On the night that our wedding is on us 19 страница

“Ye’ve done well,” he said in a casual undertone, clapping Roger’s shoulder in greeting before turning to receive the salutations of the other men and introductions to our involuntary hosts.

Roger merely nodded in an offhand sort of way, but his face took on a muted glow, as though someone had lit a candle inside him.

Young Miss Beardsley caused a great stir; one of the nursing mothers was fetched and at once put the screeching baby to her breast, hastily handing me her own child in exchange. A three-month-old boy of placid temperament, he looked up at me with mild bewilderment, but seemed not to object to the substitution, merely blowing a few thoughtful spit bubbles in my direction.

A certain amount of confusion ensued, with everyone asking questions and offering speculations at once, but Jamie’s story—edited to terseness—of events at the Beardsley farm put a stop to the hubbub. Even the red-eyed young woman whom I recognized from Fergus’s story as Isaiah Morton’s inamorata forgot her grief, listening openmouthed.

“Poor little creature,” she said, peering at the baby as it suckled fiercely at her cousin’s breast. “So you have no parents at all, it seems.” Miss Brown cast a dark look at her own father, apparently thinking orphanhood had its advantages.

“What will become of her?” Mrs. Brown asked, with more practicality.

“Oh, we’ll see she’s taken good care of, my dear. She’ll find a secure place with us.” Her husband put a reassuring hand on her arm, at the same time exchanging a glance with his brother. Jamie saw it, too; I saw his mouth twitch as though he might say something, but he shrugged slightly and turned instead to confer with Henry Gallegher and Fergus, his two stiff fingers tapping gently on his leg.

The elder Miss Brown leaned toward me, preparing to ask another question, but was prevented by a sudden blast of arctic wind that blew through the big room, lifting the loose hides over the windows and peppering the room with a spray of snow like frozen bird shot. Miss Brown gave a small whoop, abandoned her curiosity, and ran to fasten down the window coverings; everyone else stopped discussing the Beardsleys and began hastily to batten down hatches.

I caught a quick glimpse outside, as Miss Brown struggled with the unwieldy hides. The storm had arrived now in good earnest. Snow was coming down thick and fast; the black ruts of the road had all but disappeared under a coating of white, and it was obvious that Fraser’s Company was going nowhere for the time being. Mr. Richard Brown, looking mildly disgruntled, nonetheless graciously offered us a second night’s shelter, and the militiamen settled in for supper among the houses and barns of the village.

Jamie went out to bring in our bedding and provisions from the horses, and see them fed and sheltered. Presumably he would also take the opportunity to speak privately with Isaiah Morton, if the latter was still lurking out there in the blizzard.

I did wonder what Jamie meant to do with his mountain Romeo, but I hadn’t time for much speculation. It was getting on now for twilight, and I was sucked into the swirl of activity around the hearth, as the women rose to the fresh challenge of providing supper for forty unexpected guests.

Juliet—that is, the younger Miss Brown—moped sullenly in the corner, refusing to help. She did, though, take over care of the Beardsley baby, rocking the little girl and crooning to her long after it was plain that the child was asleep.

Fergus and Gallegher had been sent off to retrieve the goats, and returned with them just before suppertime, wet and muddy to the knees, their beards and eyebrows frosted with snow. The nannies were wet and snow-caked, too, their chilled udders red with cold, milk-swollen and swinging painfully against their legs. They were enchanted to be back in the bosom of civilization, though, and nattered to each other in cheerful excitement.

Mrs. Brown and her sister-in-law took the goats off to the tiny barn to be milked, leaving me in charge of the stewpot and Hiram, who was installed in solitary majesty near the hearth, contained in a makeshift pen composed of an overturned table, two stools, and a blanket chest.

The cabin was essentially one large, drafty room, with a walled loft above and a small lean-to at the back for storage. Crowded as it was with tables, benches, stools, kegs of beer, bundles of hides, a small handloom in one corner, a chiffonier—with a most incongruous chiming clock, adorned with cupids—in another, a bed against the wall, two settles by the hearth, a musket and two fowling pieces hung above the chimney breast, and various aprons and cloaks on pegs by the door, the presence of a sick goat was surprisingly inconsequential.

I had a look at my erstwhile patient, who mehed ungratefully at me, long blue tongue protruding in derision. Snow was melting from the deep spirals of his horns, leaving them black and shiny, and his coat was soaked into brindled spikes round his shoulders.

