“You have obviously never worn stays, petticoats, and a woolen gown before, Joe.”
“Well, I ’ope not!”
The trunk caught on the lip of the doorframe and they doubled their efforts to give it a mighty shove. It toppled over, the latch breaking and the lid flying open to spill its contents.
Rachel fisted her hips. “Do help me put this back to rights, Joe.”
“It’s all women’s underthin’s, miss!”
She glanced up at him. Joe was blushing. “Then I shall protect your sensibilities and repack the items myself. Search for black material in the trunks while I am doing this.”
Rachel clambered over the trunk to its opposite side. Chemises, corsets, and stockings lay in a tangled mess of pale silk and linen, the private clothing of a woman she had never thought much about. Other than Mrs. Woodbridge’s pointed mention of her sister, it had been easy for Rachel to overlook the late Mrs. Edmunds. Aside from the furnishings in her room and the untended garden, the house had been as thoroughly purged of her memory as if a maelstrom had obliterated them. Here she was now, though, revealed by the most intimate items, the ones she had worn next to her skin.
Rachel lifted a corset, the faded aroma of patchouli clinging to it. The scent was sweet, musky, spicier than she’d imagined the wife of Dr. Edmunds to be. The sort of woman he would marry would be God-fearing, a woman of his class, handsome and respectable. Much as Mrs. Woodbridge had described her. A woman who would never stand in a dock in an Irish courtroom or feel hunger or have stains upon her gown.
He truly must miss his wife. Only deepest sorrow would explain why he had allocated every memento—here was a padded velvet box for jewelry, her silver brush and combs, the gem-studded pins for her hair—to a dark room where he would never encounter them.
Rachel bit her lip and stuffed the clothing into the trunk as quickly as she could. She was making a mess of it. The clothes had been tightly packed and weren’t submitting to being clumsily forced. A gold chain dropped out onto the floor, tangled in a stocking. She unwound it from the silk, cautious not to rip the material. It was a locket, engraved with the letter M. The latching mechanism had been jostled, and the lid wasn’t completely closed. Rachel fumbled with the tiny latch, trying to get it to catch, and accidentally sprung the lid. Within, the locket framed a miniature portrait of Dr. Edmunds when he’d been younger and less careworn, his expression full of pride and anticipation. Had his wife worn this near her heart, where she could lift the locket to gaze upon his face whenever the need took her fancy? Had she rubbed her thumb over the smooth gold surface, a meager replacement for the feel of his cheek beneath her fingers, as Rachel did now?
“Is this ’ere what yer lookin’ for, miss?” Joe dangled a length of black crepe from his hand.
She blinked at him through tears that stubbornly filled her eyes. “Yes, Joe. That is perfect.”
“Ya know what else I found? Come ’ere.” He beckoned to her to join him. “A bunch o’ family pictures, it looks like.”
Lifting her skirts out of the way, Rachel stepped over the trunk, the locket gripped tightly in her fist. Against the wall were stacked a handful of paintings. They’d been exposed when Joe had pulled one of the trunks into the center of the room. She leaned closer, her stomach dropping out beneath her, her head seeking to deny what her eyes so clearly saw.
“What do ya think?” Joe asked.
The woman in the painting was young and dainty in her high-waisted dress of deepest cobalt blue, her hair the color of goldenrods around her face. The best of women, the loveliest, the most accomplished.
With a face so like Amelia’s only a blind man could miss the resemblance.
“I think Mrs. Edmunds looks precisely like her daughter.”
CHAPTER 25
Why did you not tell me?” Rachel asked Dr. Edmunds, seated behind the office desk piled high with boxes and brown-paper-wrapped stacks of books. His wife’s locket dangled from Rachel’s fingers, trembling at the end of its chain. She had forgotten to leave it in the trunk.
He set aside the medical text he had been reading, pulled from one of the stacks, the paper torn off. “Do you wish to sit?”