The Gentleman and the Rake by Katherine Woodbury

Author:Katherine Woodbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781476468457
Publisher: Peaks Island Press
Published: 2015-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

Mr. B’s Testimony Corresponding to The Marriage

Week 3

We returned to the Bedfordshire estate a week after we married. I’d reinstated the upper servants by letter already, and they were thrilled to see Pamela, especially Mrs. Jervis. Pamela met the neighbors in the capacity of my wife. A few days after our arrival, I took her to visit little Sally.

Little Sally’s school was six miles away near a farmhouse, which also functioned as an eatery. The school sent its pupils to the farmhouse on outings, and I’d arranged for Sally’s governess to bring her there that morning.

Pamela and I were already seated at an outside table when the boarding-house chaise pulled up under the property’s alder trees. Little Sally and the other students scurried inside the house, chattering avidly as girls of six tend to do. Pamela went after them, and I heard her asking their names and what they were studying. I followed and leaned in the doorway.

Little Sally has my eyes and hair and her mother’s chin. She knows me as her uncle since she knows my sister as her aunt. When the girls bounced up to visit the farm’s beehives, she curtsied to me, and Pamela turned to study me gravely.

She followed the girls to the door but stopped beside me and to my surprise, slipped her arms around my waist.

I said, “She goes by Miss Goodwin. The name was her mother’s choice.”

“How can her mother bear to be apart from her?”

The question was sincere but also deliberate. I bent to look into Pamela’s face. She gave me one of her sideways glances, and I realized that in my story of Sally Godfrey, I might not have mentioned what happened to my erstwhile lover.

I held Pamela a little tighter and smiled over her head.

“She lives in Jamaica,” I said. “She left soon after the child’s birth, passing herself off as a young widow. She married, three years ago now. Her husband knows there is a child; he believes little Sally is being raised by friends.”

“Poor lady,” Pamela said. “I am glad she is so happy.”

“And that she is so far off,” I said, and Pamela nudged me with her fist.

“Does Sally—Miss Goodwin— visit you?”

“Occasionally.” I bent my head again. “She believes the story her mother created.”

I didn’t say I wished I could claim my daughter. What is the point of wanting what would only cause damage and pain? It would do little Sally no favors to be known as illegitimate, and she should not have to bear the knowledge of her stigma.

Pamela hugged me tighter as if she guessed my feelings, then detached herself and went into the garden. She knelt beside Sally, and they watched the beehives together.

“Will you let me be your aunt?” Pamela was saying as I neared, and Sally, looking up, waved at me cheerily.

“Hullo,” she said. “I haven’t seen you for ages.” Pure exaggeration. I saw her before I went to the Hargraves.

“Would you like to live with us?” Pamela said, and I actually gasped.

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