Free The Eden Passion by Marilyn Harris Page B

not the boy's mother, Mr. Johnson," she said, "if that's what you want to know, though I raised him and feel a kinship with him as close as flesh."
    He nodded as though at last he believed something she had said. "Then would you be so kind, miss, as to shed some light on his origins? Lord and Lady Eden will make it worth your while, I promise."
    A flair of leftover anger surfaced. "I want nothing from Lord and Lady Eden," she said sharply, "and I can shed little light on the boy's . . . origins, as you put it."
    "Well, he surely didn't appear like Moses in a basket," Johnson

    countered, laying his pad and point aside as though there were nothing worthwhile to write at the moment.
    "No," she murmured, and tried to turn her mind to that distant day when Edward had reappeared after a prolonged absence, babe in arms. His son, or at least that's what he had told one and alL
    "He'd been away . . ." she began hesitantly.
    "Where?"
    "I don't remember. All I know is that Daniel Spade was quite worried. . ."
    "Spade?"
    "Edward's good friend who ran the school."
    Johnson nodded as though he too were putting pieces of the puzzle together. "And where is this Spade?"
    "Dead," Elizabeth whispered, "of the fever. Many years ago."
    "Go on." He reached for his notepad again.
    "I can't go on, Mr. Johnson," she said. "I don't know the answers to the questions you're asking."
    "Well, you must know more," he badgered. "You were there. Think!"
    Behind her she was aware of Jack Willmot, ready at the first word from her to toss the man out. Yet in a way the puzzle fascinated Elizabeth as well, that mysterious and unidentified woman who had been the fortunate recipient of Edward's love.
    She leaned forward and covered her face with her hands, trying to clear the cobwebs of fatigue and grief from her brain. Then suddenly she had an idea. "St. Dunstan's," she exclaimed. "The little parish church near Oxford Street. We took John there for baptism. Surely . . ."
    But all the time she spoke, Johnson merely wagged his head. "Nothing," he broke in. "I was there first thing this morning. The entry is listed, to be sure. But it's a useless document, covered with scrolls and angels. According to that foolish parchment, God was his maker, both father and mother."
    She detected the derision in his voice and hated it, his cynicism somehow soiling her memory of that glorious morning. Still she tried to speak civilly to him. "The priest said nothing?" she asked, remembering the kind old man well.
    "In his dotage," Johnson muttered. "He remembered Mr. Eden more for his generous donations to the church than for the baptism of his son. Try to remember," he urged. "After Mr. Eden's long

    absence, when he first appeared with the babe, did he say where he had come from?"
    She shook her head. Then: "I do remember overhearing Edward talking to Daniel Spade," she said slowly.
    Johnson sat up.
    "He said something about. . .the Lakes."
    "The Lakes?" Johnson parroted.
    She nodded. "For some reason I had the feeling he'd come from there."
    "The . . . Lakes?" Johnson repeated. "Anything more?"
    She shook her head. "We were all just glad to see him, Mr. Johnson. I don't think it would have mattered to any of us where he'd come from."
    "The . . . Lakes," he repeated a third time.
    Abruptly Johnson sat up as though burdened with another idea. "And you're certain," he asked, rising, "that the lad now at Eden and the babe which mysteriously appeared in Mr. Eden's arms are one and the same?"
    To this foolish question she laughed softly. "Now, who else would it be?"
    "Oh, substitution would be quite possible," Johnson interjected, "that babe disappearing and another taking its place."
    "Mr. Johnson," she began, rising to face him, "I washed that babe when all of him fit easily into my two hands. I dressed him, cleansed him, cared for him every minute of every day until now. . ."
    Strange, how the sensation of loneliness descended without warning. She'd been missing Edward. Now she