ever so slightly, the burden of guilt she carried always.
With her basket brimful of her harvest, she set off across the pasture, pulling off her dilapidated straw hat to feel the balm of sunshine on her hair and her cheeks. At her age a few new freckles wouldn’t matter. In any case, who was there to complain? Well, Grace, of course, but no one else.
Alexander had been fond of the faint freckles that dusted her nose and darkened in the sunshine. She remembered the feel of his hand cupping her cheek and the glow in his eyes as he teased her about them.
She sighed again, sadly this time. Alexander had been gone twenty-five years, but the passing of the decades had not diminished her grief. There was nothing like the pain of loss to teach a person that time was an illusion.
She put her hat on again as she reached the far edge of the meadow. The sheep had wandered on, Tom trailing behind them. Voices carried now across the morning air, the cries of children riding the carousel, the remonstrations of their nurses, the calls of the vendors selling ices and twisted papers of taffy. Harriet pressed on toward the drive.
Just as she reached it, a rider approached at a steady trot, a young lady mounted on a tall black horse. Harriet stopped. Her basket grew heavy on her arm, but she stood still to watch the striking pair pass by her.
The girl rode astride, which must cause comment, as would the divided skirt that made it possible. Strands of dark hair escaped from her straw hat and trailed over her shoulders. Her gloved hands rested low and easy on the reins, and she kept her chin tucked, her back straight as a spear. When she glanced up, Harriet caught a glimpse of light-blue eyes and thick dark lashes. She sat in the saddle as if she had been born to it, and Harriet felt a swell of pride.
The girl was Annis Allington, granddaughter of Harriet’s sister. She didn’t know it, but she and Harriet were the only ones left of their branch of the Bishop family.
She noticed Harriet standing beside the drive and acknowledged her with a courteous nod. Harriet nodded back, as one stranger does to another.
Annis Allington had no idea who Harriet was, of course. Her stepmother had seen to that.
Harriet passed over the dry moat and through the entrance of the Dakota with barely a glance at the building’s facade. She preferred not to meet the glare of its gargoyles, and she found its wrought iron balustrades excessively baroque. She had moved there with Grace when it first opened, attracted by the open fields and farms that surrounded it, delighted by its nearness to her beloved park. She loathed the mansions being thrown up by New York’s nouveau riche, ostentatious palaces that squatted along Fifth Avenue like the overdressed, overfed matrons who inhabited them.
Not that the Dakota wasn’t ostentatious. It was designed to be. Still, Harriet loved the bright, airy rooms with their high ceilings and tall windows. She had space for her herbarium, and Grace had her own bedroom in the apartment, instead of on the cramped upper floor with the other staff. Grace had been thrilled to discover that the entire building was electrified, its own generator providing power for lights and heating and cooking. The Dakota was ideal for the two of them, and they owed their life there to Alexander’s legacy.
As Harriet passed by the courtyard fountain and on toward the stairs, the fragrance of herbs from her basket made her raise it closer to her face to take an appreciative breath.
At just that moment, Lucille Corning, whose apartment was on Harriet’s floor, appeared at the top of the staircase. She was dressed for shopping, a short cape over a full-sleeved shirtwaist. Her day skirt, fashionably long at the back, trailed behind her as she descended.
Harriet lowered her basket and stepped aside to make room, murmuring, “Good morning, Mrs. Corning.”
Without pausing, Mrs. Corning picked up the train of her skirt with her hand and pointedly pulled it aside. She drew a long, noisy sniff as she reached the last tread, and she swept on into the courtyard without speaking a word.
It was the cut indirect. And it was not the first time.
Harriet watched the woman flutter away across the courtyard. A carriage was waiting for her, with a liveried driver who touched his cap as he helped her up the step.