Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 128742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
“So Evelyn Farnham had a child with her?”
“Evelyn Farnham was fourteen years old when the Victoria sank. I highly doubt the child was hers.”
The teacup rattles the saucer as Sophie sets them down. I can see her growing excitement as understanding dawns.
“Josephine.”
“Yup. I suspect she and William were passing the child off as her sister’s, at least while on the ship. But once they arrived in America, I bet they planned on raising their son together, with Evelyn as the baby’s nurse. That’s why she came along.”
“Their son?” Sophie raises a brow.
I smile. “We’ll get there soon.”
“But how did Josephine have a baby without the duke or duchess knowing about it? Especially the duchess. Josephine was her maid. She wouldn’t have been able to hide a pregnancy.” Sophie pauses. “Well, no, perhaps I’m wrong. She certainly could have hidden the fact that she was pregnant. But not the birth.”
“I believe she hid the pregnancy until the last possible moment. And I think this is why William raced to get them passage on that ship. She likely gave birth in secret, and they packed up in the middle of the night and left with Evelyn and their son.”
I reach into my trusty folder for several more sheets of paper.
“Now this is where it gets wild,” I tell the rapt Sophie. “I got these family documents from Ruby Farnham’s cousin. They only raised more questions, as usual, so I stayed up all night yesterday hunting down the information I was missing. This is what I found. Ready?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever been more ready in my life. This is extraordinary.”
“Just you wait.”
Grinning, I pull out my carefully constructed family tree. Not the one for the Tulleys, which I agonized over for months. But a new one I created last night.
“This is the Farnham family tree.” I don’t hand it over yet, reading from it instead. “Josephine had two siblings, Matthew and Evelyn. Ruby is a descendent of Matthew’s—he’s her grandfather. Ruby’s cousin Catherine Kerr, however, is a descendent of Evelyn’s.”
“Brilliant. So then we know what happened to Evelyn after she survived the Victoria disaster! She returned to Britain?”
I rest the family tree on my knee while I scavenge for a few more papers, which I lay down one by one.
“This is the amount Evelyn received from the Northern Star Line. This is the receipt for the passage she booked two weeks later, a one-way crossing back to England. Which, by the way, is fucking ballsy of this girl. Imagine almost drowning at sea and then turning around and boarding another ship? Hard-core.”
Sophie laughs. “Indeed it is.”
I slap down another paper. “This is a page from the diary of Josephine and Evelyn’s mother. It was in the original paperwork Ruby gave me but didn’t jump out at me because I was more focused on Josephine than her little sister. But see here? Mrs. Farnham laments how Evelyn has chosen not to return to the employ of the Tulleys, nor is she choosing to remain in England. In fact, Evelyn doesn’t even visit her mother upon her return to England. She gets on another boat—this one headed for Ireland.”
“To Robert?” Sophie breathes.
“Yes. And no. This part tripped me up for a while before I figured it out. In Catherine Kerr’s paperwork, I found a birth certificate for who I believe is Josephine and William’s son. The date of birth listed lines up with when William booked their last-minute passage on the Victoria. The child’s name is Alexander, and his parents are listed as Evelyn and Henry.”
A groove appears in her forehead. “And we believe Henry is Robert?”
“Judging by this”—I hand her a copy of a small family portrait Catherine Kerr found in her attic— “I’d say so.”
The portrait shows a young woman, eerily similar in appearance to Josephine, and a man in his midtwenties, eerily similar to the paintings I’ve seen of Robert Tulley.
“I think he was living in Ireland under an assumed name when Evelyn tracked him down. I wonder if she already knew how to find him,” I muse. “He may have told Josephine where he was going after she rejected him and chose his brother. Anyway, and this is all supposition at this point, but I think Evelyn showed up on Robert’s doorstep with his brother’s infant son. She couldn’t risk taking the baby home to her own family, because she knew her mother would take the child right to the Tulleys. And she also knew the Tulleys would never love or care for William’s bastard son with the maid.”
“You believe Robert, now called Henry, took her in.”
“Not only that, but he married her.” I lay down another page. “This is a wedding announcement in a small local newspaper of a small Irish village, heralding the union of Evelyn Farnham and Henry Brown.”