Джудит Макнот: Until You

"Then perhaps you'll also remember," Aunt Cornelia said in a quieter, but unyielding, tone, "that Sheridan's mother was my only sister. And I tell you truly, Patrick, that were she alive to see the antidote… the laughingstock… that you've made of Sheridan, she would be horrified. No," Aunt Cornelia said with absolute finality, "she would be ashamed of her."

On the other side of the door, Sheridan went rigid with bewildered alarm. Ashamed of her ? Surely, her mama wouldn't be ashamed of her, not of Sheridan; she'd loved Sheridan. Visions of her mother at the farm swirled through her mind… her mama putting dinner on the table and wearing a clean, starched apron, her hair wound into a neat coil at her neck… her mama brushing Sheridan's hair with long strokes until it crackled… her mama leaning closer to the light as she fashioned Sheridan a "special dress" from scraps of lace and cotton someone had traded them.

With a vision of her mother's starched apron and shiny hair still in her mind, Sheridan spread her arms wide and looked down at herself. She was wearing men's boots because she didn't like to bother with laces, and they were scuffed and dusty. Her buckskin pants were stained, not to mention worn thin at the seat; around her waist a braided belt that Dog Lies Sleeping had made for her was serving the dual purpose of holding her pants up and her jacket closed. Ashamed …

Involuntarily, she turned to the little looking glass on her aunt's washstand and moved closer to it to peer at her face and hair. The image in the mirror made her rear back in alarm; then she stopped and blinked her eyes and gave her head a shake to chase the vision away. For a moment she stood stock-still, completely at a loss as to what to do to fix matters, then she raised her hands to her head and tried to comb her fingers through the tangled mass of long, "wanton" red hair. Her fingers stopped, unable to penetrate more than a few inches into the snarls, so she tried to remedy things by putting her palms against the sides of her hair and pressing down hard. Then she warily approached the mirror again. Ever so cautiously she lifted her hands away. Her hair sprang back out. She didn't in the least look like her mother. She didn't actually resemble any female she'd ever seen-a fact that she'd been both aware of, and unconcerned with, until that moment.

Aunt Cornelia had said she looked like a… laughingstock , and now that Sheridan thought about it, people had been reacting to her a little oddly lately-especially men. They stared at her in a peculiar way. Lustfully? Her father obviously hadn't noticed it, but in the last year, Sheridan's chest had been swelling quite embarrassingly and sometimes it showed no matter how carefully she tried to keep her jacket closed.

Aunt Cornelia said she looked wanton. Wanton ? Sheridan furrowed her brow, trying to recollect when and how she'd heard that word used. "Wanton" had some sort of connection to a harlot… a hussie … A "wanton" hussie! That was it! That was Sheridan?

An unfamiliar lump of tears swelled in her throat at the realization. Aunt Cornelia was probably right about that and everything else-and, worst of all, that Sheridan's mama would be ashamed of her now.

Ashamed.

Sheridan was so stricken that she simply stood there, immobilized. Minutes later she realized that her aunt was demanding that Sheridan be left with her so that Sheridan could have a decent home and upbringing, and that Sheridan's father was putting up only a feeble protest. When it finally sank in, she bolted forward, tripping over her aunt's silly footstool in her haste, and yanked the door open. "No, Papa, don't! Don't leave me here! Please!"

He looked haunted and torn, and Sheridan took advantage of his indecision, flinging herself into his arms. "Please, I'll wear ladies' boots and fix my wanton hair, and everything else, but don't leave me here."

"Don't, darlin'," was all he said, and she sensed that she was losing the battle.

"I want to go with you and Rafe and Dog Lies Sleeping! That's where I belong, no matter what she says!"

Sheridan was still saying that the next morning when he left. "I'll be back before you know it," he said firmly. "Rafe has some good ideas. We'll make ourselves a pile of money, and we'll all come back for you in a year-two at the most. You'll be all grown up by then. We'll go to Sherwyn's Glen, and I'll build us that grand house, just like I promised you, honey. You'll see."

"I don't want a grand house," Sheridan cried, looking first at Rafe, who was standing in the street, looking handsome and grim, and then at Dog Lies Sleeping, whose expression revealed nothing. "I just want you and Rafe and Dog Lies Sleeping!"

"I'll come back before you know I'm gone," he'd promised, ignoring her sobs and giving her his warm, Irish smile that ladies always found so appealing. In a stroke of inspired cajolery, he added, "Think how shocked Rafe will be when we come for you and you're a lovely young lady, wearing skirts and… and doing the things your aunt will teach you."

Before she could protest, he untangled her arms from around his neck, put his hat on, stepped back, and looked at Cornelia. "I'll send what money I can to help out."

Cornelia nodded as if accepting alms from a peasant and said nothing, but her manner didn't seem to disturb him in the least.

"Who knows," he said with a roguish grin, "maybe we'll even take you back to England with us. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Nelly-living right under Squire Faraday's nose, holding court in a house bigger than his? I seem to remember that the drawing room was always filled with your beaux." With a mocking smile, he added, "None of them were good enough for you, though, were they, Nelly? But then, maybe they've improved with age."

Sheridan, who was trying to breathe slowly so she wouldn't weep like a baby, watched him shrug his shoulders in utter indifference at her aunt's rigid silence, then he turned and gave Sheridan a quick, hard hug. "Write to me," she implored him.

"I will," he promised.

When he left, Sherry turned slowly to look at the expressionless face of the woman who had caused the complete destruction of her life and who was her only living female relative. Her gray eyes brimming with tears, Sherry said very softly and very clearly, "I… I wish we'd never come here. I wish I'd never set eyes on you! I hate you."

Instead of slapping her, which Sherry knew she was entitled to do, Aunt Cornelia looked her straight in the eye and said, "I'm sure you do, Sheridan. I daresay you'll hate me much more before this is over. I, however, do not in the least hate you. Now, shall we have a bit of tea before we begin your lessons?"

"I hate tea too," Sheridan informed her, lifting her chin to its haughtiest angle and returning her aunt's stony stare-a stance that was not only instinctive but identical to her aunt's. Her aunt noticed the similarity, even though Sheridan was unaware of it. "Do not try to stare me out of countenance with that expression, child. I perfected that very look long ago, and I'm quite immune to it. In England, it would have served you well, were you Squire Faraday's acknowledged granddaughter. However, this is America, and we are no longer the proud Squire's relations. Here we are shabby-genteel at best. Here, I teach deportment to the children of people whom I would have once regarded as my inferiors, and I am lucky to have the work. I thank my Maker that I'm able to have this cozy house for my very own, and I do not look back at the past. A Faraday does not lament. Remember that. And I am not completely regretful of my life's choices. For one thing, I am no one's puppet anymore. I no longer awaken wondering what sort of uproar will occur today. I lead an orderly, quiet, respectable life."