She’d considered tracking down Ann or one of the other girls from her cabin and asking them to hide her somewhere. She missed them all so terribly. After spending nearly every waking minute with the orphans over the past three months, she felt empty, almost purposeless today without them.

Her conversation with Mrs. Moresby following the cricket game kept coming back to her. What did God have next for her? Was it marriage to one of the men waiting to meet with her? Could she resign herself to taking a husband in order to stay in Victoria? Or did God have something else in mind?

What if it were possible for Mercy to find nursing work? She didn’t have any official training, but she’d learned a lot from Joseph during the voyage. Surely she could be of some use at a hospital or maybe by assisting one of the local doctors.

She shook her head. Why would anyone let her help with nursing others? She was a nobody here.

“Mercy?” At the soft tread of footsteps entering through the back kitchen door, Mercy spun to find Miss Lawrence carrying in a pail of water. “What are you doing in here?”

Mercy had half a mind to ask Miss Lawrence the same thing. What was a gentlewoman like her doing in the kitchen? She’d come from a home and life where she had servants to run her kitchen and had likely never been in one in all her life.

“I thought you were meeting with your callers,” Miss Lawrence said. “They’re lined up outside the front door, down the stairs, and across the yard.”

My stars . . . Mercy closed her eyes against the image and tried to tell herself they weren’t all there to see her. A couple of the other poor women from the bride ship were also having visitors.

“’Tis very exciting,” Miss Lawrence continued, stepping farther into the kitchen. “Didn’t I tell you that you would have plenty of suitors?”

“I wish I didn’t have any.” The words were out before she could bite them back. Her eyes flew open to see Miss Lawrence studying her face, her head tilted and her brows arched.

“What I meant to say is that I wish I didn’t have any tonight. It’s so soon—”

“Mercy,” Miss Lawrence interrupted, lowering the heavy pail to the floor. “It’s perfectly normal to be frightened. I am as well.”

“You are?”

“I am positively terrified.”

Mercy sagged against the door and stared at Miss Lawrence. Always reserved and proper without revealing her emotions, the young woman’s quiet admission was out of character.

As if recognizing the same, Miss Lawrence reached for the pail, turning away from Mercy’s scrutiny.

Mercy wished she had the nerve to ask Miss Lawrence what she was afraid of, guessing that whatever had hurt her in England still haunted her.