Their Instant Baby. Cathy Gillen Thacker

Eleanor had died of a broken heart many years before. As Eleanor had recovered and begun to trust them, the mental confusion that they had first mistaken for amnesia had lifted, and Eleanor finally acknowledged her true identity, shocking everyone.

      “Has she stopped resisting the idea of letting us take care of her permanently?” Amy asked. Although she had few choices, Eleanor had been adamant about not being a burden to her relatives.

      Winnifred shook her head, looking distressed. “I’m hoping if Eleanor stays here long enough, she’ll let me take care of her from here on out. But right now,” Winnifred confessed sadly, “she’s only agreed to stay until her ankle heals enough for her to get around on her own again.”

      Aunt Winnifred led the way to the servants’ quarters, which were the only bedrooms on the first floor.

      The door to one tiny room was open. Harry was seated in a chair next to the narrow bed.

      “So this is where you disappeared to,” Amy teased. She’d wondered where Harry had been off to in such a hurry. Usually he hung around to talk a little with her, too.

      Harry winked at Amy. “Rude of me, I know, but I had some serious business to attend to.”

      “So I see,” Amy murmured back just as playfully, while Winnifred grinned, shaking her head at what was still going on.

      Harry was holding a hand of playing cards. Eleanor was propped up against the pillows. Her silver hair coiled atop her head, she was wearing one of Winnifred’s elegant satin bed jackets. Eleanor’s color was better than the last time Amy had stopped by to see her, at the hospital, but you could still tell from the gaunt angles of Eleanor’s face that she had been sick.

      Eleanor smiled at Amy and Winnifred, then turned her attention back to Harry. Spreading her cards out in front of her, she announced triumphantly, “Gin!”

      Harry shook his head ruefully, then shot Eleanor an admiring glance. “You really must tell me your secret someday.”

      Eleanor smiled coyly and remained mum.

      Harry stood and looked at Winnifred. “Tea and cookies for three?” he asked formally as he straightened his tie.

      “Thank you, Harry.” Winnifred smiled as she pulled up another chair beside the bed and motioned for Amy to sit in the one Harry had vacated. “That would be lovely.”

      Once again all business, Harry exited quietly. But Amy wasn’t fooled. She had seen the brief but intimate looks he and her aunt Winnifred had given each other. There was more going on between them than they wanted anyone to know, or she would eat her shoe.

      “I’ve asked Amy to help us redecorate your new quarters to your liking,” Winnifred told Eleanor.

      Eleanor’s eyes took on a troubled gleam and she held up a staying hand. “My dear Winnifred, I’ve told you that redecorating the carriage house on my behalf isn’t necessary. This room is lovely and I’m not planning to be here that long. Just another few days.”

      It was also claustrophic, Amy thought, looking at the windowless walls. So much so that no one had slept in any of the little rooms of the servants’ quarters for years. Even Harry had quarters upstairs on the second floor.

      “Where are you going to go?” Winnifred asked plaintively. “You’re supposed to stay off your feet as much as possible until your ankle heals completely, and Gabe said that will be another week at the very least.”

      Eleanor was silent. She turned her glance to the wheelchair and walker next to her bed, then looked down at the ice-blue damask coverlet across her lap. “I think I’ve brought enough hardship to this family already, without adding any more,” Eleanor said in her cultured voice.

      “If you’re talking about what happened years ago,” Amy returned gently, “everyone in the family has agreed it doesn’t matter to any of us what happened then.”

      “I don’t know how you can say that.” Eleanor speared Amy with a troubled gaze. “I was involved in an illicit love affair. I brought shame to the family name and caused the death of someone I loved very much. My entire family was miserable in the wake of the tragedy, and everyone blamed me.”

      “If you’re talking about the curse Dolly Lancaster hired a Gypsy to put on you and Captain Nyquist—” Amy said, but was interrupted by Eleanor.

      “As well as the entire Deveraux family! There hasn’t been a happy marriage or an enduring relationship since.” Eleanor looked at Winnifred. “Your husband died within a year of your marriage. Grace and Tom divorced.”

      “But the streak of bad romantic luck seems to be turning around at long last,” Amy was all too happy to point out as she leaned forward urgently. “Chase married Bridgett, Mitch married Lauren and Gabe married Maggie. I’m the only one of my parents children left unattached.”

      “And that is going to change, too,” Eleanor promised.

      Amy smiled. Her great-aunt had been encouraging romance—secretly—for years. They had just thought it was either her ghost or someone pretending to be her, who had been doing the matchmaking for the Deveraux heirs. Amy narrowed her eyes at Eleanor. “How do you know?” she asked.

      Eleanor lifted one delicate hand. “Lately I’ve just had a knack for predicting such things,” Eleanor said.

      “Or a knack for matchmaking,” Winnifred amended dryly. Winnifred looked at Eleanor. “That was you, wasn’t it, who was leaving the notes and sneaking in and out of both my home here and the Gathering Street mansion where you and Douglas Nyquist used to meet.”

      Eleanor blushed, looking guilty as charged. “Even though I was no longer part of the family,” she explained sweetly, “I’ve always tried to keep watch over the entire Deveraux clan.”

      “I understand why you would want to be close to family,” Amy ventured, figuring now was as good a time as any to get all her queries answered. She looked at her great-aunt closely. “What I don’t understand is why you let everyone believe you were dead all these years.”

      Eleanor shrugged and twin spots of color appeared in her cheeks. “It seemed easier for me to disappear and be on my own than to have everyone else linked to the debacle flee Charleston in mortification.” Eleanor paused, tears of remorse glistening in her faded-blue eyes. “I thought my ‘death’ would end the misery, but it didn’t. The scandal only seemed to get worse. And since I made my mistakes, no one connected to me who stayed in Charleston has remained unscathed. That’s why I stayed away from the family all these years. And would have continued to do so, had I not gotten hurt and you not figured out who I was. Because that was how I thought I could best protect the rest of you from the pain I had already suffered.”

      Amy thought Eleanor’s motives had been noble, if misguided. “But now the secret’s out,” Amy said pragmatically, “don’t you think you should stay with us from now on?”

      “I don’t want to be a burden,” Eleanor said simply as Harry came back into the room carrying a large tray with a silver tea service and several plates of snacks.

      “Your money is gone?” Winnifred guessed.

      Eleanor nodded reluctantly, the embarrassed color in her cheeks deepening. “I have less than a thousand dollars in the bank, which is why I have to leave as soon as possible.”

      “To go where?” Winnifred asked, plainly vexed. “And do what?”

      Eleanor shrugged and averted her eyes. “I’ll get by.”

      “You need to do more than that,” Winnifred said sternly. “You need a job.”

      Amy gaped at her aunt Winnifred. As did Eleanor. What could an eighty-year-old woman with a bum ankle do? But clearly, the fifty-year-old Winnifred had plans.

      “I’m in need of a good social secretary,” Winnifred said firmly, apparently not about to take no for an answer. “So, Eleanor, how’s your penmanship?”