Just This Once (36 page)

“Lady Stonecliff... you must be—unless this
is some h-horrible mistake—you must be... you must...”

“Who?” Josie could barely speak. “Tell me
please. I’ve been trying to find out my entire life!”

“
Josephine!”

“Yes, that’s my name.” Now it was her turn
to clutch Miss Denby’s arm. “There was a note with the brooch. It
said
Baby Josephine!

Miss Denby stared wildly, searchingly into
her eyes, her face taut with shock, joy, wonder.

“You are my sister!”

A
bird warbled in
the garden. Its voice lilted through the beautiful, silent morning
room. Josie found that for once in her life she couldn’t speak a
word. She could only stare with mute shock into Miss Denby’s
overjoyed face.

“How do you know?” she finally managed.

“I know. Believe me, L-Lady Stonecliff, I
know
. Why, look at your hair. It is the same shade, the same
as Papa’s. Our papa. I resemble Mama more, but you and I both have
her eyes, these uptilted eyes. Don’t you s-see?”

And then, before giving Josie a chance to
reply, she clasped her hands together almost in supplication, as if
fearful that this wonderful gift might be only a dream that would
vanish in a moment.

“Oh, Josephine, I can scarce believe it. Is
it really you?”

Suddenly she began to smile, a wide,
delicately beautiful smile that transformed her face, lighting it
with such incandescent happiness that the whole room seemed to
glow.

“Grandpapa,” she breathed, and her fingers
excitedly squeezed Josie’s arm.

“Oh, we must tell Grandpapa. Come,
Josephine, we can talk later—you’ll tell me everything and I shall
tell you... how we came to be s-separated, and how frantically we
searched.”

“You searched for me?” Josie felt something
thud deep inside her heart. “So you... they...
wanted
me. I
wasn’t given away?”

“Given away? No, good God, no! It was the
w-war, Josephine, the War Between the States... I was only three,
but I made it home to England while you, just a babe, ended
up—”

She stopped suddenly. “I’ll explain
everything, I promise,” she said quietly. “But Grandpapa has given
up on f-finding you. He is old and no longer strong. We must tell
him at once. He’ll be beside himself with happiness. . .”

“I have a grandfather. And a sister.” Josie
broke away suddenly, and paced to the mantel, feeling overwhelmed.
She was shaken by all the information the girl was rattling off to
her, and far too stunned to begin to absorb it all.

“Are you sure there isn’t a mistake?” She
whirled back toward Miss Denby, her lips dry. “I’d hate to tell him
and get his hopes up if it wasn’t true.”

“You have the brooch. Our mama’s brooch. And
the r-resemblance... now that I know, it is easy to see. Come.”
Miss Denby, with surprising determination for one who had seemed so
diffident, took her arm again and pulled her from the room. They
ran through the hall to a music room, a wide, lovely chamber
furnished with teal sofas and deep wing chairs, and an exquisite
rosewood piano that gleamed in a place of honor beneath a
gold-framed painting.

“L-look.” Miss Denby drew her to the piano
and pointed up at the painting.

It showed a man and woman, the same woman
Josie had seen wearing the brooch in the portrait at Lady
Cartwright’s home. Beside her this time stood a lean, handsome man
with a distinguished air and gleaming chestnut curls and a wide,
strong-boned face. He was grinning at the artist with a devilish
smile playing about his lips.

“You have our mama’s eyes and our papa’s
hair,” Miss Denby whispered, her voice thick with emotion as she
gazed first at the painting and then at the beautiful young woman
standing thunderstruck beside her.

“I’ve studied pictures of them all my life,
I know exactly how they looked. And you are a stunning m-mixture of
them both. I can see it now that I know. Josephine, it’s t-true. We
lived in Georgia on a plantation. Our family lost everything during
the war... Papa was killed at the battle of Chickamauga, and Mama
died before she could get you to safety... her efforts went amiss.
You were lost to us for all these years. Josephine, Grandpapa and
I—we despaired of ever finding you.”

“But I found you.” Josie clung to Miss
Denby’s hands, squeezing tightly, still feeling off balance,
fearful of accepting that the search that had been fruitless for so
many years had come to an end. “If it hadn’t been for the holdup,
and your letter—”

“Alicia, my dear? Forgive me for disturbing
you.”

Both of them turned to stare at the elderly
man in the doorway. With the use of a cane, he came into the room,
his gait slow and measured, but his shoulders very straight.

Josie’s heart surged into her throat as she
looked at him. Could this thin-faced, snow-haired gentleman with
his erect carriage, sharp nose, faded, almost silver-blue eyes, and
slow, beautiful diction be her grandfather?

“Grandpapa! C-come in! The most wonderful
thing has happened....”

The old gentleman moved forward with
surprising grace, despite the fact that the blue-veined hand
gripping his cane trembled. “Something has made you very happy, my
dear,” he said with a smile, and then, as his gaze shifted to Josie
with polite interest, the blue eyes suddenly sharpened.

Josie felt herself examined swiftly,
piercingly, saw something of hope and then doubt flicker in his
dignified face.

“I want to hear, by all means. But first,
won’t you introduce me to this lady.”

“Y-yes! That is what is so wonderful. She’s
Josephine, Grandpapa! Our Josephine! After all these years, she has
found us!”

The old man’s gaze swung back to Josie,
locking on her. He stared at her as if he would dissect her with
his eyes.

In the background, Miss Denby was saying
something about the brooch, about an orphanage in the South, about
years of fruitless inquiry. But Josie couldn’t focus on anything
but the awakening wonder in the old man’s eyes.

“You look... like Winston, and like my...
daughter. I thought I saw... something about you—can this be true?
Alicia...”

He tore his gaze from Josie’s at last to
glance at the blond girl as she rushed to him and took his free
arm.

