The older woman crossed her own hands in her lap, her eyes unusually gentle. “My dear, you say that the girl hardly speaks any words to you. But I am telling you that she is trying to communicate with you in the only way she knows how. You know some of her story, but you don’t know all of it – I don’t even know all of it. She is trying to fill in the gaps for you, to tell you what she needs.”
“What is she telling me?” Margaret asked, desperate. “Because I really want to help, I just feel as though everything I do is failing her in some way.”
“She lost her mother,” the woman said quietly. “She didn’t just lose her – she lost her there before her eyes. She saw her mother die. You keep wanting to explain to her everything that has happened, but I assure you she understands. She knows that her mother is dead and that she will never see her again. Add to that the early part of her life, when she was the victim of a deadly illness. She only ever received love and affection when she was in dire pain or causing some manner of trouble. Did you see how at ease she was with the rock being thrown at her? That’s not because she’s a child that likes being stoned. It’s because she knew that her mother would care if she saw blood on her child’s face. Perhaps she even hoped it would waken poor Molly Smith from her stupor and allow the two to connect.”
Mrs Tarrow shook her head sadly. “It is a difficult thing to say, but your little Poppy – yes, I will still call her by the name she knows the best – is just a hurting little girl who doesn’t even know her own heart. You have to be brave enough to read what she needs, because she doesn’t have the words to tell you.”
Margaret leaned forward with interest. “I never thought of this before,” she said quietly. “But what is it that she needs?”
“You wouldn’t know this because you’ve never had a baby,” the woman said quietly. “But all people need the same thing. When a baby is crying, it needs to be fed or cared for or held, and a mother does all these things while keeping the child close and looking into the child’s eyes. Laughing with it, crying with it, bonding with it. Your little Poppy needs the same thing. She’s pushing you away because that’s what she thinks will happen eventually – she thinks you will leave. You should keep her close even when she hurts you. You should look into her eyes with kindness, not just reproof. You should remember always that she wants to be good. She just doesn’t know how.”
For the first time, Margaret felt a ray of hope enter her heart. She nodded, tears coming into her eyes. “I will try,” she said. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
“You have a kind heart,” the woman said with a shrug. “Things like this are always more difficult in reality than they are the moment you decide to help.”
“That’s what my father says.”
“I hope he also tells you that just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” Mrs Tarrow added. “The child will heal. You must have patience for yourself as well as for her.”
Margaret left with much to think about. She took the trunk home in the carriage and had the footman carry it to her own chambers. She knew that the time would come to talk Poppy through the grief of rediscovering her mother’s belongings, but also suspected after her conversation with Mrs Tarrow that now was not the time.
She had come back too late in the evening to dine with her father, and Carrie assured her that Poppy had eaten a few scraps in her room and then drifted off to sleep. Margaret ordered some tea to be brought up to her room, along with a bowl of cold leftovers, picked at it meagrely, and then changed into nightclothes herself.
She had settled down in her bed, the coverlet drawn up over her, when she heard the first sounds of a storm outside. There was the whistling of wind against her curtains, followed by the flash of lightning and, afterwards, distant and low, the rumble of thunder. She had meant to read herself to sleep, but