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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

“—has some fairly low acquaintances. Did Lieutenant Coldstone ask about Mrs. Malvern’s possible friends?”

The slave shook his head. “Not of me, he didn’t. And I think if he had asked Mr. Jeffrey or Miss Tamar, I would have heard. Myself, I don’t even know for a fact if she had such friends, though I know that being friends with Mr. Adams, and Mr. Revere, and reading the newspapers and arguing with Mr. Malvern as she did, I shouldn’t be surprised to hear of it. As to what Mr. Jeffrey or Miss Tamar might have told him—or their father—I can’t answer for that.”

Abigail was silent for a time, gazing into the dense shadows of the kitchen. Even under the relatively strong glow of the oil-lamp overhead, the long sideboards, the sturdy bin-table and homely water-jars were barely distinguishable in the gloom. After a time she asked, “Do they hate her so much still?”

The butler sighed. “Not hate, I don’t think, so much, Mrs. Adams,” he said. “They were her enemies before they even met her. I think Miss Tamar talked herself into hating her—and talked Mr. Jeffrey into it—because it’s easier to do evil to someone you hate, than to admit to yourself you’re only telling lies and making trouble because you don’t want another little brother or sister to come along and cut into your inheritance. That’s what it came down to.”

“Rebecca—Mrs. Malvern—told me once that Tamar would search her room while she was away, and stole her letters. She said she always suspected it was Tamar who learned, and told Mr. Malvern, about her arranging to pay her brother’s gambling debts with part of the household money, and backing her father’s bills with Mr. Malvern’s name. Mrs. Malvern said she knew she shouldn’t have done it, but—”

“People do foolish things for those they love.” Scipio poured her a little more coffee. “It’s true Miss Tamar doesn’t like the idea of having her father’s estate cut up into five or six rather than just in two, but it’s for Mr. Jeffrey that she started working to turn her father against Miss Rebecca. For Mr. Jeffrey and little Master Nathan—she did her possible, to turn that poor little boy against Miss Rebecca, for his own good, as she said. He’ll thank me for it, she said, ’specially after Miss Rebecca left. But when he was ill there at the end,” added the butler softly, “it was Miss Rebecca he would call for.”

And it was for Nathan, Abigail knew well, that Rebecca had chosen to remain in Boston, the summer of ’72. Hoping against hope that she would have the opportunity to go to the child’s bedside.