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Back The Ninth Daughter
Chapters (37)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four

Shortly after she, Pattie, Nabby, and Johnny commenced the horrendous task of lifting out each dripping, steaming shirt, sheet, chemise, or baby-clout from the slowly cooling rinse-water to wring and hang to dry, Thaxter appeared in the kitchen door with the information that Mr. Malvern was here to see her.

As it had been during Lieutenant Coldstone’s call last Wednesday, the parlor was arctically cold, but as on last Wednesday, Pattie—by some miracle of efficiency—had already that morning swept the grate and laid a fire. Flames crackled cheerily as Abigail entered to receive a bow from her guest. She had been used to thinking of the tough, grim-faced little merchant as old before his time, yet seeing him now she was struck by how facile her earlier judgment had been. A week and a half ago, he had been merely weatherworn and wrinkled. Now he was old. His shoulders bowed, and the lines of his face had not merely deepened but slackened under the burden of dread.

Abigail cried, “Sir!” in consternation, and instead of curtseying, clasped his hands. “You ought not to have come.”

“You think I fear the rabble that have flooded into this town?” He sniffed, and took the seat that Coldstone had, only after Abigail herself sat down. “The lascars in Singapore would eat the lot of them for breakfast, and I managed to deal with them smartly enough. If His Majesty—” He caught himself, took a deep breath, as if forcing down the crimson anger rising to his face. “I’m quite well, Mrs. Adams,” he added, in a quieter voice. He will never be capable of gentleness, she thought. But she had the impression of looking at a granite slab that had been broken, to let the first shoots of green peep through. “And feeling a bit of a poke-nose, for I know had you learned anything—anything at all—you would have writ me, as you said.”

“And so I would,” said Abigail. “In the past week I have run up one blind alley and down another, chasing spec ters—”

Like poor Mrs. Hazlitt, conversing with the glowing blue ghost of her son, conjured by her frenzied need not to let him from her sight? She pushed the thought from her mind, though it made her stammer a little.

“I take it communication with Mrs. Moore yielded nothing?”

Abigail shook her head.

“Might—Forgive a man who’s lived hard, for his suspicions—You do not think Mrs. Malvern might have instructed her to write that she was not there, when in fact she was?”