“I am not,” Lily said tightly. “I never have been. I never have been,” she repeated. “Not to Simon Ballentyne or anyone else.”

“I'm sure Luke never wrote of you marrying,” Iona said calmly. But she looked uncomfortable and ill at ease and that was all the proof Lily needed.

Iona said, “I'll write to your father straightaway, Lily, and make the truth known.”

“Please do,” Lily said. “Tell him I haven't seen Simon Ballentyne in a month and have no plans to see him.” She was trembling and so she folded her hands in her lap tightly and tried to smile.

Bump said, “I've handled this badly.”

“No,” Lily said quickly. “Not at all. It's not your fault, but my brother's.” She glanced at the letters in her lap and all her joy was gone, replaced by worry about what might be in them.

“I have more news,” Bump said. “And I promised your mother I would tell you myself. She didn't want you to read it in a letter.”

Lily's heart was beating so fast and loud in her throat that she couldn't speak, even to ask for the reassurance she wanted.

“Your uncle Todd is gone, Lily,” Bump said. “It was the cancer that took him, in the end.”

Lily nodded, because she couldn't say the things that were in her head. Not my brother, was what came to mind. Not my father or mother, nor any of my people, thank God. Thank God.

But of course Uncle Todd was one of her people, she reminded herself, and she should feel sorrow. Uncle Toad, they had called him as children, and laughed behind their hands for their cleverness.

Uncle Todd who had been married to Kitty, who had first been married to Lily's uncle Julian. Family and not family; no blood kin but a man she had seen almost every day of her life before she came away to Canada.

For a moment Lily was unable to call his face to mind. Nor could she recall the last time she had thought about him.

As a little girl she had been afraid of Uncle Todd, afraid of his gruff manner and his sharp judgment and most of all afraid that he would try to hurt her father or mother again. She had heard the stories, and while there seemed to be an uneasy peace between the two families she sometimes dreamed at night of Uncle Todd with bloody hands.

Bump had put an end to those nightmares, when he came back to live in Paradise. Bump had known Richard as a very little boy and he had stories to tell, funny stories that he told right in front of the doctor, who turned an astonishing shade of red but never denied the truth of it. Bump had cured her of her fear of her uncle, but Lily had been grown before she learned to see past his curt manner, to the sharp wit and sense of humor.

Her uncle had never spoken to her of her drawing, but he sometimes brought her paper when he came back from one of his journeys, and once a set of pencils that came all the way from France.

It was Bump who had cured her of her fear of Uncle Todd and now he had come to tell her that he was dead.

“Did you come just to tell me that?” she asked, and blushed to hear how raw the question sounded, how childlike.

“Not just that,” Bump said. “But that's the worst news I have, and I wanted to get it out of the way.”

Lily felt herself nodding, felt some of the fear and worry leaving her at this. Then she thought of her uncle again and she wondered about her father, how he had taken the news and if he had been happy or sad. In the spring they would dig his grave in the small graveyard behind his house where Aunt Kitty was buried with the babies she had tried to bring into the world. Her cousin Ethan was alone now, in a way Lily could hardly imagine.

She said, “I must write to Ethan.”

Bump smiled at her. “That would mean a great deal to him, I'm sure.”

In her chamber Lily closed the door and drew her shawl tight around her shoulders though the room was quite warm. She sat on the edge of the bed under the embroidered silk canopy that had been Giselle Somerville's when she was a young woman. On the lace counterpane worked by nuns Lily put down her letters and studied them for a moment.

One thick letter from her mother; another one, even thicker, from Jennet; the last, a single sheet, from Curiosity. Nothing from Nicholas Wilde.

Disappointment had a taste, sharp and salty. She chided herself for her foolishness, for her hope, for her faith in a man who had never been able to claim her and never would.

Or maybe, Lily reasoned to herself, maybe it was just too soon for him to write. It was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

She tucked her legs up under herself, took the letter her mother had written and held it against her cheek and inhaled, hoping for some vague scent of her. Right now she would give almost anything to have her mother here, but there was only the letter, and that would have to be enough.

The wax seal cracked under her thumb. Lily spread out the sheets and counted them. Eight in all, closely written: the essence of her mother, her thoughts and words in strong even lines, straight and clear.

She began to read. The story began without preamble or niceties or polite inquiries or reassurances, and that in itself set Lily to worrying. And here it was, finally: Hannah's story, the one they had waited for and despaired of ever hearing.

Her mother had written it in clear sentences, in logical order, and yet Lily could hardly make sense of any of it. She stopped and went back and read through again, and again, until her mind opened itself to the ideas and images, and then she put down the pages and wept for a while, her hands pressed to her face.

All this her sister had been carrying around with her, while Lily's worst problem was a love letter that would not come. She flushed with shame and sorrow for Hannah and the need to do something, anything that might help.