“The first was the one I most loved,” Maria had said often, when they sat before the campfire at night and she spoke of the many men she had known and married over the years. “He also gave me your mother.”

The ring had little value, was a cheap trinket really, yet it had been valued by both of her grandparents, and for that alone, she would keep it.

William had wanted to go to Havers to order a stone marker for the grave. Anastasia had to explain her grandmother’s last wishes on the matter.

“My body will rest here, my memory will rest with you, child,” Maria had told her that same night she confessed she was dying. “But my name, I wish to keep to myself. If I must rest here, rather than in my own homeland, let there be no evidence of it.”

“I will put a marker here someday,” Anastasia told Sir William. “But it will not bear her name.”

Everyone in the camp placed food on the grave that night. It was the duty of the family of the deceased to do so. Dead ones had been known to come and berate their family if this hadn’t been done, or so the tales at campfires would relate. This was not the responsibility of friends or mere acquaintances, only family members. Yet everyone in the band honored Maria in this way.

Chapter 21

“THIS IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN! WE CAN’T thank you enough, Will, for thinking of us and letting us share in this endeavor of yours.”

Sir William blushed and did a little mumbling that had the three old women giggling to themselves. Anastasia, watching them, hid a smile.

She had heard much about these ladies on the way to London. They were dear friends of William’s whom he had known since childhood. Near his age and still quite socially active. His sisters by choice, he fondly called them, and they apparently felt the same way about him.

Victoria Siddons was a widow—for the fourth time, her last husband having left her exceedingly rich and plumply titled, so that for many years she had been one of the more prominent London hostesses, and still was. She entertained frequently in one manner or another, and invitations to her gatherings were quite “the thing” to have.

Rachel Besborough was also a widow, though not so repeatedly as Victoria, having been married to the same marquis for some fifty years before he passed on. She had quite a large family in her children and their offspring, though none still lived with her, so she was more often than not a guest of one of her friends.

Elizabeth Jennings, now, having never married, was quite likely the oldest “old maid” in existence, or so she said with a chuckle about herself. Not that she seemed to mind. She was Rachel’s older sister, and so had never lacked having a large family to dote on.

This morning they were all gathered in Lady Victoria’s large sitting room in her house on Bennet Street, where William and Anastasia had been staying since they’d arrived in London last week. Anastasia was standing up on a chair, undergoing her second and hopefully last fitting by Victoria’s personal seamstress, the wardrobe of fancy gowns that William had promised her almost complete.