“There’s gratitude for you,” I said rebukingly. “If it weren’t for Jamie, you’d be cooking over that fire, instead of beside it, and good enough for you, too, you wicked old sod.”

“Meh!” he said shortly.

Still, he was cold, tired, and hungry, and his harem wasn’t there to be impressed, so he suffered me to rub his head and scratch his ears, feed him wisps of hay, and—eventually—to step into his pen and run a light hand down his injured leg to check the splinting. I was more than a little tired and hungry, too, having had nothing to eat since a little goat’s milk at dawn. Between the smell of the simmering stew and the flickering light and shadows in the room, I felt light-headed, and very slightly disembodied, as though I were floating a foot or two above the floor.

“You’re a nice old lad, aren’t you?” I murmured. After an afternoon spent in close contact with babies, all in varying stages of moistness and shrieking, the company of the irascible old goat was rather soothing.

“Is he going to die?”

I looked up in surprise, having quite forgotten the younger Miss Brown, who had been overlooked in the shadows of the settle. She was standing by the hearth now, still holding the Beardsley baby and frowning down at Hiram, who was trying to nibble the edge of my apron.

“No,” I said, twitching the cloth out of his mouth. “I shouldn’t think so.” What was her name? I groped blearily through my memory, matching up faces and names from the earlier flurry of introductions. Alicia, that was it, though I couldn’t help still thinking of her as Juliet.

She wasn’t much older than Juliet; barely fifteen, if that. She was a plain child, though, round-jawed and pasty. Narrow in the shoulder and broad through the hip; not much of the jewel in the Ethiop’s ear about her. She said nothing more, and to keep the conversation going, I nodded at the baby, still in her arms. “How’s the little one?”

“All right,” she said listlessly. She stood staring at the goat a moment longer. Then tears suddenly welled in her eyes.

“I wish I was dead,” she said.

“Oh, really?” I said, taken aback. “Er . . . well . . .” I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to summon enough presence of mind to deal with this. Where was the beastly girl’s mother? I cast a quick look at the door, but heard no one coming. We were momentarily alone, the women milking or minding supper, the men all caring for the stock.

I stepped out of Hiram’s pen and laid a hand on her arm.

“Look,” I said in a low voice. “Isaiah Morton’s not worth it. He’s married; did you know that?”

Her eyes went wide, then squinted nearly shut, spurting sudden tears. No, evidently she hadn’t known.

Tears were pouring down her cheeks and dripping on the baby’s oblivious head. I reached out and took the swaddled child gently from her, steering her toward the settle with my free hand.

“H-how did you . . . ? Wh-who . . . ?” She was gurgling and sniffling, trying to ask questions and get control of herself at the same time. A man’s voice shouted something outside, and she scrubbed frantically at her cheeks with her sleeve.

The gesture reminded me that while the situation seemed rather melodramatic—not to say slightly comic—in my currently muzzy frame of mind, it was a matter of great seriousness to the principals involved in it. After all, her male relations had tried to kill Morton, and would certainly try again, if they found him. I tensed at the sound of approaching feet, and the baby stirred and whined a little in my arms. But the footsteps crunched past in the road, and the sound vanished in the wind.

I sat down beside Alicia Brown, sighing with the sheer pleasure of taking weight off my feet. Every muscle and joint in my body ached from the aftereffects of the previous day and night, though I hadn’t had time until now to think about it much. Jamie and I would undoubtedly spend the night wrapped in blankets on someone’s floor; I eyed the grimy, firelit boards with an emotion approaching lust.

It was incongruously peaceful in the large room, with the snow whispering down outside, and the stewpot burbling away in the hearth, filling the air with the enticing scents of onion, venison, and turnips. The baby slept on my breast, emanating peaceful trust. I would have liked just to sit and hold her, thinking of nothing, but duty called.

“How do I know? Morton told one of my husband’s men,” I said. “I don’t know who his wife is, though; only that she lives in Granite Falls.” I patted the tiny back, and the baby burped faintly and relaxed again, her breath warm beneath my ear. The women had washed and oiled her, and she smelled rather like a fresh pancake. I kept one eye on the door, and the other warily on Alicia Brown, in case of further hysterics.

