The Apothecary's Daughter (55 page)

A year has come and gone since I left Bedsley Priors.

Lilly read on silently. Finding out her mother was not traveling the
continent nor the high seas as she had often imagined did not surprise
her as it might once have done. At the time of this writing, her mother
was living in London under another man’s protection. But even that
was not what shocked her.

“What can she mean?” Lilly murmured, and reread the section
once more, this time aloud.

“I do not lay all the blame at your door, Charles. I know
that as a wife, I was a disappointment, and that I broke our marriage vows even before you did, and in more respects. I had
been unhappy for quite some time, as you well know.

“I release you to M., Charles. I know she is the wife of your
heart. And if that poor afflicted girl can grow up with a father, then
I shall take some comfort in that. Comfort I sorely need whenever
guilt over leaving L. and C. rises to stab me in the heart….”

Lilly felt frozen and overheated all at once. Nerves tingled down
her spine and through her limbs. Her mind spun and spun again, down
through the years of memories, trying to force it all to make sense. It
cannot mean what it appears to mean. It cannot.

She looked at her father and saw the shame and grief in his eyes. For
so long she’d assumed him innocent, the victim. She had blamed her
mother alone! Blamed and empathized with and longed for. What good
was an endless memory if what it remembered had all been a lie?

“Is it true?” Lilly asked. “You and … Mrs. Mimpurse?”

“It was a long time ago.”

The hands holding the letter shook. “How long?”

“More than twenty years … long before your mother left us. I
thought we had got past it.”

“Where was Mr. Mimpurse?”

“Gone, as he often was, before he left for good.”

“Before he died, you mean?”

“You had better ask Maude about that.”

“You want me to ask your lover? I think not.” Never had Lilly
used such a cutting tone with her father.

He winced.

Her mounting anger suddenly faded into a cold, dizzy cloud
that threatened to suffocate her. “What does she mean, `if that poor
afflicted girl can grow up with a father’? Did she mean she expected
you to marry Mrs. Mimpurse and raise Mary as your own?”

Her father looked at her. Two seconds passed. Two ticks of the
clock. Three. Four.

“She is my own.”

The company of agreeable friends will be the best medicine.

DR. HILL, THE OLD MAN’S GUIDE TO HEALTH AND LONGER LIFE, 1764

illy burst into the coffeehouse through the front door, not the
-J kitchen. Mary glanced up at her from where she was wiping
off a table, startled by the door banging against the wall. Vaguely,
Lilly noticed tears in Mary’s eyes, eyes that were bloodshot and
miserable.

Lilly faltered, suddenly not sure if, or how, to reveal her own news.
Instead she asked, “What is it?”

Mary wiped randomly at the table without seeing its surface. Her
finger bore only the smallest bandage now. “I know it is foolish. Did I
not tell you he would be quickly shot of me once he learned … ?”

Oh no. “I am so sorry to hear it.”

“I do not blame Mr. Shuttleworth, poor man. It is my own fault
for not telling him I was not the woman he thought I was.”

Lilly took a deep breath. She said unsteadily, “You are not the
woman I thought you were either.”

Mary looked up at her sharply, searchingly.

Lilly crossed the room and stood before her. “What do you know
of your father? “

Mary straightened. “My father? Do you mean … Harold
Mimpurse? “

Lilly asked quietly, “Do I?”

Mary stood perfectly still, only her sad blue eyes blinked. Eyes
so like Charlie’s, Lilly realized.

“Do you know?” Mary tentatively asked.

Lilly nodded. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

They heard a sudden scraping of chair legs on the floor above them,
and as the two stood there, staring at one another, Maude Mimpurse
trod heavily down the stairs. She halted at the bottom step, holding
the rail for support, looking from one of them to the other.

Lilly stepped forward and held the letter out to her. She kept her
face impassive as Mrs. Mimpurse’s wide eyes tried to search her own.
Maude’s gaze fled to the letter instead, and after a few seconds of
skimming its contents, the woman pressed a trembling hand over
her heart. She looked again at Lilly, shamefaced. The eyes she turned
toward her daughter were filled with trepidation.

“You know?” she asked Mary.

“That Charles Haswell is my father?” Mary said matter-of-factly.
“Yes, I know.”

“How? For how long? ” Maude was clearly stunned.

“My room is above this one, as yours is, and sound carries in this
house, as you’ve just witnessed. I heard the two of you talking once.
Arguing actually, about what Dr. Foster said about me. But even if I
hadn’t overheard, I had the evidence of my eyes, hadn’t I? I remember
Papa well enough to know there was nothing of the man in my veins.”
She splayed her fingers in the air beside her head. “And where else did
this ridiculous hair come from? “

“I never thought it. Not once,” Lilly said breathlessly. “Have I
not always said you were more clever than I? “

Maude said, “We didn’t want anyone to know Mr. Mimpurse was
not your father. Your reputation would have suffered.”

“Mine, or Charles Haswell’s?” At the unusual rancor in Mary’s
tone, Lilly winced. She could easily imagine her father putting his
precious Haswell reputation and that of his shop above anything
else.

“It’s very natural you should be upset,” Maude said.

Mary took a deep breath. “I am not. I am glad she knows.”

Lilly stared at Mary, a girl she had always known, but had never
really known at all.

“Lill finding out we are sisters is the only good thing this day
has brought.”

Sisters.

“That,” Lilly said, “I have always known.”

