• • •
SOPHIE GOT UP from her spot in the garden and held out her hand to Lia. “Shall we go for a walk?”
The little girl had begun to show some of the roundness that was appropriate to her age, her hair had taken on a glossiness, and her coloring was high. Where her sister was weighed down by worry, Lia was relentlessly calm, cheerful, and affectionate. Mrs. Lee reported that the only time she had seen the girl cry was when Margaret and Aunt Quinlan had been arguing about the relative importance and value of corsets, a difference of opinion that was aired daily. Lia’s unhappiness, Mrs. Lee believed, came from the inability to climb into both laps at once to offer comfort.
Now Lia skipped along at Sophie’s side, singing to herself, a melody Sophie didn’t recognize. She held one of the old dolls from the attic firmly by a leg, and seemed unaware of or unconcerned by the doll’s head dragging along behind her. When they sat down on a bench in the early evening light, Lia began to undress the doll, holding a conversation with her that sounded very much like Margaret talking to Lia herself. Suddenly she stopped and looked up at Sophie.
“What’s a corset?”
Sophie had been waiting for this question, but she had assumed it would come from Rosa, who was at the center of the disagreement between Margaret and Aunt Quinlan.
“A corset is a kind of chemise.”
Lia’s expression was puzzled. Sophie doubted that even Aunt Quinlan knew the Italian word for chemise, and so she touched the doll’s old-fashioned undergarment, knee length and low in the bosom, with sleeves that came to the elbow. “This is a chemise. You wear one, shorter than this.”
Lia still looked puzzled and then her face cleared as she made a decision. She grabbed her pinafore, skirts, and petticoats in both hands and hefted them to peer down at her own belly and the cotton chemise that covered it. Sophie gently disengaged her little hands and smoothed down the skirts.
“A corset is a kind of chemise,” Sophie repeated. “But not soft. It’s made out of very stiff material. Some ladies wear corsets because if they are tight enough, it pinches in to make their middles look very small. They do this to be fashionable.” She made a motion in the air, the outline of a woman with a tightly cinched waist.
Lia squeezed the rag doll’s lumpy middle, frowning in concentration. She said, “Aunt Margaret wants Rosa to wear a corset.”
It didn’t surprise Sophie to hear this from Lia. While Italian was her first language, the little girl had an acute ear and could parrot things exactly, even if she didn’t entirely understand them.
Sophie said, “Aunt Margaret thinks that all young girls should start wearing corsets as soon as possible, because she did as a girl.”
“But Aunt Quinlan doesn’t like corsets.”
“No, she doesn’t. She didn’t allow Anna or me to wear them, not ever, because she believes corsets—” She paused and rethought her approach. “Girls who wear tight corsets can’t run and play or climb trees or do anything much except sit. Aunt Quinlan says that being free to move is more important than this.” She made the same figure in the air.
She could have added her own medical opinion and Anna’s, but Lia had heard enough. The little girl propelled herself from the bench and onto the lawn, where she stopped to spin in place with her arms extended, the half-dressed doll still firmly in hand. Then she loped off, yelling behind herself, “I am the wind!”
“Yes you are,” Sophie said with a laugh. “And so you shall always be.”
• • •
BY THE TIME Sophie and Lia got back, Jack Mezzanotte had gone home and Anna off to bed in anticipation of an early and difficult surgery. But Margaret was waiting and she immediately grabbed up Lia.
“Past her bath time,” she said to Sophie. At the stairs she paused. “Mail came for you while you were out.”
Sophie waved good-bye to Lia, who still held the half-dressed doll in one grubby hand.
On the hall table were two letters and a small packet that took her breath away. She would have recognized it by shape in a dark room, so often had she held it in her hand. The last time more than a year ago. Cap had written the address himself. Very deliberately she put it aside and picked up the first letter, waiting for the frantic beat of her heart to settle.
The handwriting was unfamiliar, an awkward scrawl that was nothing like Cap’s measured, angular hand.
Dear Dr. Savard,
I write with the news that I have no news. I have spoke to the Arabs who run gangs from the Battery to the Park and nobody remembers a Guinea boy with dark hair and blue eyes, about seven years old or any other age. I also had a look around certain establishments you wouldn’t be familiar with, places Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte can tell you about if you ask. No trace of the boy at the Hurdy Gurdy, Billy McGlory’s and the like, nor did I hear of him in worse places still. I’ve got business up Haymarket way this coming week and will see what there is to see. With any luck, nothing at all. Better a train headed west than the Black and Tan or one of the Chinee opium joints, that’s my opinion. I’ll write again as soon as I have something to report, good or bad.
Your humble servant
G. Gianbattista Garibaldi Nediani—Ned
Despite the serious subject matter, Sophie had to smile. Anna’s description of Ned had been almost as colorful as the letter. She put it aside for Anna’s attention.
The second letter had been written by someone with a clean, nimble hand that was also unfamiliar to her.
