But on that day in Africa, Finnea Winslet jarred me back to life. Even months after that day and long night, her face still haunted my dreams.
I remember all too clearly pulling her out of the wreckage. Finding the worst of her wounds. Keeping her alive until the rescuers arrived in the thick, green jungle, who then swept her away before my own weakened body could react.
And I’m sure the feel of her in my arms will haunt me forever.
But one night, as quickly and unexpectedly as she had been taken from me on that fateful day, she stepped back into my life as if walking into my dreams. Sitting down in front of me at a formal dinner table in Boston, so beautiful and alive. Dressed in a decorously proper gown as if she had lived there her whole life. Without uttering so much as a word of explanation or greeting.
As if she had never seen me before on a train in Africa.
But I knew she recognized me. I saw it in the only part of her that remained wild. Her eyes.
Chapter Two
Boston
Leticia Winslet sat in a wingback chair across from Jeffrey Upton, vice president of Winslet Ironworks. His office was well appointed but small compared to the mostly unused office beside his that belonged to Leticia’s son, Nester, president of the hugely successful iron foundry. But Leticia knew that Jeffrey had never been a man to quibble about petty issues. He didn’t care about the size of his office; he cared only about the success of the company and his part in it.
Winslet Ironworks had been Jeffrey’s sole concern since he began running the company twenty years earlier. The ideal person to run a family-owned business.
Jeffrey was a handsome man, with a full head of gray hair that made him look dashing rather than old. He was a widower with grown children well set in their lives.
It went without saying that Nester, who had been named president three years before, was the top man. But everyone, including Leticia, knew that Jeffrey Upton still ran Winslet Ironworks. And it was Jeffrey she turned to when she needed something—advice, an advance on her monthly allotment, or a discussion of any family concern she couldn’t discuss with her son or even her own mother, Hannah Grable, who lived in the Winslet home.
Today the concern was the past. Her husband was dead now. A man she hadn’t seen in more years than she cared to count. She thought of the one time William Winslet had returned, so different and changed. So African.
She shuddered at the memory, shuddered at how wild he had become. How he had swept her into his arms and carried her up to their bedroom. His hands so boldly on her, stripping away her clothes, unwilling to turn down the lights. He had wanted to see her, he had whispered, his lips brushing against her skin. Her body tingled at the thought.
But she repressed it adamantly. Fiercely. She had wanted no part of Africa, and she had begged him to return home for good. They had no business in the wilds. They were blue-blooded Bostonians, for mercy’s sake. Her own mother the matriarch of good society.
But William had refused, telling her if she didn’t come with him then, he didn’t want her back.
Finnea was the price she’d had to pay.
Finnea.
Suddenly home. A stranger.
Leticia glanced out the window at the reassuringly familiar streets of downtown Boston.
“I’m not sure I understand what the problem is,” Jeffrey said from behind a desk that was too large for the room. But Nester had ordered it, found it not to his liking, then moved it into Jeffrey’s office when it couldn’t be returned. Nester had a new, perfectly sized desk just beyond the thick plaster wall.
With a minimum of ceremony, Jeffrey straightened paper and pens, secured the stopper in the bottle of ink, sat back, and said, “In the two months Finnea has been here, she has managed to recover her health nicely after that ghastly train wreck. What could possibly be the matter now?”
Leticia smoothed her flowing skirt of rich cashmere, refusing to meet his eye. “Well, she is… odd.”
Jeffrey rested his chin on his steepled fingers. “What makes you say that?”
“If you must know, the minute she was able she sent the doctor away and requested all sorts of herbs and strange things. The house positively reeks of herbal packs and concoctions that she swears are medicinal.”
“Do you doubt her?”
“Well, no. But every time I turn around she is drinking some strange tea, or draping her … her … person with awful-smelling poultices.” Leticia sighed. “Though as you mentioned, she has made a remarkable recovery. But now that she has grown stronger, she has turned her attentions on the servants.”