She sniffed and sobbed, hiccuped once, and then relapsed into silence, staring at the floor.

“I wish I was dead,” she whispered again, in tones of such fierce despair that I set both eyes on her, startled. She sat hunched, hair hanging limply beneath her cap, her hands fisted and crossed protectively over her belly.

“Oh, dear,” I said. Given her pallor, the circumstances, and her behavior toward the Beardsley baby, that particular gesture made it no great leap to the obvious conclusion. “Do your parents know?”

She gave me a quick look, but didn’t bother asking how I knew.

“Mama and Aunt do.”

She was breathing through her mouth, with intermittent wet snuffles.

“I thought—I thought Papa would have to let me wed him, if—”

I never had thought blackmail a very successful basis for marriage, but this seemed the wrong time to say so.

“Mmm,” I said instead. “And does Mr. Morton know about it?”

She shook her head, disconsolate.

“Does he—does his wife have children, do you know?”

“I’ve no idea.” I turned my head, listening. I could hear men’s voices in the distance, carried on the wind. So could she; she gripped my arm with surprising strength, wet brown eyes spike-lashed and urgent.

“I heard Mr. MacKenzie and the men talking last night. They said you were a healer, Mrs. Fraser—one said you were a conjure woman. About babies. Do you know how—”

“Someone’s coming.” I pulled away from her, interrupting before she could finish. “Here, take care of the baby. I need to—to stir the stew.”

I thrust the child unceremoniously into her arms and rose. When the door opened to admit a blast of wind and snow along with a large number of men, I was standing at the hearth, spoon in hand, eyes fixed on the pot and my mind bubbling as vigorously as the stew.

She hadn’t had time to ask explicitly, but I knew what she’d been about to say. Conjure woman, she’d called me. She wanted my help to get rid of the child, almost certainly. How? I wondered. How could a woman think of such a thing, with a living child in her arms, less than a day out of the womb?

But she was very young. Very young, and suffering from the shock of hearing that her lover was untrue. Not yet far enough advanced in pregnancy to show, either; if she hadn’t yet felt her own child move, no doubt it seemed quite unreal to her. She’d seen it only as a means of forcing her father’s consent; now it likely seemed a trap that had closed suddenly upon her.

No wonder if she was distraught, looking frantically for escape. Give her a little time to recover, I thought, glancing at the settle, where the shadows hid her. I should talk to her mother, to her aunt. . . .

Jamie appeared suddenly beside me, rubbing reddened hands over the fire, snow melting from the folds of his clothes. He looked extremely cheerful, in spite of his cold, the complications of Isaiah Morton’s love life, and the storm going on outside.

“How is it, Sassenach?” he asked hoarsely, and without waiting for me to reply, took the spoon from my hand, put one hard, cold arm around me, and pulled me off my feet and up into a hearty kiss, made the more startling by the fact that his half-sprouted beard was thickly encrusted with snow.

Emerging slightly dazed from this stimulating embrace, I realized that the general attitude of the men in the room was similarly jolly. Backs were being slapped, boots stamped, and coats shaken to the accompaniment of the sort of hoots and roaring noises men make when feeling particularly exuberant.

“What is it?” I asked, looking round in surprise. To my astonishment, Joseph Wemyss stood in the center of the crowd. The tip of his nose was red with cold, and he was being knocked half off his feet by men smacking him on the back in congratulations. “What’s happened?”

Jamie gave me a brilliant smile, teeth gleaming in the frozen wilderness of his face, and thrust a limp crumple of wet paper into my hand, fragments of red wax still clinging to it.

The ink had run with the wet, but I could make out the relevant words. Hearing of General Waddell’s intended approach, the Regulators had decided that discretion was the better part of valor. They had dispersed. And as per this order from Governor Tryon—the militia was stood down.

“Oh, good!” I said. And flinging my arms round Jamie, kissed him back, snow and ice notwithstanding.

THRILLED WITH THE NEWS of the stand-down, the militia took advantage of the bad weather to celebrate. Equally thrilled not to be obliged to join the militia, the Browns instead joined heartily in the celebration, contributing three large kegs of Thomasina Brown’s best home-brewed beer and six gallons of hard cider to the cause—at half-cost.

