The Wicked Redhead by Beatriz Williams

Author:Beatriz Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

15

SO THERE I stand, holding my envelopes, absorbing the meaning of this symmetry, and a hand falls on my shoulder.

I whip around right fast, causing a woman in a dressing gown to stumble backward, clutching her old-fashioned cap above a face I recognize as that of Miss Marshall’s nanny.

“I’m sorry, Miss Kelly,” she gasps. “Didn’t mean to startle you. It’s your sister, ma’am. Young Miss Kelly. She’s asking for you. I tried to soothe her, but she only wants you.”

16

PATSY HOLDS out her arms to me. “Ginny!”

“I’m here, sweetie pie. Right here.”

“I called and called.”

“I’m sorry, Patsy, I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear you. This place is so big.”

She nestles right up to my chest, resting her cheek upon my breast, and her flannel nightgown is soft against the skin of my arms. The curtains are thick, enclosing the tiny room in an atmosphere of darkness; you would hardly know that outside the window, Manhattan beats and throbs and casts out its glow into the universe. We are a pair of country caterpillars, snuggled together in our tight cocoon.

“I want to go home now,” Patsy says.

“Home? You mean back to Florida?”

“No. Home.”

The word makes my bones chill. I stroke her hair and try to think of something to say. Patsy starts to cry.

“I want my daddy!”

“Hush, sweetie pie.”

“I want my daddy! Where’s my daddy?”

“Your daddy’s—your daddy’s . . .” Dead. Gone. Sucked down into purgatory, where he be stabbed with red-hot pokers for all eternity, or else folded into the scalding embrace of Mephistopheles. But you can’t say such things to a child, can you? You can’t say such things to a daughter about Duke Kelly, who might have been the devil’s own bastard but was also a daddy, her daddy, tickling his moustache in her hair and buying her dolls and smelling of tobacco and whiskey and a safe, warm bed.

And it’s nighttime, and little girls must sleep. The truth can wait for the coming of dawn.

“Daddy’s got his own business, sweet pea,” I tell her. “But he does love you.”

“Johnnie loves me, too,” she says, and her sobs subside a little.

“Yes, he surely does. Your brother loves you most of all. He always will.”

Her voice turns slower. Loses its high, watery pitch. “Mr. Marshall loves me.”

“Mr. Marshall?”

“He told me so. Said you would return home soon and come to me.”

“Oh, my darling.”

“He was just right. Where was you, Ginny?”

“I was—I was—I had to visit an old friend. Eat my supper. If I knew you were still awake—”

“Mr. Marshall came,” she says, dreamy now, gathering back the country cadence that had already begun to slip away during our weeks in Florida with the crisp-voweled Fitzwilliam family. “Remember how he carried me out of the rain, that time?”

“I do, Patsy. I remember it well.”

“Is you fixing to marry him, Ginny? Cause he might be my big brother, then. If Daddy don’t come back.”

We are sitting up against the headboard, Patsy and me, and as it’s a narrow bed, made for

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