Free Amy Snow by Tracy Rees Page B

Bookshop. She does not.
    So I step into the cold, damp afternoon and commence to wander the streets. The size of the city becomes apparent as I walk, street after street after street, never passing a shop of any kind, let alone a bookshop.
    The absence of a chaperone makes me painfully self-conscious. If Aurelia had ever paced the streets of London alone, Lady Vennaway would have died from shame. I am, in addition, all too aware of my shabby appearance. At Hatville, everyone understood that I was lowly, but here, out of context, I look as unimportant and lacking in connections—and therefore as vulnerable—as I truly am.
    These reflections chase me back to Jessop Walk. My first explorations have been discouraging but I am glad I have been cautious when I see that night falls sooner and swifter here than it does in the country. Gaslights, something I have never seen before, flare eerily in the murk and usher me on.
    Alone in the chilly, charmless room that is mine for the next two days, I swallow the remains of my luncheon and stare at the wall. I don’t know what to do. So I take up the pages I began in the Rose and Crown last night. I wish I could stop myself journeying back in time each time my quill touches the page. I wish that my present had more to recommend it. Yet I find myself thinking of my origins, something I have not done for many years. This is a certain route to drawing yet another blank. Who am I?
    I used to wonder about my parents all the time. So did Aurelia. From my earliest youth, one of our favorite fascinations was speculating about my birth. It was too great a mystery not to! A baby left in the snow with no clothes and no clue . . . For a fanciful sprite like Aurelia and a solemn little girl like me, who longed to be something , it was fertile ground.
    At first we assumed I was a princess, stolen away by wicked usurpers, bent on the downfall of my kingdom. But we found two flaws in this theory. One was that none of the periodicals Aurelia avidly read had reported a missing princess baby in their Foreign News columns. The other was that if I were ever found, my duty would be to go and rule my country. Aurelia would be alone again and it sounded tedious to me.
    Our next hypothesis was that I was a gypsy. This had more to recommend it, as some traveling gypsies had passed through Enderby the previous year. Gypsies, we understood, were extremely feckless and disorganized. They might well have lost a baby. But gypsies could not have traveled across the Hatville estate, fenced and fortified as it was, so how did I come to be there? I did have very long black hair like the gypsies, but my skin was pale and my eyes too light. We discarded this idea also.
    Aurelia proffered the idea that I was Lord Vennaway’s “love child,” a term she heard liberally sprinkled about Hatville’s drawing room. I was too young to understand fully what that meant, and I’m not convinced she did either. We liked the possibility because it would make me Aurelia’s sister and it would certainly explain Lady Vennaway’s attitude towards me.
    Now that I am older I have come to accept that, despite Lady Vennaway’s attitude, I am not likely to be Lord Vennaway’s illegitimate daughter. Physically, I look even less like a Vennaway than I do a gypsy or a princess. Also, I believe if Lord Vennaway were to take his affections elsewhere than to his wife, he is hardly the sort of man to do so with the sort of woman who would leave a baby on his estate. No, he would have very discreet, tasteful affairs indeed. Besides, it never felt true. When Lord Vennaway beheld me, I saw indifference, disdain, and mild irritation. I never saw love, I never saw curiosity, and I never saw guilt.
    It was hard for me to admit how much pain it caused me, not knowing who I was. I would have given anything for even a shred of information about my parents. A name, the shape of a nose, a favorite