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“How are my sisters and brother?” she asked, her tone formal.
“All married, Timothy just last year to Anne Harris. You remember her, don’t you? Lived two houses down, had a terrible fever when she was but two years old.”
“Oh, yes. Little Annie Harris.” Helen smiled, but it was bittersweet. Annie Harris had been only five— Jamie’s age—when she’d left home to live with Lister. She’d missed an entire lifetime out of her family’s daily life.
Her father nodded, on firmer ground now that he had something familiar to discuss. “Rachel is married to a young doctor, a former student of mine, and expecting her second child. Ruth married a sailor and lives in Dover now. She writes often and comes to visit every year. She has but one child, a girl. Your sister, Margaret, has four children, two boys, two girls. She had a babe stillborn two years ago, another boy.”
She felt tears closing her throat. “I am sorry to hear it.”
Her father nodded. “Your mother fears that Margaret still grieves.”
Helen took a fortifying breath. “And how is my mother?”
“Well enough.” Papa looked at his hands. “She does not know I’ve come to see you today.”
“Ah.” What more could she say to that? Helen glanced out the window. A dog was napping in the sun on the inn doorstep.
“I should not have let her send you away,” Papa said.
Helen turned to stare at him. She’d never guessed that he hadn’t been completely in agreement with Mother.
“Your sisters were not yet married, and your mother worried for their futures,” he said, and the lines on his face seemed to deepen as she watched. “Also, the Duke of Lister is a powerful man, and he made it plain that he expected you to go to him. In the end, it was simply easier to let you go and wash our hands of you. It was easier, but it wasn’t right. I’ve regretted my decision for many years now. I hope you can forgive me someday.”
“Oh, Papa.” Helen went to the other side of the carriage to hug her father.
His arms were strong when they wrapped around her. “I’m sorry, Helen.”
She pulled back and saw that there were tears in his eyes.
“You can’t come home, I’m afraid. Your mother will not budge on that point. But I believe she’ll look the other way if you write me. And I hope that I can see you again someday?”
“Of course.”
He nodded and stood, briefly touching Abigail’s cheek and the top of Jamie’s head. “I need to go now, but I’ll write you in care of Sir Alistair Munroe.”
She nodded, her throat swelling.
He hesitated, and then said gruffly, “He seems like a good man. Munroe, that is.”
She smiled, although her lips trembled. “He is.”
Papa nodded and then he was gone.
Helen closed her eyes, her hand at her trembling mouth, on the very edge of breaking down in tears.
The carriage door opened again and rocked as someone climbed in.
When Helen opened her eyes, Alistair was scowling at her. “What did he say? Did he insult you?”
“No, oh, no, Alistair.” And she got up for the second time and crossed the carriage to kiss him on the cheek. She drew back and looked into his startled eye. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Chapter Nineteen
Princess Sympathy gathered all the magical things she could—spells, potions, amulets that were said to convey power—for she knew that if she were to face the sorcerer, she would need to be armed. Then she set off at night, all alone and without telling anyone in her father’s castle. It was a long and dangerous journey back to the sorcerer’s castle, but Princess Sympathy had her courage and the memory of the man who had saved her to guide her.
At last, after many weary weeks, she arrived at the grim black castle just as the sun rose on a new day. . . .
—from TRUTH TELLER