“In what way?”
“She is dispensing concoctions for toothaches and salves for cuts, teas for stomach upsets and tinctures for all manner of maladies as if she were just returning from medical school rather than the jungles of Africa.” Leticia placed her gloved hands on either arm of the wooden ball-and-claw chair. “The servants have become absolutely devoted to her.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Leticia looked him in the eye. “As my daughter, her place is in the drawing room, Jeffrey, not in the washroom tending the help.”
Jeffrey tsked. “Give her time, Leticia. Let her have a chance to become accustomed to Boston and its ways. She has only just recovered.”
“But we don’t have time! Next Saturday is Bradford and Emmaline Hawthorne’s dinner party. I’ve already sent word that we would attend.” Her fingers curled tightly around the wooden arms. “Perhaps it’s not too late to send our regrets after all.”
“Nonsense. Just watch, Finnea will prove you wrong and be a picture of loveliness.”
She worried her lip. “Well, I did manage to find a beautiful gown that will complement her bold coloring.” Sighing again, she added, “Even after all this time convalescing in bed, she is still as dark as a native. Good Lord, it will take a box of rice powder to make her look half-decent.”
“She has only a hint of gold left in her skin, Leticia. And once you put her in that dress with a touch of powder, I’m sure she will be lovely.”
“I’ve noticed,” she said, suddenly coy, “that you certainly have taken an interest in Finnea. Chocolates the other day? Flowers this morning?”
Jeffrey smiled, his spine relaxing against the leather. “I’ve come to a place in my life where I am thinking of remarrying.”
Leticia gasped. “Marry? Finnea?”
“Why not? Older men marry younger women all the time.”
His smile faltered and he leaned forward. “But not a word to Nester. At least not yet. I think he needs a bit more time to get used to her.”
“I’m not certain Nester will ever get used to her.”
Jeffrey shrugged. “Regardless, not a word yet. And you might think about a party yourself, in honor of Finnea’s birthday. It’s coming up, or have you forgotten?”
“I most certainly have not,” she stated, incensed, though in truth she had. “In fact, I was thinking of a party just the other day.”
They were interrupted when Nester’s fiancée walked into the office. Before the young woman could utter a word, Leticia said, “Isn’t that right, Penelope?”
Penelope Manser was a stunning woman with black lacquer hair, pale white skin, and doe-shaped blue eyes. “Isn’t what right?”
“That just the other day I was talking about having a birthday party for Finnea,” she said with a meaningful look at her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. “A gala,” she added, suddenly inspired. She would not be considered lacking in her duty to her child. She put from her mind that she had been lacking where Finnea was concerned for the past nineteen years. She’d had to leave Africa, she told anyone who would listen. She’d had no choice. Nester had been ill. Certainly everyone understood that fact.
“Of course, Mother Lettie. A party for Finnea. It is going to be wonderful.” Penelope’s rosebud lips pulled into a lovely smile. “Are you ready to go? Nester has left the carriage, and Mother Hannah will be waiting for us.”
“Grand. Come, dear,” Leticia said, standing and taking Penelope’s arm. “We must start making plans. I mean, continue making plans,” she amended with a quick glance at Jeffrey. “It will be fabulous. Until then, we shall see you at the Hawthornes’ next Saturday, Jeffrey.”
Then she stopped at the door and turned back. “I hope you are right about the outcome of Finnea’s entree into society.”
Finnea Winslet learned two things on her first night out in Boston Society—that the centuries-old New England town was farther away from Africa than mere geographic miles, and that there was a great deal more to familial ties than blood.
But neither of these infinitesimally complicated facets of her new life daunted her. The long, elegantly set dining table, however, gave her pause.
Finnea sat in the opulent dining room, among some of Boston’s most important inhabitants, studying the line of cutlery that was laid out on the white linen tablecloth in descending order like stair steps marching down either side of her plate. Never had she seen so many knives, forks, and spoons on any given table, much less for a single place setting.
