The Matrimony Plan (21 page)

“I know.” Gabriel picked up the leash. “You don’t have to rub it in.”

He’d lost her. This time for good.

T
hough a bath and clean clothes helped Felicity feel almost like her old self, she couldn’t sleep. Her parents had promised to answer her questions. In fact, she could hear Daddy prowling the hallway, his steps uncharacteristically nervous. She towel-dried her hair but didn’t bother to comb it out.

Daddy stopped pacing the moment she opened her bedroom door. With expectant concern, he asked, “Are you ready?”

She nodded and took his arm, like a bride being escorted up the aisle. There’d be no wedding this summer—maybe not ever. Robert wasn’t what he pretended to be, and Gabriel… How could he accuse her father of being a criminal? She thought he was a man who cared for people and thought the best of them. How cruelly wrong she’d been.

Daddy squeezed her hand. “I love you, little one.”

Felicity shoved the sting of Gabriel’s betrayal to the back of her mind. Now was not the time to lament lost romance. Tonight she needed to know who she was.

The hall and parlor lights blazed even as the clock struck midnight. Mother paced below, her pallid face untouched by rouge and her hair mussed. Felicity had never before seen her at less than her best, even when sick.

“Felicity.” Mother’s lips quivered, and her eyes were puffy. “You worried me sick.” She wrung a handkerchief, made an aborted attempt at an embrace and retreated to the parlor.

Oh, why couldn’t Felicity have a normal mother, one who kissed away bruises and shared tears? How she longed to really talk with her, to share fears and hopes. Instead, there’d always been a distance between them. When she was little, she didn’t understand why. Now she knew. She wasn’t her child.

They walked into the parlor, where the heavy velvet drapes had been drawn shut. Pearlman would not see what transpired in the Kensington house that night.

“Sis.” Her brother unfolded his long legs and stood up from the sofa.

“Blake? What are you doing here?”

“Dad asked me to come over,” he explained, offering her the seat beside him.

Instead, she chose the love seat and left enough room for Mother to join her. Her mother poured two cups of steaming liquid from the silver coffee service while Daddy took his position at the folding whist table where he’d assembled a stack of very official-looking papers.

He cleared his throat. “I wanted everyone to hear this at the same time.”

Mother handed her one of the cups. “Hot chocolate. It’ll make you feel better.” But instead of sitting beside Felicity, she hung nervously at arm’s length.

Felicity dutifully took a sip, though her stomach couldn’t handle food until she knew the truth. “Tell me everything.”

Mother handed the other cup to Daddy. “Where do we begin, Branford?” Her voice quavered, and at that moment Felicity caught a glimpse into her soul. She was terrified,
so afraid of rejection that she couldn’t even reach out to her children.

Daddy leaned back and tugged on the sash of his smoking jacket. “You were a baby, Felicity, when I first saw you. What was she, Eugenia, six weeks old?”

Felicity shook her head. That wasn’t what she wanted to know. “Start at the beginning. When did you decide to adopt? Was I sent here on a train? What happened to my parents? Where did they live?” She choked out the hardest question of all. “In the tenements?”

“No,” Mother exclaimed, glancing at Blake, “certainly not. We’d never take in a filthy street urchin.”

Felicity cringed.

As usual, Mother failed to notice Felicity’s discomfort and the prejudice in her words.

“You were to be Blake’s sister, after all.” She smiled at her son.

Blake’s sister. Even now she couldn’t be valued for herself.

“Then where was I born?” Felicity asked before she lost nerve.

Daddy exchanged a glance with Mother.

“I need to know who my real parents are,” she insisted. “I need to know who I am.”

“We are your parents,” Mother insisted, but she wouldn’t look at Felicity.

Daddy rose. “Let me handle this, Eugenia.” He pulled a paper from the stack and gave it to Felicity. “Here’s your adoption certificate.”

Felicity took it gingerly and scanned the document for any indication of her origin. “It gives my name as Felicity Anne Kensington and lists you but no birth parents.”

“We named you at once. You didn’t have a name.”

Not even a name. What couple doesn’t name their baby? A couple that doesn’t want a child. “Then I was abandoned?”

Daddy shook his head. “You were orphaned. Your parents died from typhoid soon after your birth.”

Typhoid fever. A horrible sadness swept through her for the parents she’d never known—to hold a newborn baby, dreaming of the wonderful life you’d have together and then to have it snatched away. The little fingers, the tiny toes… how they must have hoped for their future, but then disease took it all away.

