Unspeakable (25 page)

BATES DROPPED ME AT THE PARK
. I needed air. I needed to think. I needed answers.

My feet followed the footpath winding through the green fields, going around in circles as my thoughts did the same. Finally, I could walk no farther. I only wished my mind exhausted as easily. I veered off the path toward the bench overlooking the pond, still lost in worries when a voice interrupted me.

“I swear, you've done more laps than a racehorse.” Steele. Both hands were clasped behind his head, his ankles crossed. Clearly he'd been sitting there just watching me running rings around him.

“I delivered the coat today,” I said, wearily sitting beside him. It felt good to talk about it, even if it was with Steele. “Actually, I gave it to the
mother
of his
child
.”

“Really?” He paused. “Sorry, I didn't know about that. Honestly. I would have brought it myself—”

“There's something else I have to tell you.”

I thought of my daughter alive. Somewhere. Tomorrow was July 8. Her first birthday. I'd already missed so much. I looked at Steele. If anyone could find her, it would be him.

Did I really want him involved? We'd finally finished with all the
Empress
business. Our deal was done. Was there any point in telling him any more? Knowing him, he'd probably want a picture to go with his article, a great big eight-by-ten of the mother and child reunited.

Reunited
.

The truth was, I'd do anything to find her, and what harm was there, really, in telling him about Aunt Geraldine's letter? He already knew the worst of it, that I'd lost my virginity to a scoundrel and my self-worth in the asylum. Why not tell him the rest?

“My daughter is alive.” It felt so wonderful to say, I had to repeat it. “She's alive! My aunt told me in a letter. She didn't die, Steele.”

“Really? That's great news, Ellen.” He saw the expression on my face. “Or … is it good news?”

I told him what Aunt Geraldine had written, that they'd taken the baby and I'd no idea where. “I know our deal is done”—I turned to face him—“but if anyone can find information on my child, it's you.”

Flattery, yes, and I hoped it might sway him, but I believed it, too. Steele was like a bloodhound. And I would know. Hadn't he tracked me across the ocean? Hadn't he dug up things I'd buried long ago? There was no misleading this dog once he had a whiff of something.

He stared off, lost in his thoughts. Perhaps he was wondering if he had the time. He must have had other stories on the go, other deadlines looming.

I gave him the scent of a reward. “We can ask her adoptive parents to let you take a picture of her and me together … for your story. Imagine that, Steele.”

A glimmer of something lit behind his eyes.

“‘Surviving Stewardess Finds Her Long-Lost Child,'” I added, not caring if he told the world my sins and plastered my face all over the paper. Not if it meant finding my daughter. I just wanted to see her. To hold her, even once. To know that she was all right.

He hadn't answered me and I thought that perhaps he'd had enough of my story. Maybe he just wanted to be done with it. Maybe he had other women—other stories—to pursue.

“That night”—he turned, his eyes vivid—“what was the last thing Meg said to you in the water?”

“I don't know,” I stammered, trying to switch tracks. “Something about promises she'd made to my aunt. About taking care of me—”

He nodded, leading me to it. “She kept that one. But what was the promise she broke?”

I closed my eyes and went back to that horrible moment when Meg slipped from me. Her voice echoing in my mind. “She'd promised to never tell me the truth. But then she said, ‘Barnardo's'.” I opened my eyes and looked at him.

“I'll bet your daughter is with the Barnardo family. Do you know them?”

Barnardo's
. Of course! Not a passenger, not even a family,
as Steele thought. But he was right. My daughter was there. I never made the connection before. Losing Meg like that had upset me. I didn't want to think about her last words. Her last breath. But with it, she'd been telling me where they'd taken my child.

“It's not a family,” I said, my smile fading as the memory of the children surfaced. “It's an orphanage. Dr. Barnardo's Home.”

I remembered seeing the Barnardo orphans standing on the Liverpool quay waiting for passage aboard the
Empress
during one of our crossings. It wasn't that they were so young, only nine or ten, if that. Or even that there were dozens waiting. Fifty at least. It was the white tags secured to their coats. I'll never forget the sight of them, labelled and left like luggage on the dock. It was only after that Kate told me how Barnardo's Home children often crossed aboard the
Empress
. And why.

“They are sent to work on farms in Canada,” I explained to Steele.

“Like slaves?” he asked, incredulous. “This is 1914. Didn't we abolish that back in the 1800s?”

“They're more like indentured servants, really. They work to earn their freedom. But I suppose they haven't a say in it, do they?”

It had broken my heart to see the orphans. But it was nothing compared to the pain I felt now, knowing that, one day, my daughter would be standing dockside with her tag fluttering in the wind.

“Leave it with me,” Steele said. “Give me a couple of days to do some digging. I'll find her.”

Steele knew me, more than anyone else, even more than the man I'd loved. At that moment, the truth was that my only confidant, my only friend in all the world, was Wyatt Steele.

But I never quite knew what I was to him.

Chapter Thirty-Five

IT HAD BEEN A WEEK
since I'd seen Steele and still there was no word. Bates told me I'd wear out the carpets with all my pacing, but what else could I do?

