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

“I am glad to know your schooling has provided you with an honest income. That is more than an unfortunate like yourself should have hoped.”

“Oh, indeed. I’m very lucky.”

Setting aside her “tea,” Kate cast a surreptitious glance at the mantel clock. Time was growing short. She despised wasting precious minutes on niceties when there were questions singeing the tip of her tongue. But abruptness wouldn’t win her any answers.

A wrapped parcel lay in her lap, and she curled her fingers around the string. “I was so surprised to learn you’d settled here. Imagine, my old schoolmistress, pensioned just a few hours’ ride away. I couldn’t resist paying a call to reminisce. I have such fond recollections of my Margate years.”

Miss Paringham raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Oh, yes.” She stretched her mind for examples. “I particularly miss the . . . the nourishing soup. And our regular devotionals. It’s just so hard to find two solid hours for reading sermons nowadays.”

As orphans went, Kate knew she’d been a great deal happier than most. The atmosphere at Margate School for Girls might have been austere, but she hadn’t been beaten or starved or unclothed. She’d formed friendships and gained a useful education. Most important of all, she’d been instructed in music and encouraged in its practice.

Truly, she could not complain. Margate had provided for her every need, save one.

Love.

In all her years there, she’d never known real love. Just some pale, thrice-washed dilution of it. Another girl might have grown bitter. But Kate just wasn’t formed for misery. Even if her mind could not recall it, her heart remembered a time before Margate. Some distant memory of happiness echoed in its every beat.

She’d been loved once. She just knew it. She couldn’t put a name or face to the emotion, but that didn’t make it any less real. Once upon a time, she’d belonged—to someone, somewhere. This woman might be her last hope of finding the connection.

“Do you remember the day I arrived at Margate, Miss Paringham? I must have been such a little thing.”

The old woman’s mouth pursed. “Five years at the oldest. We had no way to be certain.”

“No. Of course you wouldn’t.”

No one knew Kate’s true birthday, least of all Kate herself. As schoolmistress, Miss Paringham had decided all wards of the school would share the Lord’s birthday, December 25. Supposedly they were to take comfort from this reminder of their heavenly family on the day when all the other girls had gone home to their own flesh-and-blood relations.

However, Kate always suspected there’d been a more practical motive behind the choice. If their birthdays were on Christmas, there was never any need to celebrate them. No extra gifts were warranted. Wards of the school made do with the same Christmas package every year: an orange, a ribbon, and a neatly folded length of patterned muslin. Miss Paringham did not believe in sweets.

Apparently she still didn’t. Kate bit a tiny corner off the dry, tasteless biscuit she’d been offered, then set it back on the plate.

On the mantel, the clock’s ticking seemed to accelerate. Only twenty minutes before the last stagecoach left for Spindle Cove. If she missed the stage, she would be stranded in Hastings all night.

She steeled her nerve. No more dithering.

“Who were they?” she asked. “Do you know?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“My parents.”

Miss Paringham sniffed. “You were a ward of the school. You have no parents.”

“I do understand that.” Kate smiled, trying to inject some levity. “But I wasn’t hatched from an egg, was I? I didn’t turn up under a cabbage leaf. I had a mother and father once. Perhaps I had them for as many as five years. I’ve tried so hard to remember. All my memories are so vague, so jumbled. I remember feeling safe. I have this impression of blue. A room with blue walls, perhaps, but I can’t be certain.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and frowned at the knotted carpet fringe. “Maybe I just want to remember so desperately, I’m imagining things.”

“Miss Taylor—”

“I remember sounds, mostly.” She shut her eyes, delving inward. “Sounds with no pictures. Someone saying to me, ‘Be brave, my Katie.’ Was it my mother? My father? The words are burned into my memory, but I can’t put a face to them, no matter how I try. And then there’s the music. Endless pianoforte music, and that same little song—”

“Miss Taylor.”

As she repeated Kate’s name, the old schoolmistress’s voice cracked. Not cracked like brittle china, but cracked like a whip.

In a reflexive motion, Kate snapped tall in her chair.

Sharp eyes regarded her. “Miss Taylor, I advise you to abandon this line of inquiry at once.”

“How can I? You must understand. I’ve lived with these questions all my life, Miss Paringham. I’ve tried to do as you always advised and be happy for what good fortune life has given me. I have friends. I have a living. I have music. But I still don’t have the truth. I want to know where I came from, even if it’s difficult to hear. I know my parents are dead now, but perhaps there is some hope of contacting my relations. There has to be someone, somewhere. The smallest detail might prove useful. A name, a town, a—”