Kate Welsh - A Texan's Honour

“And this can fit with the Winstons’ lives and personal histories?”

“Yes. Heddie and Winston went there after her sister Esther’s husband died. Heddie was expecting at the time but the child didn’t live more than a few weeks.”

Alex glanced toward Mrs. Winston where she sat toward the front of the car. “That is so very sad.”

Patience nodded. “After that, Heddie took up a post as head housekeeper for her sister’s home and Winston became the butler. The farm began to fall on hard times because the foreman stole a great deal from Esther.”

“It happens,” he said in an airy tone that had him wincing. He no longer wanted to be that man who hid his every deep thought behind a wall of careless comments. Patience stared at him, a tiny frown showing in her usually unlined forehead. She was as alone behind her walls as he was behind his. He didn’t know her well enough to scale hers or break down his before her, either. Instead he motioned for her to go on.

It took her a short moment of examining her notes before she looked up and began again, all signs of disappointment in his character gone. “Heddie and Winston left in pursuit of income to send back to help pay debts and keep the farm going and to keep Esther in the privileged lifestyle she’d come to expect. The farm was to go to them upon her death except it went for taxes instead. That is where truth and fiction depart.”

She looked at her lap, drawing his gaze to her knotted fingers. “The story will go,” she continued, “that they left their daughter—me—with Aunt Esther to be raised genteelly. Aunt Esther had me educated by governesses in her home where she kept very much to herself.”

“Good. That will explain your cultured speech and manners. I’d worried.” He’d worried about her classic beauty, too, but didn’t want to make her ill at ease again by mentioning it.

“The Winstons worried, as well, which is why we formulated the tale this way.”

“So, go on with your story. How is it that you’ve joined up with your parents on a trek to the West?”

“When Aunt Esther died two years ago, I joined them in San Francisco and was hired by your cousin as a governess.”

“We had better make sure Jamie and Amber know of this. Amber is an involved parent who still teaches Meara on her own.”

Patience nodded. “I have begun a letter to send to Amber so she knows in case there is an inquiry into the Winston family. Heddie apparently took Miriam Trimble’s place as housekeeper because Mrs. Trimble was too elderly to keep up with both the staff and act as nursemaid to the earl’s daughter.”

Alex chuckled. “I would love to hear Mrs. Trimble’s reaction to that being said of her—the old warhorse.”

A frown crinkled Patience’s forehead, her brows pulling together in a V . “Warhorse? But she has been described to me as all that is kindness. Amber loves the woman.”

Now he laughed. “As does Jamie. She was a mother to him for nearly his whole life. And a better mother no boy could have asked for. Mrs. Trimble was a mouthful for a little tyke. You should know he called her Mimm and still does.”

“Oh. Yes. Amber calls her that, as well. Thank you for the correction.” She looked down at her notebook and scribbled a footnote.

Alex held tight to his lighthearted facade, refusing to let it crack. “I had another experience with her. She used to call me the spawn of Satan. Even did it once in the presence of the daughter of a British peer. The name followed me in society from that day until I came to America. Mrs. Trimble apologized after what happened in San Francisco, so all is happy between us.”

Her eyes softened and he could have sworn she lifted her hand as if to touch him in comfort but she let it fall in her lap. “I am so sorry. I know how much it hurts to be misjudged,” she said instead.

Though he wished with all the loneliness inside him that she had found the courage to reach out to him, he shrugged in a purposefully careless gesture. “I didn’t care,” he lied, feeling a bit like a petulant child denying what was true to spite an authority figure. “I had my way to protect Jamie and she had hers. Together, though very separately, we managed.”

She stared at him for a long moment then looked away, withdrawing into her thoughts and leaving him to wish he had admitted that Mrs. Trimble had hurt him with her mistrust.

Keeping his careless facade alive grew more difficult around her than it had ever been. Conversely, he thought he was supposed to be shedding the mask now that he had embarked on his new life, but he couldn’t seem to manage it with Patience there. He could come to care for her and her rebuff might actually hurt. Right then, casting off the mask would be too much like casting off an old friend. It kept him safe and protected from rejection and contempt.

Should he have said a simple yes? That, of course, it had hurt? Should he confess that his own mother had been dead? That though he had taken on an adult’s role in Jamie’s life he’d still been a child himself? That he’d needed comfort and the kind of support only an adult could have provided? He hadn’t understood all that at the time, though. Instead, he’d been alone and had felt as if the weight of his corner of the world rested on his shoulders. Especially since then and now he feared his mother’s death had been his fault.

Determined to get Patience talking again Alex asked a question with a rather obvious answer, but it was the best his tumultuous thoughts allowed. “So were you supposed to have been in California when Jamie arrived there with Amber?”

Patience shook her head. Why was he insisting on this conversation? It might look casual to the Winstons but she saw determination in his gaze. She almost asked but decided answering his queries was the easiest course to take. And he had been helpful adding one or two facts they’d forgotten to account for. “No. We are to say my parents, the Winstons, were hired by Mrs. Miriam Trimble before the earl and Amber arrived just as they truly were. I am to have traveled there later to meet up with my parents after Heddie’s sister, Aunt Esther, passed. I will say I arrived after the fire and became Meara’s governess.”

She resented her father enormously at that moment. It was his fault she had to lie this way. Resentment warred with shame because she lacked the means to fight him openly instead of resorting to deception.

“Something about this doesn’t sit well with you,” Alexander said.

How had he known? “You’re very perceptive. I was taught to abhor liars. And now I am one.”

He looked angry for a moment then his gaze softened. He leaned a bit forward and set his forearms on his thighs. It put him at her eye level.

She wanted to scoot off the sofa and run but forced herself to remain still. She didn’t want him to see her for the coward she was even though she refused to examine why.

“Your father didn’t seem to have the same problem when he began to spread it about that you have gone mad,” he told her. “You mustn’t let the content of a Sunday sermon on lies endanger you, no matter how much you agree with the sentiments.”

She hadn’t thought of it that way. If she didn’t stick to the plan, her father and Howard Bedlow would win. She set her lips together and nodded before notching her chin upward and straightening her back the way her mother had always done when she’d stood up to Patience’s father. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But, still, you cannot argue that I won’t be lying. I’ll be lying to all my new neighbors and even to the children I hope to teach. I’ll be living a complete lie. I’ll be a lie.”

“But you will be keeping yourself safe and you may be giving the Winstons their fondest dream. Did you see Heddie’s face that first night in New York when she tossed me out of your room? She was like a mother bear defending her cub. I have been watching the three of you. There is some sort of instantaneous connection between you. I am quite sure they have in mind an adoption of a sort.”