A Lady by Midnight (Spindle Cove #3)(17)

Lark nodded. “So there were no records. During those years, the parish was divided between the three neighboring churches. We decided to make family outings, visiting one per week.”

“Only in this family,” said Harry, “would we consider it high entertainment to go searching musty parish registers for a stillborn cousin.”

Lark ignored her sister. “We started at St. Francis, the closest. No luck there. This week was a choice between St. Anthony in the Glen and St. Mary of the Martyrs. I must admit, I was lobbying for St. Anthony’s, because I liked the pastoral sound of it, but—”

“But our resident martyr had his way, and St. Mary’s it was.”

“Yes, thank goodness. The book, Evan?”

Lord Drewe withdrew a large volume that looked to be a well-thumbed parish register. Kate was surprised he would have been allowed to remove it from the church. But then, he likely paid the vicar’s living. She supposed any requests from the local marquess would be difficult to deny.

He opened it to a previously marked page, found a line with his fingertip, and read aloud, “Katherine Adele, born February the twenty-second, in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-one. Father, Simon Langley Gramercy. Mother, Elinor Marie.”

“Katherine?” Kate’s heart began to pound. “Did you say Katherine?”

Lark bounced in her chair with excitement. “Yes. We scanned the next several years’ worth of records—no death listing. No christening either, but no death. We asked the vicar if he knew of any Katherine living in the area who might be the right age now. He replied that he didn’t. However, he said he’d recently received a letter.”

“A letter?” Badger nosed at Kate’s shins, and she lifted the pup into her lap. “My letter?”

For the past several years, she’d played the organ for Sunday worship at St. Ursula’s. She asked no financial compensation for the service. Only a favor. Each week, Mr. Keane gave her an hour in the vicar’s office. She chose a parish from his enormous Church of England directory and penned a letter, requesting a search of parish registers for any female children born between 1790 and 1792, given the Christian name Katherine, who had since fallen from the local record. She’d begun with the parishes nearest Margate and worked outward.

Slowly. Over weeks and months and years.

The vicar signed and posted the letters for her. He also did her the favor of keeping them secret. Most of the villagers would have laughed at her for spending so much time and effort on a fruitless enterprise. In their eyes, she might as well have spent her time sticking notes in bottles and heaving them into the ocean.

But Kate hadn’t been able to let the idea go. She’d made hope her weekly habit. Every time the post brought another crushing “No”—or worse, when months passed with no reply at all, letting her know a perfectly good stone had gone unturned—she listened to that voice inside her heart: Be brave, my Katie.

And now . . .

Now Aunt Marmoset’s spice drop had nearly dissolved in her mouth—and the older woman was right. A thick, delicious sweetness coated her tongue.

Kate savored it.

“Yes,” Lark said. “It was your letter. And I just knew in my heart, our Katherine must be you. We set off at once, traveled all afternoon, and arrived here a few hours ago.”

“We showed your vicar this”—Harry indicated the painting—“and once he recovered from his small apoplexy, he told us that Miss Kate Taylor did indeed bear a remarkable resemblance to the portrait.”

“From the neck up, of course.” Lark directed this comment—and a timid smile—at Corporal Thorne.

“So there you have it, my dear.” Aunt Marmoset patted Kate’s knee. “The tale has a miraculous ending. We have found you. And by all evidence, you seem to be the long-lost daughter of a marquess.”

The words hit Kate like an avalanche. In the aftermath, her emotions were frozen, scattered things. It was all too much. She had parents named Simon and Elinor. She had a birthday. She had a middle name.

If . . .

If this could all be believed.

“But I never lived anywhere near Kenmarsh,” she said. “I was raised as a ward of Margate School until just four years ago. That was when I came here to teach music lessons.”

“And before Margate, where were you?” Lord Drewe asked.

“I haven’t any clear memory, unfortunately. I asked my schoolmistress for details.” Goodness, had her horrid interview with Miss Paringham only been that afternoon? “She told me I was abandoned.”

Kate stared at the woman in the portrait. Her mother, if this could be believed. Had she died? Or given her baby up, unable to care for a child on her own? But it was plain from the way the woman’s hand draped affectionately over her rotund belly, she’d loved that infant in the womb. How amazing, Kate thought, to think she could be in that painting, underneath the skin of it, fetal and wriggling and . . .

Loved.

“You poor thing,” Lark said. “I can’t imagine how you must have suffered. We can’t undo those years, but we will do our best to make up for them now.”

“Yes,” Drewe agreed. “We must install you at Ambervale as soon as possible. When I’m home tonight, I’ll send a lady’s maid to help with your packing.”