The knocker rapped and I bolted to the hall, sure it was him as Lily took an envelope and closed the door. Still, maybe he'd written me. Maybe he'd found her. But the message wasn't from Steele. Just a letter from Mr. Cronin, my aunt's solicitor, requesting my presence the following week.

THE HOURS DRAGGED ON AND ON
, an endless vigil of waiting dawn to dusk for answers that never came. Day after day. Then finally, he called. “I've found her.” Three small words and everything changed. All my pent-up worry, my deepest fears, all the anxiety that had been simmering all week bubbled over in tears. I couldn't speak.

“I've pulled a few strings,” he said, “but we've got a
meeting with Mrs. Winters tomorrow morning. And your daughter, Ellen. She's going to be there, too.”

I gripped the phone and nodded as the truths sank in:

My daughter is alive
.

I know where she is
.

I'm seeing her tomorrow
.

The knowing I'd wanted for so long stirred up more questions. What does she look like? What will she do when she sees me? Will she somehow recognize me—from my months of carrying her? And if so, is there a place in her little soul that knows I gave her up? I hardly slept at all that night.

THE NEXT MORNING
, against Bates's protests, I took Steele up on his offer to drive me to the Barnardo Home. And though I was tempted to sit in the back and treat him like what he was, a man working for me, I gave in and, instead, climbed into the front beside him. He teased me about that, about it being my first time sitting in the front seat. As if he should talk, the way he ground the gears and bucked forward.

“What is it with you people?” He slammed on the brake and shoved the stick hard. “Gears. Wheel. Drivers. You've got everything on the wrong side.”

“I assure you, we've got it on the right side.” Leave it to him to assume he was right and the whole country was wrong. “Maybe you're just a terrible driver.”

Bates stood in the garden, anxiously watching us lurch by.

Steele waved enthusiastically as we passed. “I don't think your butler trusts me with you.”

I chuckled. “It's the car he doesn't trust you with.”

We drove for half an hour and then pulled over on a long stretch of road. Steele turned off the engine.

“What are you doing?” I glanced at the rolling fields. A few cows looked up from their pastures alongside. “This isn't the place, is it?”

He held out the keys. “Here.”

I paused.

“If it's your first time in the front seat,” he smirked, “I'm guessing you've never driven before.”

“No,” I conceded. “I haven't. But now is hardly the time to learn.”

“Now is the perfect time. Just give it a go.” He threw the keys up so that I had to catch them. Next thing he ran around the front and pulled open the passenger door.

“Get back in your seat,” I ordered, even as he shoved in, forcing me to move. He laid his arm across the back of the seat and I edged farther away, shimming my legs past the gearstick and ending up right behind the wheel. “You said you'd take me to see my daughter.”

“I said I'd
find
your daughter. And I did.
You
are going to get us there.”

“I'm going to get us killed,” I said. He had to be joking. “I'm not doing it.”

I could tell by his face he wasn't giving in on this, the stubborn jackass. Well, neither was I. “I don't know the first thing about driving.”

“Sure you do.” He grinned. “Where do you put the key?”

“I know where I'd like to put it,” I muttered, ramming it in the ignition.

He laughed. “There's the spirit.”

Steele talked me through starting the car. The engine squealed a bit as I turned it too long. Easy enough, I suppose, but getting her started wasn't the problem. Clutch, brake, gas. Three pedals—not so many. I held down the clutch and brake as instructed.

“We'll take her nice and slow, keep her in first.” He wobbled the shift and jammed it upwards. “Now take your foot off the brake and ease up on the clutch.”

Even as I did it, I could feel the car moving forward and I slammed my foot down, jerking us to a halt. But on the next try, I let it go and we rolled along the gravel shoulder.

“Good,” he said, a little smile tugging at his lips. “Now, how about we try the road?”

I turned the wooden wheel, too far at first, and we swerved out and back and out again before I wobbled us straight.

Driving! I am driving!

“Now give her a little gas,” Steele suggested. “Not too much—”

The car leapt forward as I gunned it, and I braked a little overenthusiastically, slamming us to a stop, throwing Steele against the dashboard.

“See?” I turned to him, heart punching my ribs. What the hell was I doing? “I told you I can't drive! And now look what I've done. You're bleeding.”

He touched his cut lip with his fingers, pushed his tongue against it, then waved it away. “It's nothing.”

“I can't.” I folded my arms and we sat in the middle of the road, engine idling. “It's too dangerous.”

“Think of it as an adventure.”

I didn't know what twists and turns the road might take
after it disappeared over the hill ahead. “It's too risky, Steele. I just can't.”

“Ellen,” he said, taking a deep breath, “there's a risk in every adventure. In not knowing where you might end up, figuring it out as you go along. That's what
makes
it an adventure.”

I looked out my side window at the cows in the meadow, watching us as they chewed, indifferent to the drama on the road.

“So you get a fat lip,” he continued, “so you make mistakes, so what?”

I turned back to him.

Already his lip had swollen like a bee sting in his sideways grin. “I still say, it's a hell of a lot more fun than idling away in the middle of the road.”

This wasn't about driving. I realized it then. It was about taking control. About making a choice and moving ahead. How many ways, how many times had I let other people tell me what road I took? I'd always been a passenger in my life, at the mercy of someone else's plans.