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Strange—he needed her to agree, and yet, at the same time, he wanted to warn her off. He went to her, held out the miniature. She walked with it at once to a lamp and held it up, turning it this way and that.
“Enamel,” she murmured. “Beautifully glazed. Do you know, is this Augustus Burgess’s work?”
Trust her to evaluate the miniature as an object when he wanted her to focus on the girl it depicted.
“I don’t know the artist,” he said. “It was a gift. I only know the sitter. Euphemia. Effie.”
She had sent it to him with her last letter, posted to India.
He joined Miss Coover by the lamp. She lifted her head, registering his presence, but did not move away.
“Your sister,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“You see the resemblance?”
The green eyes, the black hair, the prominent facial bones, too much cheekbone and nose—they could have been twins. They look like foreigners. He’d heard it said on more than one occasion.
“It’s striking,” she said. “You’re both of you striking.” She flushed, lowering the portrait. He took it from her, for no reason other than to touch her hand.
“I haven’t seen her in three years. I can hardly believe it. When I left India . . .” He barked a laugh, remembering those final days before he boarded the steamer. Recently court-martialed, discharged from the army, headed home to put on mourning for a brother he cursed on sleepless nights . . .
She’d taken a step back to better study him. He made his face impassive, but his words, his tone, expressed his emotion.
“The idea that I would see her was my only solace.”
He forced a smile to undercut the mawkishness. Miss Coover seemed to elicit from him displays of sentiment.
She frowned. He was coming to understand her frowns. This one didn’t indicate displeasure but assessment. She was puzzling out the story.
“Why haven’t you? Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” A throat this dry cracked and bled. He felt pain when he swallowed.
“She eloped while I was still abroad. I got the news by letter. She’d married in Scotland but she was returning to London.”
He’d read that last letter over and over.
Be happy for me, it urged. I don’t require anyone’s blessing but yours. You’ll love Charles as I do, I’m sure of it. As for my role in the circus, I’ve chosen musician. How could Father mount a protest when I might have chosen lion tamer? A joke, dear brother. I have written to the dragon as well, and I expect nothing but fire. He will never approve, but I hope that you might. No, I know that you will. You’ve always understood me. When Charles and I return to London, I plan to do worse yet. I mean to sing upon the stage! Charles’s friends Frank and Madge adore my voice and want me in their show. I can use my married name, so no one need find me out and die of horror. I’m so glad you’ll be home at last. Come to Shoreditch to see me sing and I’ll dedicate the first song to Anthony, my cuckoo-bird brother. I’ll write with my address as soon as I have one. For now, mine is a roving life, and a merry one!
She hadn’t written with her address. She’d never written again. Or if she had, those letters had never reached him. He’d learned what happened from his father’s letter, which he’d found waiting for him in Hampshire.
“By the time I debarked in England, things had changed.” He rubbed his jaw. “Her husband abandoned her.”
Miss Coover shook her head slightly, as though in disagreement. “But then . . . she didn’t come home?”
“No.” The violence rising in him tested his restraint. He edged out of the circle of lamplight. “She would have known she wasn’t welcome.”
He’d argued with his father, pleaded with him to look for her.
She’s all Thalia’s, his father had said. She’s none of mine.
The night of that particular fight, the urge to strike his father—already weakened by attacks of apoplexy—had risen so sharply in Anthony that he’d pressed his fist against his own mouth until his lip split and blood ran down his teeth.
He could still taste the blood.
“She eloped shortly before George died. She didn’t attend his funeral, nor our father’s.”
Lucy looked at him. He could see the questions forming. She was the questioning type.