“It’s true. Your eyes tell you, and so does
your h-heart, Grandpapa. Our Josephine has come home.”

And as Josie watched, the elegant old man
with his beautiful carriage and immaculate suit and ivory-handled
cane, held open his arms and began to cry.

* * *

She spent three hours in the house in
Belgravia discovering who she was and what had happened to her so
many years ago. At some point, a footman sent Rupert and the
carriage home, as Josie’s grandfather insisted his own carriage
would bring her home when she was ready. But, the old gentleman
insisted, his eyes and voice strong again after the initial bout of
emotion, she must stay as long as she wished.

This home was her home, he told her. And a
shining-eyed Alicia ran to find photographs and letters of the
parents Josie had never known.

Her grandfather was Hugh Althorpe, Duke of
Bennington. Her mother, Charlotte, had been a great beauty, gently
raised in London and at Bennington Hall in Kent. She’d fallen in
love with an American plantation owner from Georgia, Winston Denby,
and married him only a few years before the start of the War
Between the States.

Alicia had been born first, lovingly
ensconced in the white, pillared plantation house of Twelve Trees,
where Winston’s elderly father also lived. When the Confederates
began drafting soldiers in 1862, Winston Denby had had to leave his
wife and father and infant daughter. He’d joined the ranks of
Confederate officers, had proved himself brave and cool in battle,
and had received promotions.

“Winston went home to Twelve Trees on
furlough. It was late summer of 1863,” the Duke told Josie as he
stared into his empty teacup. “He feared for Charlotte and for
Alicia. Conditions were dreadful in the South and growing worse. He
wanted Charlotte to go home to England. If only she had,” he
murmured sadly, “if only she had.”

Before either Alicia or Josie could fill the
silence that followed, the Duke began to speak again, his tone
heavy. “But my daughter wouldn’t leave her father-in-law, a
stubborn, proud old man who vowed to die on Twelve Trees before he
let the Yankees drive him away.” He cleared his throat. “My
daughter was stubborn too—or perhaps one might even call it
courageous. She felt it her duty to remain on the land, to keep the
family’s plantation going as long as she could, to look after all
their people there, and the livestock and crops.”

“She had courage and loyalty,” Josie
whispered. She’d heard enough stories of the privations in the
South during the war to know how difficult it must have been.
Clothing, supplies, food, medicines, all had been in disastrously
short supply. The women and children remaining behind had
sacrificed their comfort and much more besides—giving all that they
could.

The Duke shook his head. “At least Charlotte
and Winston had the good sense not to want their little daughter to
live in the midst of a war-torn land.” He leaned back in his chair
and sighed. “They didn’t want young Alicia to suffer the hunger,
deprivation, and fear afflicting everyone around them. And above
all, they wanted her to be safe in the event the Yankees did get
through.”

The Duke steepled his fingers and glanced at
Alicia, perched solemnly on the sofa beside Josie. “During his
furlough Winston arranged for her to be taken north, to safety, and
from there she sailed to us in England—accompanied by a slave
couple devoted to her and to the Denby family. We were so relieved
and overjoyed to have her with us. We thought it would be a
temporary situation, an extended visit. Ah, but we were wrong.” His
eldest granddaughter had tears in her eyes as she watched him turn
his head away, to stare out the window at the garden, where the
bird now was silent. She turned to Josie and continued the
tale.

“During his furlough, when P-Papa visited
Mama...”

She took a breath and started again. “You
were born some nine months after that.”

Josie met her eyes and nodded.

“But Mama became ill only a few months
after—she and our Papa’s father took ill with smallpox—and General
Sherman’s troops were on the m-march....”

Josie listened as the painful scraps of
information the Duke had acquired over time emerged. News of baby
Josephine’s birth had reached them, and also news that Charlotte
was ill and couldn’t be moved—that the Yankees were closing
in....

Her mother and grandfather had died on the
plantation amid the chaos of war, with Sherman’s soldiers marauding
and destroying everything in their path. By the time the dust had
cleared and the war ended, and news could be sent and received,
Charlotte’s baby, Josephine Maud Denby, was missing.

The sun made gilded patterns on the carpet
as it slipped westward, and as the brilliant afternoon faded and
cooled, the clouds blew in. The words swirled around Josie as she
sat with the Duke and with Alicia in the pretty room in Belgravia
and heard how the Duke’s hirelings had searched orphanages across
Georgia, and in several other states as well, how a detective had
made inquiries, how long and hard they’d struggled to find one tiny
child in the wrecked and agonized South.

“We prayed you had been taken in by someone,
that you would be found in a good home, or in one of the
orphanages, but there were so many children orphaned by the war, it
was impossible to find you. We tried, child,” the Duke told her
heavily, “for years we tried. And then, last year, Alicia sailed
with me to America, determined to search for you herself—my shy,
timid granddaughter who will not brave parties or balls, braved an
ocean voyage and a strange new land in an effort to find her
sister. We checked records, made inquiries in person, but came away
empty-handed.”

Josie’s heart swelled with emotion as she
met the gaze of the girl beside her. Now she understood the
fragment of letter found in Alicia’s stolen handbag, the reason her
sister had been on the stagecoach that Snake and his boys had
robbed.

Maybe it was all fate, destiny, that had
enabled her to find her family at last. What had Ethan said last
night?
You can’t escape your destiny.

One point struck her most forcibly. It made
her grip her hands in her lap and swallow back tears. She had been
wanted. Her mother had loved her, her family had wanted her. She
had not been abandoned, tossed aside.

But for war, and circumstances, she would
not have had to grow up alone and lonely, at the mercy of
strangers. But for war, she would have grown up like Alicia—cared
for, sheltered, loved.