By the time supper was over, I sat in the corner of a settle with the Beardsley baby in my arms, half-dissolved with weariness, and kept vertical only by the fact that there was no place as yet to lie down. The air shimmered with smoke and conversation, I had drunk strong cider with my supper, and both faces and voices tended to swim in and out of focus, in a way that was not at all disagreeable, though mildly disconcerting.

Alicia Brown had had no further chance to speak with me—but I had had no chance to speak with her mother or her aunt. The girl had taken up a seat by Hiram’s pen, and was methodically feeding the goat crusts of corn bread left from supper, her face set in lines of sullen misery.

Roger was singing French ballads, by popular request, in a soft, true voice. A young woman’s face floated into view in front of me, eyebrows raised in question. She said something, lost in the babble of voices, then reached gently to take the baby from me.

Of course. Jemima, that was her name. The young mother who had offered to nurse the child. I stood up to give her room on the settle, and she put the baby at once to her breast.

I leaned against the chimney piece, watching with dim approval as she cupped the child’s head, guiding it and murmuring. She was both tender and businesslike; a good combination. Her own baby—little Christopher, that was his name—snored peaceably in his grandmother’s arms, as the old lady bent to light her clay pipe from the fire.

I glanced back at Jemima, and had the oddest sense of déjà vu. I blinked, trying to catch the fleeting vision, and succeeded in capturing a sense of overwhelming closeness, of warmth and utter peace. For an instant, I thought it was the sense of nursing a child, and then, odder still, realized that it was not the mother’s sense I felt . . . but the child’s. I had the very distinct memory—if that’s what it was—of being held against a warm body, mindless and replete in the sure conviction of absolute love.

I closed my eyes, and took a firmer grip on the chimney breast, feeling the room begin a slow and lazy spin about me.

“Beauchamp,” I murmured, “you are quite drunk.”

If so, I wasn’t the only one. Delighted at the prospect of imminent return to their homes, the militiamen had absorbed most of the drinkables in Brownsville, and were working assiduously on the remainder. The party was beginning to break up now, though, with men stumbling off to cold beds in barns and sheds, others thankfully rolling up in blankets by the fire.

I opened my eyes to see Jamie throw back his head and yawn enormously, gape-jawed as a baboon. He blinked and stood up, shaking off the stupor of food and beer, then glanced toward the hearth and saw me standing there. He was plainly as tired as I was, if not quite as giddy, but he had a sense of deep content about him, apparent in the long-limbed ease with which he stretched and settled himself.

“I’m going to see to the horses,” he said to me, voice husky from grippe and much talking. “Fancy a walk in the moonlight, Sassenach?”

THE SNOW HAD STOPPED, and there was moonlight, glowing through a haze of vanishing cloud. The air was lung-chillingly cold, still fresh and restless with the ghost of the passing storm, and did much to clear my spinning head.

I felt a childish delight in being the first to mark the virgin snow, and stepped high and carefully, making neat bootprints and looking back to admire them. The line of footprints wasn’t very straight, but fortunately no one was testing my sobriety.

“Can you recite the alphabet backward?” I asked Jamie, whose footsteps were wavering companionably along with my own.

“I expect so,” he replied. “Which one? English, Greek, or Hebrew?”

“Never mind.” I took a firmer grip of his arm. “If you remember all three forward, you’re in better condition than I am.”

He laughed softly, then coughed.

“You’re never drunk, Sassenach. Not on three cups of cider.”

“Must be fatigue, then,” I said dreamily. “I feel as though my head’s bobbing about on a string like a balloon. How do you know how much I drank? Do you notice everything?”

He laughed again, and folded a hand round mine where it clutched his arm.

“I like to watch ye, Sassenach. Especially in company. You’ve the loveliest shine to your teeth when ye laugh.”

“Flatterer,” I said, feeling nonetheless flattered. Given that I hadn’t so much as washed my face in several days, let alone bathed or changed my clothes, my teeth were likely the only things about me that could be honestly admired. Still, the knowledge of his attention was singularly warming.

It was a dry snow, and the white crust compressed beneath our feet with a low crunching noise. I could hear Jamie’s breathing, hoarse and labored still, but the rattle in his chest had gone, and his skin was cool.

“It will be fair by morning,” he said, looking up at the hazy moon. “D’ye see the ring?”

It was hard to miss; an immense circle of diffuse light that ringed the moon, covering the whole of the eastern sky. Faint stars were showing through the haze; it would be bright and clear within the hour.

