The nuns filed out, robes hissing over the flagstones. Rose barely noticed. All her attention was on the letter and the baby whose fist poked blindly at the air. As the latch clicked behind the last nun, Mother Superior stood.
She gestured at the hard-backed chair in front of the desk. “Sit.”
Rose obeyed, folding her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling.
“How did you learn of this matter?” the Mother Superior asked. “Who has been passing messages to you?”
It was a trap.
Honesty always costs someone else.
Rose found a lie deep within herself, coming out as foreign as another language. “I overheard it in the hall. Some of the girls gossip when they think no one listens.”
Mother Superior regarded her in silence. “Eavesdropping is a sin, girl.” The proper response was immediate repentance, but Rose was so tired of bending to others’ whims.
“So is lying, Reverend Mother.”
Something flickered in the old woman’s eyes. The tension between them stretched like cooling wax, slowly growing brittle. With a soft sigh, Mother Superior slid the letter across the desk.
“You might as well read it.”
Rose lifted it, breaking the seal with her thumbnail before unfolding the single, lined page. The ink was blotted in places as if the writer’s hands had shaken, but the handwriting was delicate, familiar.
She read in silence at first, then aloud:
Dearest Rose,
If you are reading this, it means I am gone from this world. I am sorry, so sorry, to burden you once more, but I have no other. My daughter is named Elizabeth, though I call her Lizzie, and she is all I have left worth leaving behind.
Rose paused, the words lancing straight through her composure. Julia had achild?She hadn’t seen her best friend for over two years—since she had been sent here. After the initial disappointment of Julia never replying to her letters, Rose had begun to suspect that the nuns were confiscating her mail. Julia had been too good a friend to desert her in her hour of need.
Rose recalled one-sided conversations where she had pleaded with the nuns to check if she’d received any correspondence, but they had always shrugged and feigned ignorance.
Now she had proof. How many of her letters had the Mother Superior burned? And now her friend was gone forever? The knowledge was almost too much to bear, but she forced herself to continue.
Please, keep her with you. I know that, with you, she might know kindness, even in the confines of duty. The Duke of Carden is her father, though he will never claim her. Please raise her with the gentleness you showed me. I wish only that she might smile and not always be in shadow.
I loved you best of all, and I am sorry. Pray for me.
Your Julia.
A sob cracked her last word. The letter shook in Rose’s palm, but she clung to it.
She crossed to the basket and slipped her eyes over the baby, over Lizzie, who blinked up at her with untroubled wonder. Her fist curled and uncurled, seeking a finger to wrap around. Rose obliged, letting the tiny hand clamp onto her index finger.
“Hello,” she whispered.
The baby’s lips pursed, then stretched into a lopsided, gummy smile.
Mother Superior cleared her throat. “St. Clement’s is far from an orphanage. We have neither the means nor the staff to care for an infant.”
Rose did not let go of the baby’s hand. Desperation rushed up, a heat in her chest that could not be ignored.
“She is no burden. I will see to her myself,” she said. Mother Superior narrowed her eyes. Rose heard the desperation in her own voice and hated it, but pressed on. “I’ll do whatever is needed. Extra duties, the night watches, the laundry. Sister Margret will not assign anyone. I’ll do all of it. Anything for her to stay here.”
Mother Superior said nothing. She folded her hands on the desk with the patience of someone who had outlasted a great many pleading girls and expected to outlast a great many more.
“Please.” The word cost Rose something. “She is all that is left of my friend.”