Daddy stroked his mustache. “Let me back up. You wanted to know when we decided to adopt. It was after your mother lost a baby girl—stillborn.”

Felicity had never heard this before. She looked to her mother, who’d gone ashen, eyes downcast. Twenty-one years later, the loss still hurt. No wonder she was afraid to become too attached.

“Doc Stevens said your mother couldn’t have another child, so I decided we’d adopt, quickly and without fuss. I went to an orphanage in Detroit and saw you. You looked so much like Blake that I knew you were the one.”

Felicity let every word and action sink in. Mother’s hands knotted around that handkerchief. Daddy was in control as always. “Then I’m from Detroit?” she whispered.

Mother and Daddy glanced at each other before he answered. “The agents said your parents died aboard ship.”

“Aboard ship.” Felicity knew what that meant. “Then I’m an immigrant, a foreigner.” Just like Luke. Just like Mrs. Grattan said.

“You’re an American,” Mother said sharply.

“But I wasn’t born here. Where did my parents come from?”

Again Mother and Daddy exchanged glances. Again
Daddy spoke. “The agency wasn’t certain. Either Hungary or Romania, they think.”

“Hungarian?” Felicity’s ears hummed. How the Highbury girls had ridiculed Eastern Europeans, calling them Gypsies. She waited for Blake to make a joke, but he stayed mercifully quiet.

“You might be royalty,” Mother suggested.

Blake snorted.

“It’s possible,” Mother insisted.

“No, it isn’t,” Felicity said. “Royalty doesn’t emigrate to America anonymously and pennilessly. Admit it, Mother. I’m common stock.” Somehow saying the words felt good, even liberating.

“Don’t say such a thing,” Mother said. “A lady is always confident and secure, no matter her circumstances. Grace and manners cover a multitude of sins.”

Felicity felt her cheeks heat. “Being born common and foreign isn’t a sin.”

Mother gasped. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant the circumstances of your birth don’t matter.”

“Exactly,” Daddy stated emphatically. “You’re our daughter, and that’s all that’s important. Birth is nothing. It’s what you do in life that matters.”

Perhaps to Daddy, but Mother talked of nothing but status. “Then bloodlines—”

“Mean nothing,” Daddy finished for her. “We loved you the moment we saw you. You’re my little girl and always will be.”

“Oh, Daddy.” Felicity thought she could never cry again, but back came the tears. No matter what, she could count on her father.

He took her hand. “Besides, despite what your mother would have you believe, neither one of us has the purest blood.”

“Branford,” Mother hissed.

“It’s true, Eugenia, and our children deserve to know it. Your mother’s family made its money in meatpacking, and I’m a self-made man. My parents sharecropped. There’s not one drop of blue blood.”

Mother wailed into her handkerchief, but Blake burst out laughing. “You don’t say. That’s a relief.”

Felicity stared, openmouthed. That’s why she had never met her grandparents, only heard stories that were apparently complete fabrications. All of Mother’s pretensions had been based on nothing. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I would have understood.”

Daddy glanced at Mother. He didn’t need to say a thing for Felicity to understand. The facade all centered on Mother.

“I understand,” Felicity said quietly, “but you could have at least told me I was adopted.”

Daddy shook his head. “We wanted everyone in Pearlman to treat you as our biological child.”

“But Dr. Stevens knew,” Felicity pointed out. “And so did Mrs. Grattan. How did she find out? Or am I the only one in Pearlman who didn’t know?” Eloise and Sally surely knew, and Gabriel didn’t look the least bit surprised when Mrs. Grattan announced the truth. Stricken, yes, but not surprised.

Daddy looked at Mother. “Sophie Grattan was the attending nurse at the stillbirth.”

Felicity had forgotten that Mrs. Grattan was once a nurse.

“We swore her to secrecy.” Daddy’s face grew dark. “Apparently her word meant nothing.”

“She always held that over me,” Mother wailed. “Every society meeting. Everything I tried to do, she’d always bring it up. I lived in terror.”

“Then you should have told me.” Felicity didn’t want her parents to descend into bickering again when they’d finally
opened up their hearts. “If you’d told me the truth, none of this would have happened.”

Mother stiffened. “We didn’t want you to suffer any stigma for being…”

“A foreigner?” Felicity recalled the epithets hurled against Luke.

