Free Mist of Midnight by Sandra Byrd

hand in response. I indicated that she should take the most comfortable chair in the room, next to the floor-to-ceiling, leaded-glass windows that overlooked the downs.
    She wasn’t interested in observing the downs, though; she was busy assessing me. I took from her look that Michelene had dressed me well, and a warm flush of contentment rose within me. She sat down and Annie soon appeared with a tea tray. It trembled in her hands like an unsteady cymbal. All three of us sighed little puffs of relief when it was safely settled on a sturdy side table.
    â€œI’m very happy you were able to see me. After your very long ordeal , that is.” She took a teacup from Annie with a practicednod. “And journey?” Her raised eyebrows and the touch of asperity in her voice made it clear she, too, did not believe me to be who I said I was.
    â€œYes,” I said. “It was long indeed. But faith saw me through and here I am now. In my own home.”
    She raised an eye to me at that and set her teacup down. She waved away the cake tray that Annie had offered. Preserving her figure, perhaps? She was a pretty woman, her long strawberry-blond hair finely curled around a creamy complexion, protected most days, I was certain, by a shadowing bonnet.
    I took a sweet, so long denied to me after the Rebellion, and much to be enjoyed now that I was home. “Michelene, my lady’s maid, tells me that you are planning to embark for India this coming autumn.”
    She nodded. “I am the fifth daughter in my family,” she said matter-of-factly. “My brother is already in India, and he has recently assured me that, now things have quieted down and the country is firmly under British control again, it would be quite safe for me to go. He hopes to make introductions.”
    She was refreshingly direct and my heart softened toward her. It was a difficult thing to be a woman. Fortunately, an unmarriedwoman with property was accountable to no one but herself; this was the secure position I would soon find myself in, however temporarily tenuous this mystery had made my fate.
    I reassured myself of this, anyway, over and over again, late at night.
    â€œI hope that you will find India to be as welcoming and hospitable as I did,” I said.
    She flinched and a look of surprise crossed her face. “You would not be afraid to return?”
    â€œNot at all. I spent many happy years there up until the oneof . . . of horror.” My hand shook as the abrupt memory of my rushed and disorderly flight ahead of the rebels came back. I felt, once more, the final embrace of my mother and father. We hadn’t known it would be our last. Perhaps Father had known. He’d looked mournful. I pushed the memory back, afraid it would unsettle me. My real fear, I now admitted, is that one too many unexpected memories or fancies pushing their way in would unsettle my mind for good.
    â€œHow did you come to be in India?” Her voice softened.
    â€œMy father was a second son, and had fought in the Burmese War, and then traveled a bit,” I said. “He returned home with distinction and, after his brother died from smallpox, my father inherited Headbourne House. He settled down, married my mother, and my brother, Peter, and I were born here. But he never forgot the people of the East Indies and some years later he put his investments into the hands of his solicitors and returned as a missionary.”
    She sat there quietly for a moment. “Did your mother wish to go as well?”
    That seemed a rather personal question from a woman I’d only just met, but I sensed that she was asking as much for herself as anything else, so I answered, delicately.
    â€œMy mother did not want to leave England; she had envisioned herself here, in Hampshire, at Headbourne. But my father decided we must go, and so we did.”
    She nodded. “She made a way once there?”
    â€œAfter sufficient time. The