“You need not remind me of that.”

“I hope I needn’t. She wouldn’t be as sanguine about her confidences being shared as I have been.”

Lady Belwood drew herself up with dignity. “You may believe, Miss Flite, that I have never mentioned that woman’s name.” She abruptly stood. “I would thank you to do me the same courtesy.”

Effie glanced after Lady Belwood as she stalked from the room.

Did Miss Corvus know of her ladyship’s connection to Lord Compton? That it was she who had put him in the way of a wealthy heiress?

Effie riffled through her embroidery bag. She had several uncompleted samplers remaining. Given the variety of things she’d learned, perchance she’d have to send them all.

• • •

Tuesday arrived with unusual rapidity. Effie departed that morning for Hertfordshire, clad in her black dress and veiled bonnet, as anonymous as a widow. It was but an hour by train. Plenty of time for apprehension to grow.

Despite what she’d told Gabriel, she wasn’t happy to be making the journey alone. Just once, it would be nice to have someone at her side, especially now when she was so anxious and uncertain.

Mrs. Young might tell her anything.

Or next to nothing.

Either way, it would be one enormous step further than the ignorance Effie had endured all her life. Years and years spent dreaming, imagining a mother who had loved her. A mother who had only given her up because she’d believed Effie would have a better life in an orphanage somewhere, surrounded by strangers, than she’d have if she remained in the Rookery.

Her mother had been wrong.

There was no substitute for the connection one had to one’s family. That innate sense of belonging to someone that Effie had always felt lacking. It was why she had rebelled against Miss Corvus. Why she had, for so long, desired to return to that elusive someplace of her childhood. A place beyond conscious memory.

Goodness, what if her mother was still alive? Or worse—what if she had died in reduced circumstances, never knowing Effie had wanted to find her?

By the time she arrived at Sawbridgeworth, Effie had fretted herself into a headache. The train slowed with a grinding scrape of metal and a blast of steam. The conductor shouted unintelligibly as it came to a jolting halt.

Outside the window, the timber-built station came into view. Effie waited for the other passengers in the second-class carriage to disembark before she collected her parasol and rose to exit herself.