“Don’t ever say that again,” snapped Mother. “You’re a Kensington.”

But no amount of pretending would rub away the truth. “You’re ashamed of me.”

“No, dearest,” Mother cried, “I only wanted what was best for you—the best schools, the best husband, the best marriage.”

“It was the same for me,” Blake chimed in. “You know how Mother has to orchestrate everything.”

“B-but all I ever really wanted was to be loved for who I am,” Felicity whispered. The words sank like a balloon filled with cold air.

Mother’s face twisted up again. “I did my best. I thought you knew how I felt.”

As Felicity watched her mother weep, she realized that she would have to initiate any change in their relationship. Mother was too afraid to reach out, even when told that love would be reciprocated. Hesitant, she looked to Daddy for encouragement. He nodded, his walrus mustache shaking, and wiped his face with his handkerchief.

Mother had collapsed into a sobbing heap, head on her knees, shoulders heaving. Everything Eugenia Kensington valued had been stripped away: wealth, status and control. For the first time in Felicity’s life, she wasn’t afraid of her mother. She pitied her.

“It’s all right, Mother.” Though it took every ounce of will, she went to the woman who’d tried so hard in all the wrong ways. Kneeling, Felicity embraced her. Mother’s bony
shoulders shook, but she didn’t pull away. Then came the most difficult words of all, those of forgiveness.

“I love you,” Felicity whispered.

Mother lifted her head, face mottled. “You do? I—I never knew for certain.” She bit her lip, looking for once vulnerable. “I love you so.” She battled a sob. “Daughter.”

Felicity threw her arms around her mother and wept as Mother stroked her damp and tangled hair for the very first time.

No matter how close Gabriel sat to the kitchen stove, he couldn’t get warm. The events of the night tumbled through his mind over and over, always coming out badly. Every time he made the fatal accusation, every time she asked what he meant, every time she walked away.

Moments before he’d held her close, professing his love, then one careless moment cost him everything. No wonder so many scriptures decried the tongue.

He clutched the cup of coffee.

“She’ll need time to heal,” Mariah said, taking a seat at the kitchen table, “and work things out with her parents.”

“I know.” He blew on the coffee, sending a cloud of steam against his face.

“Then why so glum?”

How could he begin to tell her? Yet even clergy needed someone who would listen to the deepest anguish of the soul. Mariah had always been that for him.

“I lost her.” Every word bled.

“How?”

He gulped the strong brew. It scalded his throat. “Have you ever withheld knowledge to spare someone?”

“Do you mean the bootlegging ring?”

“It slipped out at the worst possible time. Why couldn’t I
leave it alone? Why didn’t I listen to you and leave it in the sheriff’s hands?”

“Because you can’t bear injustice.”

“I thought I could expose the crime without hurting Felicity. I thought I knew best.”

“In other words,” Mariah scolded, “you played God.”

The best confessor could dredge the most carefully buried sins from a man’s soul. The truth hurt. The truth tore his pride to tiny pieces. He licked his lips, eyes burning. “The worse sin of all—pride. I deserve her rebuke.”

“Yes, you do.”

He buried his face in his hands, scourged by the blazing whip of self-realization. All this time he’d cried out against Felicity’s pride, when the most prideful actions of all came from him.

“I was so concerned with the splinter in other people’s eyes that I didn’t see the plank in my own,” he said miserably. “What a fool I am.”

“Without God, we all are.”

His eyes burned. “But how can I mend the damage? H-how do I…?”

“Get her back?” Mariah looked him square in the eyes. “You apologize.”

But he’d seen her face, the hurt, the betrayal. “It’s too late.”

“Perhaps, but you still must ask.” Mariah scraped back her chair. “But not tonight. Pray, get some sleep and you’ll think more clearly in the morning.” She paused, staring at something outside the kitchen window. “Are you expecting someone?”

Gabriel rose as she opened the door.

“Would you care for coffee, Sheriff?” She offered to take the man’s hat and raincoat.

“No, thank you, ma’am.” Though Gabriel pulled out a
chair, the sheriff declined that, too. “I need to get back to the jail. Thought you’d want to know that we caught them.”

Gabriel should have rejoiced. This was what he’d wanted all along, what he’d preached against and strived to correct. It’s why he’d been called to Pearlman. At least that’s what he used to think.