Yes, though not one Felicity would have noticed, had Ian not done so first. But then, Charity looked like Mama, Mercy most resembled her own father, and Felicity—
Well. She’d never felt she much resembled anyone in particular. Perhaps some distant ancestor she’d never met, nor ever had any hope to. She hadn’t been expecting to see echoes of her own face in someone else’s. But the resemblance was there, in bits and pieces, beneath the dirt and the grime. To allthree of them. Charity’s nose, she thought. Mercy’s brows. Andhereyes.
They’d known there could be more of them. But it had been an abstract sort of thought. Distant, vague. A mere possibility that would never come to fruition without some outside intervention. And yet, here she was. This girl, so much younger than the rest of them. Another sister; one Mama had kept.
The girl’s empty mug clattered noisily onto the small table between them, released too soon by fingers too twitchy to keep hold of it. At last she spoke, in a small, birdlike voice. “Are you—are you going to send me to the magistrate?”
Felicity hesitated. “I don’twantto,” she admitted. Her eyes strayed to the longcase clock in the corner, noting the time. Five hours more, and Mama would be waiting. Ian was already arranging for her capture, time now to their advantage. “Will you tell me your name?” she asked.
The girl shuffled her feet upon the floor, her hands clasping in her lap. “Grace,” she said softly, directing her reply to her toes. “Grace Seymour.”
Grace. It was a confirmation they hadn’t truly needed, and still Felicity felt tears well in her eyes. Beside her, Mercy smothered a small sound with the tips of her fingers, and Charity swallowed back a sniffle. “Grace,” Felicity said. “How old are you?”
A small shrug which threatened to wrench the blanket from her shoulders. “Sixteen,” she said. “Please don’t send me to jail. It’s dreadful in there. There’s rats.”
Felicity startled. Just sixteen—and she’d already been jailed? “When were you in jail?” she asked.
Another shrug, awkward and shy, as if suddenly cognizant she’d admitted to something she ought not to have done. “Two years ago,” she said. “Just—just for a week. I stole a penny bun and got pinched for it right quick.”
A week in jail for the theft of a penny bun! Atrocious. “Surely your—your mother came to your aid?”
If Grace noted the stumble, she gave no sign of it. Instead she gave a firm shake of her dirty blond head, sending her hair flying. “She said I was lucky enough that she’d waited for me to be released. That she hoped a week in the clink was enough to make certain my fingers would be more nimble next time.” Her shoulders slumped, her hands knitting in her lap. “I was just hungry,” she said in a disconsolate mumble.
“And were you hungry the night you pickpocketed me?”
“I’m always hungry.” Again her gaze flitted away, and she said in a faintmutter, as if she were repeating words that had been spoken to her, “Don’t steal, don’t eat.”
“She shouldn’t have made you steal to eat,” Mercy blurted out. “She’s your mother, she ought to have—she ought to have—” She gave a great sniffle and swiped at her eyes. “She ought to have lovedyou.”
Yes. She ought to have lovedallof them. But it had become abundantly clear, now, that Mama had never loved anyone other than herself. It had hurt once, so deeply, to have been abandoned. To know that Mama had chosen to leave them behind, and it hadn’t even been a difficult choice. And now Felicity wondered if she and Charity and Mercy hadn’t been theluckyones. They had all found places for themselves, but it seemed that Grace—Grace had no one at all, no place of her own.
Someone had to give her one. Someonehad to care for a girl who had no one else. A girl alone and frightened, dragged off the street and into a strange home. Surrounded by strangers, and likely with the utter certainty that she would be abandoned once again by the mother who by all rights ought to have come to her aid. Above all else, this girl was hersister. Another missing piece of her family, like Mercy had once been.
This girl was no villain. She was only a child. One who had been shown too little love, too little care. “I’m not going to send you before the magistrate, Grace,” Felicity said.
A fierce relief swept over the girl. Her eyes glittered with tears; her chin quivered. “I’m sorry that I—I stole your reticule,” she said, swiping at her eyes. “I oughtn’t to have done it.”
No, perhaps not. But she had been hungry. Near to starving, by the look of her thin frame. “You followed me to the theatre that evening?” Felicity asked.
Grace ducked her head, shamefaced. “Mama knew where you were going to be. I was supposed to create a distraction after the play had let out, to lure you away. But I never had to, because—because—”
Because she had left of her own volition. So Grace was absolved of that much at least. “Your mother gave you that note this evening? Told you where to deliver it?”
Another awkward shuffle. Grace hunched her shoulders, gave a small nod. “She just told me to put it through the mail slot,” she confessed. “And to be sure no one saw me do it.” A little hiccoughing sob, half-stifled in her fist. “She’s going to be so angry with me.”
“Do you know what was in the note?” Charity asked.
“No, I—I can’t read,” Grace confessed, shamefaced. “And Mama never tells me anything. I just do what she says, or she slaps me.”
Poor child. Poor, frightened child. Exactlythe same as Felicity had once been. Almost the same age, even. She remembered well enough how wretched it had felt, to be suddenly bereft of her only family. And Grace hadn’t even had much of that to begin with.
“She told you to put the note through the mail slot,” Felicity said. “But you knocked upon the door, didn’t you? Why is that, Grace?”
Grace gave a little shrug, and her eyes darted guiltily. “Mama never tells me anything,” she reiterated. “But sometimes I overhear her. Sometimes I eavesdrop when I’m not meant to. And a few days past I heard her say that you were her daughter, and I thought that might make you—that you might be…” Her voice drifted away into silence, and her shoulders slumped. “Those men grabbed me and dragged me here, and I was so frightened,” she said. “But I only wanted to ask. I only wanted to know.”
“If I was your sister?” Felicity asked.
A tiny nod. Hesitant, ashamed. So afraid to be slapped down once again, when it had taken all of her courage only to knock upon a door in search of answers.
