Page 13

“Good afternoon, sunshine,” he said in greeting.

“Afternoon, Mr. Gregory.”

“Is Miss Helene about?”

Bianca nodded. “She’s in the parlor. She and Mrs. Bowen have a visitor.”

That complicated his plan a bit. He’d peek inside and ask if he could have a minute of her time once she was available. He found her in the parlor as Bianca had said he would.

Mrs. Bowen and another elderly woman Gregory didn’t recognize sat on the sofa with Helene in a nearby chair. The older women looked up at him.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I don’t wish to interrupt.”

Helene slowly turned. Gregory fixed a smile on his face in anticipation of seeing one on hers. But there was no smile. Not even a hint of one. Instead, anger crackled in her eyes, sending him back a step. Her mouth pressed into a tight, tense line.

Gregory looked, wide-eyed, from Helene to Mrs. Bowen and back a few times. “What’s happened?”

Mrs. Bowen and their visitor looked at him in obvious confusion and displeasure.

“Have I done something?”

Helene stood with palpable dignity. “May I speak to you a moment?” she asked. “In private, please.”

He nodded, a feeling of foreboding settling over him. Helene sailed past him, her chin held at a determined angle. Gregory followed in her wake. Helene spotted Bianca in the kitchen and changed her path. She pulled open the front door, went through, and came to a stop on the front porch.

Gregory pulled the door closed and stood on the spot, bracing himself for whatever was about to come his way.

“Who are you?” Helene demanded.

He hadn’t expected that. “I beg your pardon?”

“Mrs. Jamison”— she motioned quickly in the direction of the house— “arranged for the farmhand I hired for the summer, the man I thought was you. But she says that that man was thrown from a horse a month ago and wasn’t able to come.”

Gregory’s heart dropped to his boots. His ruse had been revealed before he’d had a chance to confess.

“But you,” Helene continued, “let me believe you were the man I’d hired.”

“Helene—”

“Miss Bowen,” she corrected. “Now, who are you? Answer me truthfully.”

“I am Gregory Reeves, just as I always said I was.”

She was shaking her head even before he finished. “You know perfectly well I’m not asking what your name is. You allowed me to believe that you were the man I’d arranged to work here, someone whose character had been vouched for by someone I trusted. Tell me now who you are and why you are here.”

He’d wanted to make the confession. The time had come for it, though this was not at all how he’d hoped to go about it. “I’m Gregory Reeves, lately of the United States Army, where, like most soldiers, I was known by my surname— Reeves. They all just called me Reeves.”

Her brow pulled in thought. After a fraction of a moment, her eyes opened wide and her mouth formed the tiniest of Os.

“I served with your brother,” he continued, though he was certain she’d already begun to piece together his identity. “He was my very best friend. He read me all of your letters because I didn’t receive many myself. He asked me to come check on you and your mother if he didn’t live to do so himself.”

She blinked a couple of times, her gaze vague and distant. “Josiah sent you?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

She paled, and he felt an urgent need to reach out for her. The gesture, he knew, would not be the least welcome. He kept his arms at his sides and pressed on.

“I intended to tell you as much on that very first day, but you set me to work so quickly, I didn’t have the opportunity.”