Dear Dr. Sophie,
It is just a few weeks since we had the pleasure of welcoming you to our home on a beautiful spring afternoon, and now I find myself writing not—as I had hoped—to invite you for another visit, but to share the news of my husband’s sudden death. We laid Sam to rest on what would have been our fifty-second anniversary, just four days ago.
We are steadfast in our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and take comfort in His tender mercies. He has called Sam to His side and one day He will call me to join him. Until then I have family to look after and work to do.
Aside from this sad news, I am also writing to say that our eldest grandson, also called Samuel Reason, has taken over the printing shop. You didn’t meet Sam when you were here because he was on his way home from Savannah, where he was visiting his wife’s family. Now he asks for permission to call on you to discuss business matters. If you could send word to him at the shop on Hunterfly Road about when he might call, I would be thankful for your help during this difficult time.
I hope you know that you are welcome here at any time, for any reason, and that you will not wait long to visit.
With sincere good regards and many thanks for the care and kindness you showed my beloved husband, I remain your true friend.
Mrs. Delilah Reason
Sophie sat quietly for a long time, thinking about Sam Reason. Mrs. Reason had her children and grandchildren, sisters and brothers and friends to support her and give her purpose. More than that, she had fifty-two years of memories to sustain her, an abundance Sophie found hard to imagine as she weighed Cap’s unopened package in her hand.
Very carefully she clipped the string and folded away the thick brown paper wrapping. Inside she found the familiar, much-loved pen case that had passed back and forth between Cap and herself for ten years, always with a letter enclosed and sometimes with more. She had thought never to see it again and so for a moment she only studied it, tracing the carving of a single tree beside a lake of inlaid pearl.
Finally she opened it to take out a letter of many pages, rolled into a tube and tied with a bit of string. She was terrified and exultant all at once.
Sophie, my love,
Nothing has ever felt more right than the act of breaking the long and painful silence that I created between us. I could make no accusations if you were to tear up this letter without reading another word, but I hope you will not. I
have things I must say to you.
I have hurt you and disappointed you and told myself that I acted for your own good. You know that my fears for your health are founded in fact but I must now confess that while I could not admit it to myself at the time, my decision to cut you off was about more than your health. I was angry because I wanted you for my wife and you rejected me. And so, to my shame, I rejected you and convinced myself it was the right thing to do.
Then Aunt Q came to call and when she went away she took my delusions and pretenses with her. I have been cruel and unfeeling, and I can only ask your forgiveness. I hope you will be more generous than I have been, though I don’t deserve it.
I have missed you. Every day, every hour, every minute I have missed you. You must know that I love you still and always, as I have loved you since that June we were sixteen, standing in the shade of the rose arbor, my senses filled up with the scent of the flowers and the low hum of the bees, and then with you and nothing else. Your taste, the texture of your skin at the corner of your mouth, the very sound of your breath catching in your throat. I loved you then as I will love you on the day I die. And I will die, Sophie, and my death will come too soon.
And so I come to the letter from Dr. Zängerle which your good aunt brought me. I have read it many times and in the end, I cannot believe that Dr. Zängerle’s methods will provide a cure, but I do think that his treatment might give me more time than I would otherwise have. You want me to go to Switzerland and put myself in Dr. Zängerle’s care at the Rosenau clinic. I will agree, with some conditions:
However much time I may have, you and I will spend it together. You must come with me to Switzerland and stay with me until the end, whether it comes in a week or six months or even, as unlikely as it seems, a year. I want you to be my wife and when my time is done, my widow. Before we depart for Europe, we must be married in a legal ceremony with your family and witnesses of my choosing in attendance. Our marriage must be announced in the papers both before and after the fact. Whatever the uproar and accusations and scandal, nothing will be done in secret.
We will not share a bed or any kind of physical intimacy beyond the care a physician provides for a patient. You and I will both take every measure to ensure that I do not infect you, or anyone else.
There must be no ambiguity about our status as man and wife and thus the platonic nature of our marriage must not be public knowledge. You will promise to present yourself to the world as my wife in all ways, even after I am gone. This has to do with the law, and only secondarily with my pride.
When you are my widow, you will accept all rights and properties that come to you in accordance with the terms of my last will and testament, in which you will be named as my sole heir with the exception of provisions for Mrs. Harrison and the staff in their old age. You can be sure of two things: the testament will be rock-solid and unbreakable, and one or more of my aunts or cousins will attempt to break it anyway, in order to deny you your inheritance. To protect your interests I will make arrangements for the very best legal counsel to represent you before the courts in this and any other matter. Uncle Conrad will be the executor of my will, and he will coordinate all aspects of my estate working with the other attorney I have engaged, but your word will be final.
What you do with the estate once it is released to you will be entirely and exclusively up to you. If you choose to build a hospital, to donate it all to a school, or simply to live in comfort for the rest of your life, no one will be able to interfere with you. I know you, Sophie, and you are thinking just now that you don’t care about money or property. But I do care. This is what I want, and in this point I will not be denied.