“Yes. We can go home tomorrow, then?”

“Aye. It will be muddy going, I expect. Ye can feel the air changing; it’s cold enough now, but the snow will melt as soon as the sun’s full on it.”

Perhaps it would, but it was cold enough now. The horses’ brushy shelter had been reinforced with more cut branches of pine and hemlock, and it looked like a small, lumpy hillock rising from the ground, thickly covered over with snow. Dark patches had melted clear, though, warmed by the horses’ breath, and wisps of steam rose from them, scarcely visible. Everything was quiet, with a palpable sense of drowsy content.

“Morton will be cozy, if he’s in there,” I observed.

“I shouldna think so. I sent Fergus out to tell him the militia was disbanded, so soon as Wemyss came wi’ the note.”

“Yes, but if I were Isaiah Morton, I don’t know that I would have set straight out on the road home in a blinding snowstorm,” I said dubiously.

“Likely ye would, if ye had all the Browns in Brownsville after ye wi’ guns,” he said. Nonetheless, he paused in his step, raised his voice a little, and called “Isaiah!” in a croaking rasp.

There was no answer from the makeshift stable, and taking my arm again, he turned back toward the house. The snow was virgin no longer, trampled and muddied by the prints of many feet, as the militia dispersed to their beds. Roger had stopped singing, but there were still voices from inside the house; not everyone was ready to retire.

Reluctant to go back at once to the atmosphere of smoke and noise, we walked by unspoken mutual consent round the house and barn, enjoying the silence of the snowy wood and the nearness of each other. Coming back, I saw that the door of the lean-to at the rear of the house stood ajar, creaking in the wind, and pointed it out to Jamie.

He poked his head inside, to see that all was in order, but then, instead of closing the door, he reached back and took my arm, pulling me into the lean-to after him.

“I’d a question to ask ye, Sassenach, before we go in,” he said. He set the door open, so the moonlight streamed in, shining dimly on the hanging hams, the hogsheads and burlap bags that inhabited the lean-to with us.

It was cold inside, but out of the wind I at once felt warmer, and put back the hood of my cloak.

“What is it?” I said, mildly curious. The fresh air had cleared my head, at least, and while I knew I would be as good as dead the instant I lay down, for the moment I had that sense of pleasant lightness that comes with the feeling of effort completed, honor satisfied. It had been a terrible day and night, and a long day after, but now it was done, and we were free.

“Do ye want her, Sassenach?” he asked softly. His face was a pale oval, blurred by the mist of his breath.

“Who?” I asked, startled. He gave a small grunt of amusement.

“The child. Who else?”

Who else, indeed.

“Do I want her—to keep her, you mean?” I asked cautiously. “Adopt her?” The notion hadn’t crossed my mind consciously, but must have been lurking somewhere in my subconscious, for I was not startled at his question, and at the speaking, the idea sprang into full flower.

My breasts had been tender since the morning, feeling full and engorged, and I felt the demanding tug of the little girl’s mouth in memory. I could not feed the baby myself—but Brianna could, or Marsali. Or she could live on cow’s milk, goat’s milk.

I realized suddenly that I had unconsciously cupped one breast, and was gently massaging it. I stopped at once, but Jamie had seen it; he moved closer and put an arm around me. I leaned my head against him, the rough weave of his hunting shirt cold against my cheek.

“Do you want her?” I asked. I wasn’t sure whether I was hopeful of his answer, or fearful of it. The answer was a slight shrug.

“It’s a big house, Sassenach,” he said. “Big enough.”

“Hmm,” I said. Not a resounding declaration—and yet I knew it was commitment, no matter how casually expressed. He had acquired Fergus in a Paris brothel, on the basis of three minutes’ acquaintance, as a hired pickpocket. If he took this child, he would treat her as a daughter. Love her? No one could guarantee love—not he . . . and not I.

He had picked up my dubious tone of voice.

“I saw ye with the wean, Sassenach, riding. Ye’ve a great tenderness about ye always—but when I saw ye so, wi’ the bairn tumbling about beneath your cloak, it—I remembered, how it was, how ye looked, when ye carried Faith.”

I caught my breath. To hear him speak the name of our first daughter like that, so matter-of-factly, was startling. We spoke of her seldom; her death was so long in the past that sometimes it seemed unreal, and yet the wound of her loss had scarred both of us badly.

