. He pirates for Greece. He plunders and gives the funds to the island, and to people who are planning to overthrow the Turks. If he is caught, it would be dangerous to be his wife.’
She held her hand out to brace herself on the window facing, and then looked over her shoulder. ‘Before Father left, he told me Stephanos would make a good protector for me and I would be able to take care of my sisters. Yet he knew of Stephanos’s trips at sea and the risk of being seen as too close to him.’
She half turned to Warrington. ‘Father would never have emptied our mother’s slop bucket. Or his own. They would have overflowed.’
‘I am thankful for the pails, Melina. I believed I had learned my lesson. I would not let a woman’s face or body move me should I not wish it. And on a miserable ship when I had no desire in me until I saw you, I was burning to get you to my bed.’ His booted foot kicked the inside of the carriage across from him. ‘On the blasted ship—I was back at the mercy of a woman’s body again. Smelly slop buckets. Ridicule from the mates. And you turned out to be...not what I expected. I cannot trust myself to know a woman’s true heart. True person.’
‘Don’t you feel you know me?’
He moved, taking in a breath in such a way he pulled from her. ‘I’m not sure. And it doesn’t matter, even if I knew. I cannot exorcise the past I helped create, but I must make sure my son has what he needs for the future. I want to go home to Jacob—need to go home to see my son. But I can’t yet.’ Warrington’s eyes firmed on to something in his memories. ‘I have to talk with Cassandra’s sister. I want to know who the girl’s father is. To see if he knows of the babe, though I would think he does. When Cass returned home, most couldn’t have easily guessed she was with child—though I suspected the moment I saw her face. She’d changed. And the date of the birth was not something any of us wanted made note of.’
His hands curled into fists. ‘I woke up one morning on Ascalon. I wished for the sound of Jacob’s voice. Before too many years pass, he’ll have a man’s words. I’m going to lose my little boy whether I wish it or not and I was on a ship, sailing farther and farther from my own responsibilities.’
He brushed a moth from inside the carriage and it fluttered and found another resting place of darkness. ‘I feel nothing for the little girl. I keep lingering here, finding reasons to stay. Because I don’t want to return home and face a child who looks like my wife and looks nothing like me. I have to get her from Whitegate.’
‘You can’t leave a child with no parents.’ She turned back to the window and indicated the street. ‘I see the children here, and even though we had nothing on Melos, everyone had the same nothing. Some of the little ones here barely have clothing hanging on their thin bodies.’
