called upon those skills now. She chatted about the weather and the neighborhood and the city in general, asking Mr. Dudley what he thought about this or that, and of course he never had an opinion. Finally, she accomplished her mission, which was to make him understand that she wasn’t leaving before he did.
“I… I suppose I should be going,” he said in defeat after what seemed an age to Sarah. Letitia looked stricken.
She glanced at Sarah, probably wishing her in Hades, but her social skills had not included training in how to handle someone as rudely determined as Sarah. “I… I hope you’ll be able to call again soon,” she said to him at last, her eyes suspiciously moist.
“Oh, certainly,” he quickly assured her. “I…I’ll make a point of it.”
She gave him her hand. “Thank you for coming. It was so very nice to see you. To see a familiar face, that is,” she amended, remembering Sarah’s presence.
He had to swallow before he could say, “It was very nice to see you, too. I hope I haven’t hindered your recovery in any way.”
“Oh, no! In fact, I’m sure you’ve helped it tremendously!”
Sarah somehow managed not to choke. “It was lovely meeting you, Mr. Dudley,” she said in an effort to get him going. “Perhaps we’ll encounter each other again.”
“I…I’d like that,” he said without conviction, releasing Letitia’s hand with obvious reluctance.
“I’ll ring for the maid to see you out,” Letitia said. “Mrs. Brandt, will you be leaving, too?” she added almost hopefully.
Sarah smiled serenely. “I’d like to speak with you privately, if you don’t mind. I need to find out how you’re feeling.”
Letitia frowned. She wasn’t very adept at concealing her true emotions, and now she wanted Sarah even farther away than Hades. They sat in uncomfortable silence until the maid appeared in the doorway, and Dudley took his leave again.
It was painful to watch the two of them unable to say what they wanted to say because of Sarah’s presence, but she steeled herself to the ordeal. When at last the door had closed behind him, she turned to Mrs. Blackwell.
“He seems like a very nice young man,” Sarah ventured, and Mrs. Blackwell burst into tears.
Sarah hurried to her side. “I was afraid that entertaining a visitor might be too much of a strain for you,” she said, searching for her handkerchief.
Before she could find it, Letitia pulled one from her sleeve and began to weep into it. “You don’t understand!” she insisted.
“Oh, I believe I do,” Sarah said. “You’ve known Mr. Dudley for several years, haven’t you?”
Letitia cried harder.
“You obviously care deeply for one another. Anyone could see it in the way you look at each other, which makes me suspect that Mr. Dudley was the young man with whom you attempted to elope the night you were injured.”
Letitia’s head came up. Her lovely eyes were full of unshed tears, but she had been shocked into horrified silence. “Who told you that?” she whispered.
“You know how servants gossip,” Sarah excused herself.
“They couldn’t… He’s never been to the house before! They’ve never even set eyes on him!”
Sarah didn’t remind her that her maid had known him well. “But you have been seeing him elsewhere, haven’t you?”
“No! Certainly not! That would be immoral. I’m a married woman. I mean I
“Mrs. Blackwell,” Sarah said, out of patience, “you don’t have to make excuses to me. I have no wish to judge you. But it’s obvious that you must have been seeing Mr. Dudley. He most certainly is the father of your child.”
She gasped in feigned outrage. “How can you even suggest such a thing? He couldn’t be. I haven’t seen him in years! You heard him, he only saw the notice of Edmund’s death in the paper and came to offer his condolences.”
Her porcelain cheeks were splotched with red now, and her eyes were wild. She wasn’t a pretty liar.
“I’m not the only one who will suspect that he’s the baby’s father,” Sarah said. “One look at your child… I assume your father knows what Dudley looks like. He’ll guess immediately.”
This time Letitia practically wailed, sobbing uncontrollably into her now-soggy handkerchief.
Although she could not condone adultery, Sarah also couldn’t bear to see such misery, and Letitia was her patient. She took the weeping woman into her arms. “There now, there’s nothing you can do about the past. You can only do something about the future.”
This made Letitia cry even harder, but Sarah patted and soothed, and after a few moments, with no encouragement at all, Letitia began to bare her soul.
“We never meant for it to happen,” she insisted between sobs. “Peter left after the accident. My father had him discharged from his job, and he had no choice but to leave town. He found work here in the city, and we never saw each other again until… until I was already married to Edmund.”
“That must have been a shock, seeing him again,” Sarah suggested tentatively, worried about saying the wrong thing and stopping the flow of confidences.
“He came… he came to one of Edmund’s lectures. He’d seen my name on the poster, and he came to see me. Just to find out how I was,” Letitia added, and Sarah nodded her comprehension. “You have to understand, I was hurt when we… You see, Peter and I eloped one night. I knew my father would never allow us to marry, so what else could we do? But my horse stumbled in the darkness, and I was horribly hurt.”
“So your father ran Peter out of town, and then Dr. Blackwell came to cure you,” Sarah said, hurrying the story along. She already knew this part.
“But Peter saw my name on the poster, and he just wanted to make sure I was well. He still loved me, you see, and he hadn’t been able to make any inquiries about me without drawing my father’s attention to him. He only wanted to make sure I had recovered!”
Sarah nodded again. “Of course he did.”
“When I saw him in the audience, I almost fainted. I could hardly finish my speech. He told me later that’s when he knew I still loved him. I was desperate to see him privately, but I had no idea how to find him. But I didn’t have to worry about that because he was able to find me.”
“I’m sure that wasn’t too difficult. Dr. Blackwell was famous.”
Letitia ignored the mention of her dead husband. “Peter sent me a note and asked me to meet him somewhere. He just wanted to talk to me, to find out if I had forgiven him. He’d felt so guilty for leaving me and for having caused my accident. Or at least he always blamed himself, even though it wasn’t really his fault.”
“And so you met him. Weren’t you worried about being seen?”
“Of course! That’s why we…”
“Why you what?” Sarah asked when she hesitated.
“I couldn’t risk Edmund finding out, and it was the only place we could meet without being seen,” she said defensively.
“And where was that?”
“The… Mr. Fong’s establishment,” she admitted reluctantly.
“An opium den?” Sarah asked in surprise.
“They’re very discreet,” Letitia insisted.
“I’m sure they are,” Sarah said.
“After that…” Letitia began, but her voice broke again.
“I know you must have been very lonely and unhappy,” Sarah said, remembering what the nurse had told her. “I understand that Dr. Blackwell was very busy and was hardly ever at home.”
“It wasn’t that. He just never loved me,” she informed Sarah indignantly. “Not at all! He only married me so that I would have to keep speaking at his lectures.”
“He told you that?” Sarah asked in surprise.
“Not in so many words, but I’m not completely stupid. It was obvious. He never even… after the first few