Faith herself was not unreal at all, though.

She was near me, whenever I touched a baby. And this child, this nameless orphan, so small and frail, with skin so translucent that the blue threads of her veins showed clear beneath—yes, the echoes of Faith were strong. Still, she wasn’t my child. Though she could be; that was what Jamie was saying.

Was she perhaps a gift to us? Or at least our responsibility?

“Do you think we ought to take her?” I asked cautiously. “I mean—what might happen to her if we don’t?”

Jamie snorted faintly, dropping his arm, and leaned back against the wall of the house. He wiped his nose, and tilted his head toward the faint rumble of voices that came through the chinked logs.

“She’d be well cared for, Sassenach. She’s in the way of being an heiress, ken.”

That aspect of the matter hadn’t occurred to me at all.

“Are you sure?” I said dubiously. “I mean, the Beardsleys are both gone, but as she’s illegitimate—”

He shook his head, interrupting me.

“Nay, she’s legitimate.”

“But she can’t be. No one realizes it yet except you and me, but her father—”

“Her father was Aaron Beardsley, so far as the law is concerned,” he informed me. “By English law, a child born in wedlock is the legal child—and heir—of the husband—even if it’s known for a fact that the mother committed adultery. And yon woman did say that Beardsley married her, no?”

It struck me that he was remarkably positive about this particular provision of English law. It also struck me—in time, thank God, before I said anything—exactly why he was positive.

William. His son, conceived in England, and so far as anyone in England knew—with the exception of Lord John Grey—presumably the ninth Earl of Ellesmere. Evidently, he legally was the ninth Earl, according to what Jamie was telling me, whether the eighth Earl had been his father or not. The law really was an ass, I thought.

“I see,” I said slowly. “So little Nameless will inherit all Beardsley’s property, even after they discover that he can’t have been her father. That’s . . . reassuring.”

His eyes met mine for a moment, then dropped.

“Aye,” he said quietly. “Reassuring.” There might have been a hint of bitterness in his voice, but if there was, it vanished without trace as he coughed and cleared his throat.

“So ye see,” he went on, matter-of-factly, “she’s in no danger of neglect. An Orphan Court would give Beardsley’s property—goats and all”—he added, with a faint grin—“to whomever is her guardian, to be used for her welfare.”

“And her guardians’,” I said, suddenly recalling the look Richard Brown had exchanged with his brother, when telling his wife the child would be “well cared for.” I rubbed my nose, which had gone numb at the tip.

“So the Browns would take her willingly, then.”

“Oh, aye,” he agreed. “They kent Beardsley; they’ll ken well enough how valuable she is. It would be a delicate matter to get her away from them, in fact—but if ye want the child, Sassenach, then ye’ll have her. I promise ye that.”

The whole discussion was giving me a very queer feeling. Something almost like panic, as though I were being pushed by some unseen hand toward the edge of a precipice. Whether that was a dangerous cliff or merely a foothold for a larger view remained to be seen.

I saw in memory the gentle curve of the baby’s skull, and the tissue-paper ears, small and perfect as shells, their soft pink whorls fading into an otherworldly tinge of blue.

To give myself a little time to organize my thoughts, I asked, “What did you mean, it would be a delicate matter to get her away from the Browns? They’ve no claim on her, have they?”

He shook his head.

“Nay, but none of them shot her father, either.”

“What—oh.” That was a potential trap that I hadn’t seen; the possibility that Jamie might be accused of killing Beardsley in order to get his hands on the trader’s farm and goods, by then adopting the orphan. I swallowed, the back of my throat tasting faintly of bile.

“But no one knows how Aaron Beardsley died, except us,” I pointed out. Jamie had told them only that the trader had had an apoplexy and died, leaving out his own role as the angel of deliverance.

“Us and Mrs. Beardsley,” he said, a faint tone of irony in his voice. “And if she should come back, and accuse me of murdering her husband? It would be hard to deny, and I’d taken the child.”

I forbore from asking why she might do such a thing; in light of what she had already done, it was clear enough that Fanny Beardsley might do anything.

“She won’t come back,” I said. Whatever my own uncertainties about the rest of it, I was sure that in this respect at least, I spoke the truth. Wherever Fanny Beardsley had gone—or why—I was sure she had gone for good.