Mary looked skeptical, brows high. “Indeed?”

“Though I may have forgotten, for a year or two.”

“Lilly Haswell forgetting,” Mary said, smiling tremulously. “A
day of firsts all around.”

Maude, Mary, and Lilly sat in the kitchen near the hearth, all
three indulging in a rare glass of honey wine.

“It was about a year after your father returned to Bedsley Priors
with his new bride,” Maude began. “I had loved Charles for years
and, in truth, thought he would marry me when he returned from
his apothecary’s training in London. Instead he came home with a
beautiful wife.”

Tears brightened Maude’s eyes even all these years later. “I could
not blame him. We were not officially engaged. And Rosamond was
very lovely, though she seemed to regret the marriage almost at once.
I was heartbroken but decided I would go on as best I could. I married
Harold Mimpurse, though I’d refused him once before. I had always
wanted to open a coffeehouse once my days as a maid were behind
me, and Harold promised to set me up. And that’s the one promise he
kept. He was a goodhearted man but had the constancy of a hound.”
She glanced at Mary. “Sorry, my dear.”

Mary nodded.

“He was gone more often than not, peddling his copper wares once
he’d been decommissioned from the army. Met up with a widow in
Reading and spent more nights with her than with me. It was during
one of these absences that your mother left the first time, before you
were born.”

“The first time?” Lilly interrupted. “She’d left before?” Lilly
instantly recalled Mrs. Kilgrove’s seemingly delirious words about
her mother’s first return.

Maude nodded. “Charles and I were both hurting and lonely, and
temptation had its way. I thought perhaps we’d be together after all,
Charles and I, after a fashion. But then, Rosamond came back only two
days later. As though she’d only been gone shopping. I don’t know that
she ever told your father where she’d gone or who she’d been with, but
I saw how shaken and repentant she was. Charles and I were mortified
over what we’d done and didn’t speak of it for years.

“Your parents had a real marriage after that, it seemed. For a
time anyway. Mr. Mimpurse came back as well, though I cannot say
with equal repentance. He soon left again, while Rosamond stayed.
How could I tell Charles I was carrying his child? When his marriage
looked to finally be on solid ground? Especially when Rosamond soon
confided she, too, was carrying a child? ” Maude paused to drain her
glass.

How difficult that must have been for her, Lilly thought. She had
always known her father and Mrs. Mimpurse were fond of one another
beneath their sharp words and brusque ways, but she’d had no idea
how deep those feelings went.

“When Rosamond was in her lying in, I admit I wondered if the
child would look like Charles … and I wondered if he feared the child
would not.” She turned wine-warmed eyes on Lilly. “But one look at
you and it was perfectly clear you were Charles Haswell’s daughter,
with tufts of his reddish hair already gracing your little head. As you
grew older, you came to look more like your mother, but are still so
like him in many ways.

“After that, I tried all the harder to be a friend to your mother.

Both of us having wee girls so near in age gave us plenty in common
we’d not had before. I cannot say I felt no resentment, but I prayed
God would give me a love for her, and I think He answered.”

Maude reached over and refilled their glasses, though hers was
the only one empty.

“Things went along quite uneventfully until Charlie was born.
Such a hard birth it was. Your poor father. He did all he knew how, but
it wasn’t enough. He even sent Mrs. Fowler to fetch Dr. Foster. The
man was so long in coming, Charles thought he had refused. Foster
never gave an excuse for his delay. I don’t think your father has ever
forgiven him for it.”

Lilly shook her head. “I had no idea.”

“Finally Foster did come with his gruesome forceps and cold condescension and pulled the child from your mother at last. To his credit,
he also revived the babe. Poor Charlie was nearly blue at birth.”

Thoughtfully, Maude shook her head. “Rosamond was cast down
after that. Not even your sweet face could cheer her.”

Lilly felt the familiar ache of rejection stir in her breast.

“By Charlie’s first birthday, it was evident that something was
not right with the lad. Very little could hold his attention. He did not
want to be held or petted. Was slow to creep, stand, and walk. But
still she stayed.”

Maude sighed. “Harold did not. When Mary was twelve years
old, he announced he would not be returning. I told no one. I confess
I was tempted to announce that he had died on one of his trips. The
status of widow so less shameful than abandoned wife. When I received
a letter from the Reading widow a few months later, I thought I had
brought his death down upon him. Killed in a fall from his horse. Can
you imagine? Him, a war hero. I’d have sooner believed the pox.” She
took another sip and stared at the embers in the hearth.

“Rosamond did not leave until some three years later. I saw
her walk away with her carpetbag, dressed for travel. I knew your
father had gone to see Sir Henry, so I ran next door, to make certain
Charlie was all right. You and Mary were already at Mrs. Shaw’s.
I asked Mrs. Fowler where your mother had gone, but she said the missus hadn’t told her a thing, just bid her look after the lad till Charles
come home. I hurried after Rosamond in the direction she’d gone. I
did not actually see her on the narrowboat that was heading east on
the canal, but Mrs. Kilgrove did. Said Mrs. Haswell had embarked
with a tall, dark-haired man in naval dress. Of course, Mrs. Kilgrove’s
sight wasn’t keen even then.”

Quinn or Wells? Lilly wondered and shifted in her chair. “In London, I learned that Mother hoped to marry a naval captain before she
met Father. But the man married another.” She thought of what Dr.
Graves had told her. Had first Quinn, then Wells disappointed her?