“I’m quite sure nothing like that would ever happen to Mandy. Here.” I gave him the wrapped stone. “Be careful with it.”
We made our way slowly upstairs, trailing warm ginger steam, and found Jamie sitting beside Fanny on the bed, a small collection of things laid out on the quilt between them. He looked up at me, flicked an eyebrow at Jem, and then nodded at the quilt.
“Frances was just showing me a picture of her sister. Would ye let Mrs. Fraser and Jem have a look, a nighean?”
Fanny’s face was still blotched from crying, but she had herself more or less back in hand, and she nodded soberly, moving aside a little.
The small bundle of possessions she had brought with her was unrolled, revealing a pathetic little pile of items: a nit comb, the cork from a wine bottle, two neatly folded hanks of thread, one with a needle stuck through it, a paper of pins, and a few small bits of tawdry jewelry. On the quilt was a sheet of paper, much folded and worn in the creases, with a pencil drawing of a girl.
“One of the men dwew—drew—it, one night in the salon,” Fanny said, moving aside a little, so we could look.
It was no more than a sketch, but the artist had caught a spark of life. Jane had been lovely in outline, straight-nosed and with a delicate, ripe mouth, but there was neither flirtation nor demureness in her expression. She was looking half over her shoulder, half smiling, but with an air of mild scorn in her look.
“She’s pretty, Fanny,” Jemmy said, and came to stand by her. He patted her arm as he would have patted a dog, and with as little self-consciousness.
Jamie had given Fanny a handkerchief, I saw; she sniffed and blew her nose, nodding.
“This is all I have,” she said, her voice hoarse as a young toad’s. “Just this and her wock—locket.”
“This?” Jamie stirred the little pile gently with a big forefinger and withdrew a small brass oval, dangling on a chain. “Is it a miniature of Jane, then, or maybe a lock of her hair?”
Fanny shook her head, taking the locket from him.
“No,” she said. “It’s a picture of our muv—mother.” She slid a thumbnail into the side of the locket and flicked it open. I bent forward to look, but the miniature inside was hard to see, shadowed as it was by Jamie’s body.
“May I?”
Fanny handed me the locket and I turned to hold it close to the candle. The woman inside had dark, softly curly hair like Fanny’s—and I thought I could make out a resemblance to Jane in the nose and set of the chin, though it wasn’t a particularly skillful rendering.
Behind me, I heard Jamie say, quite casually, “Frances, no man will ever take ye against your will, while I live.”
There was a startled silence, and I turned round to see Fanny staring up at him. He touched her hand, very gently.
“D’ye believe me, Frances?” he said quietly.
“Yes,” she whispered, after a long moment, and all the tension left her body in a sigh like the east wind.
Jemmy leaned against me, head pressing my elbow, and I realized that I was just standing there, my eyes full of tears. I blotted them hastily on my sleeve and pressed the locket closed. Or tried to; it slipped in my fingers and I saw that there was a name inscribed inside it, opposite the miniature.
Faith, it said.
I COULDN’T GO to sleep. I’d given Fanny her tea, provided her with suitable cloths—not at all to my surprise, she already knew how to use them—and talked gently to her, careful not to raise any more of her personal ghosts.
When Fanny had come to us, Jamie and I had agreed that we wouldn’t try to question her about any of the bits of memory she dropped aloud—like the bad men on the ship and what had happened to Spotty the dog—unless she seemed to want to talk about them. I thought she would, sooner or later. Bree and Roger had agreed as well, though I could see how curious Brianna was.
Fanny had mentioned Jane now and then, offhandedly, but in a way designed—I thought—to keep a sense of her sister alive. Seeing her distress tonight, though … Jane was much closer to her than I’d thought. And now that I’d seen Jane’s face … I couldn’t forget it.
Knowing only what I did know about the girls’ lives in the brothel in Philadelphia was upsetting; I really hadn’t wanted to find out how they’d come there. I still didn’t … but I couldn’t keep the worm of speculation at bay; it had burrowed into my brain and was squirming busily through my thoughts, killing sleep.
Bad men on a ship. A dog thrown into the sea. A pet dog? A family—if Fanny and Jane had been with their parents on a ship that encountered pirates … or even a wicked captain, like Stephen Bonnet … I felt the hairs rise on my forearms at thought of him, but with remembered anger, not fear. Someone like him could easily have taken a look at the two lovely young girls and decided that their parents could be dispensed with.