Before I fell ill you told me again and again that you loved me but could not marry me. You imagined that in time I would come to resent you. Somehow you convinced yourself I would miss taking tea with old aunts and regret the lost opportunity to guide debutantes around the dance floor, that gossip and fashion and interminable talk of bloodlines would become more important to me over time. You were wrong. You are wrong, but none of that matters once we are married and away from this city. Distance and death will put an end to whatever disapproval my Aunt Eugenie or Mrs. Astor and her ilk can bestow. And you will be mine, and I will be yours, and that is all that matters to me. In the days and hours of my life, you are all and everything.
It is a fine thing for me to ask for mercy where I showed none, but please do not make me wait long for your answer.
I am ever yours.
Cap
12
SOPHIE STARTED OUT of sleep at the first crow of Lia’s beloved rooster and realized that she was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. She had drifted off rereading Cap’s letter, which she still held pressed to herself. Cap, who loved her and wanted her for his widow.
She needed to talk to Anna before she sat down to write a single word. With a sudden burst of energy she went about getting ready for the day, washing without looking at her face in the mirror for fear of what she might see there. No more than fifteen minutes later she slipped into Anna’s room.
“An early morning visit.” Anna stretched luxuriously, arms extended over her head. “I thought it might be Lia; she has been coming in quite often recently to tell me her stories.” Then she looked at Sophie more closely and sat up, fully awake.
Sophie found that she couldn’t say anything at all, and so she held up the letter.
Anna smiled broadly, both dimples popping into view. “Finally.”
“Read it.”
She frowned. “Sophie, it’s too personal.”
“Please. I wouldn’t know where to start to put it in my own words. And I need your advice.”
That made Anna laugh out loud. “When is the last time you took my advice?” But she accepted the letter and began to read.
• • •
ANNA WAS A slow reader, and always had been. It was the judge in her, Aunt Quinlan always said. She had to weigh every word before she could go on to the next. When she put the letter down, finally, she looked up at Sophie with tears in her eyes.
“What are you going to do?”
Sophie came forward and sat beside her cousin, folded her hands in her lap, and felt the relief and joy blossom inside her. She would say the words now and make it true.
“I’m going to marry him. Of course.” And then, because she needed to be honest with herself, “I’m going to marry him and then be with him when he dies.”
Anna put her arms around Sophie’s shoulders and pulled her close.
“Are you happy?”
“It seems wrong, but I am.”
Anna stroked Sophie’s hair. “You’re marrying Cap because you love him and you want to be with him for what time he has left.”
There was something in Anna’s tone that struck Sophie as odd. She studied her cousin’s face, and was not comforted by what she saw there.
“Tell me,” Sophie said.
Anna didn’t pretend to be confused. Instead she picked up the letter and ran her eyes over it until she found a specific phrase. She cleared her throat and read out loud. “‘You want me to go to Switzerland and put myself in Dr. Zängerle’s care at the Rosenau clinic.’”
A small tingle began at the bottom of Sophie’s spine. Something was off, but her thoughts were racing so frantically she couldn’t catch the one she needed.
Very gently Anna said, “How did Cap know the name of the village? It wasn’t mentioned in any of the materials, as far as I remember. Was it?”
Sophie knew Dr. Zängerle’s letters almost word by word, and she didn’t recall any mention of a village called Rosenau. For ten seconds she held herself completely still, and then she let out a barking laugh.
“This is too much, even for Cap.” But even as she said it, Sophie knew that it was not. Cap was more than capable of planning complex, long-reaching schemes; he took huge satisfact
ion in them. She had refused him, but he had never given up, not really.
“This is an insane idea. Are we really thinking that Cap cut himself off from me as a—” She reached for a word that would not come.
“Strategy,” Anna supplied. “Yes, I think maybe he did.”
“So he was in contact with Zängerle more than a year ago. But why a year? Why set this up and wait a year?”
Anna spread her hands out over her lap and considered. “He was aiming for your tipping point. The day you would be lonely enough for him to say yes to this—” She touched the letter.
“But Zängerle’s letter, how could he have timed that?”
“By holding off and then delivering it himself. It wasn’t dated, if I remember correctly.”
Sophie felt herself flushing with anger and amusement, frustration and resignation. “What a stupid chance he took. What cheek, the underhanded swindler. Could he have really been so desperate?”
“Hold on,” Anna said. “We’re just speculating. This might not be what it seems.”
Sophie let out a sputtering laugh. “Oh please. Once you pointed it out, it’s obvious that it’s one of his schemes.” She put her face in her hands. “He kept us apart for a whole year to force this marriage.” Her shoulders shook, but she wasn’t sure if she was on the brink of laughter or tears.
“He knows you too well,” Anna said. “A year ago, would you have accepted him under the same circumstances?”
Sophie tried to imagine how she would have reacted to this particular proposal. She had been so sure of herself when she refused him. “I don’t know. I doubt it.”
Anna said, “I can’t get over the fact that he drew Dr. Zängerle into this scheme.”
“Really?” Sophie said, taking out her handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “Now that I think about it, I’m wondering why it took so long.”
She rolled over and pressed her face into Anna’s pillow so that she could scream without rousing the house.