Elisabeth clutched at the front of Maggie’s dress, letting the apple and the corresponding alphabet card fall to the floor. Her small face was contorted with grief and fear. “Mama!” she whispered.

Maggie hugged Elisabeth close again, her chin resting on top of the little girl’s dark head. “Oh, Elisabeth, I wish I were your mama. I truly do. Then we could be together always.”

Elisabeth was still sobbing and Maggie rocked her in her arms, softly singing a lullaby that she’d learned from her own mother long ago. When the child had fallen silent again, she laid her gently on the bed and covered her with a satin comforter. Elisabeth slipped her thumb into her mouth and fell into a sound, exhausted sleep.

“Poor little darling,” Cora said from the doorway. “I don’t think she’s been sleeping well lately.”

Maggie bent to kiss the small forehead and dashed away her tears with the back of one hand. “It’s going to be dreadful to leave her,” she confided.

“I know,” Cora replied quietly. “There’s a man here to see you, Miss Margaret, from Mr. McKenna’s offices.”

Maggie steeled herself for some gruesome accounting of Reeve’s death and walked bravely out of the bedroom and down the front stairway. The clerk was standing just inside the parlor.

“If this is about Mr. McKenna’s death,” she said abruptly, “please be very brief.” Maggie raised her chin. “I must get to the theater.”

The young man was gazing at her in amazement. “Mr. McKenna’s—death?” he said, marveling.

Maggie felt an odd, wiggling sensation deep inside her, as though her frozen spirit might be thawing. She dreaded the pain that would result. “Yes,” she answered stiffly. “Surely you know that he was killed at sea.”

“Miss Chamberlin,” the visitor breathed, aghast, “Mr. McKenna is very much alive. He’s being brought home from New Zealand within the week!”

The entryway swayed and undulated around Maggie, and wild hope leapt within her. “Alive?” she choked. “Reeve is alive? Why didn’t someone—”

The clerk took Maggie’s arm and supported her until he’d led her to a sofa in the nearby parlor and helped her to sit down. “Dear God in heaven, madam—don’t tell me that this household has believed Mr. McKenna dead these past few days!”

Maggie nodded, her throat too thick with tangled emotions for her to speak.

The bearer of glad tidings offered his hand in an agitated and very belated introduction. “Simon Coates, at your service, madam. Good heavens, I cannot understand how such an error could have been made.”

Maggie’s spirit was rejoicing wildly, though outwardly she was quite calm. After some struggle with her constricted vocal cords, she managed to say, “You said that Mr. McKenna is being brought from New Zealand. Was he injured?”