Outside, the city stood frozen. It had begun to snow, foreign to her, but beautiful in an eerie sort of way. The muffled quiet. The giant white snowflakes crystallizing on the windowpanes, dusting the streets and bushes like powdered sugar on a cake.
So different from Africa.
That was what she loved the most. Boston was so very different from her beloved Africa. Worlds apart. A lifetime away from belongings that had not yet arrived. Carved wooden toys and hand-sewn little dresses. A lifetime away from the memory of a tiny little voice as soft and sweet as butter candy.
Oh, Isabel, her mind cried. Your mama misses you so.
Her throat tightened and her eyes burned with emotion. But she shook memories away, concentrating on the newness of this strange city with its odd and baffling ways.
Like cutlery.
Relief washed over her as Africa faded from her mind and she focused on a fork. What exactly she was supposed to do with each piece of the glistening line of silverware only God and her hostess knew. Or so she assumed until she glanced down the long table and found that not a single other guest looked as dumbfounded as she felt. They all talked and smiled, clearly undeterred by the staggering array of eating utensils.
But then her gaze halted, as it had so many times that night, on Matthew Hawthorne. A rush of blood made her heart pound. He was strong and chiseled. Fierce and warrior like just as she remembered him, just as she remembered the rock hard strength of his body when she had fallen against him on the train.
Her breath grew shallow and her lips parted, followed quickly by the sting of red in her cheeks when she remembered those hours after the wreck.
“Don’t you dare die on me!”
His words. Bold and demanding.
She pushed them away.
Finnea had wondered about him often, wondered what had happened to him after the rescuers arrived, carrying her out of the tangle of trees and vines. She could think about that— about the after. It was only those hours between the wreck and when the rescuers arrived, that dark space of time, that she couldn’t think about without emotion threatening to overwhelm her.
Later in the thatch-roofed hospital, when consciousness had returned full force, she learned he had been there asking after her. She had left the hospital early the next morning without a word. She didn’t want to see him. Couldn’t see him because he made her remember. The jungle. That long night.
“Try, Finnea. Just try.”
“Leave me alone,” she moaned.
“Damn it, Finn, don’t be such a coward. Let me help you.”
She tried to turn away, seeking the soft confines of that dark, soothing place behind her eyelids. “Go away.”
“I will not go away,” he replied fiercely. “You’re going to fight.” His voice quieted and he pressed his forehead to hers for one brief moment, the sounds of the jungle surrounding them. “You can’t die on me, Finn. I won’t allow it.”
“I hate you, you know that, don’t you?” she bit out, but the need to drift away had been pushed back.
Matthew only smiled. “Yes, I know that. Now help me.”
She had cried desperately when she boarded the ship for Boston, determined never to see him again—as if suddenly withdrawing from a potent drug.
But she was better now. Or so she had thought until she found him unexpectedly sitting across from her, his deep blue eyes taking her in, as if looking for scraps of a woman whose shape and texture he would recognize beneath the unfamiliar velvet gown and elaborate curls of her red hair.
Over the months she had begun to discount the effect he’d had on her. But she knew now she had been wrong. It was hard to understand the impact of this man unless a person saw him for herself. The startling perfection of his face—until he turned. The scar slicing through such beauty, as if the gods had been jealous of what they’d created and wanted to even the score.
She closed her eyes, attempting to close out that day and the long night that had followed. But she couldn’t forget his face any more than she could forget how he had held her close, touching her.
“Finnea, don’t hide from me.”
His voice so caring. His hands gently capturing hers when she tried to cover herself as he pulled the blood-soaked material away from her skin.
She had turned her head away sharply, staring into the thick vines, feeling his hands.
“I’m so glad you could join us, Miss Winslet.”
Finnea blinked Africa away, then looked up and found Mrs. Bradford Hawthorne smiling at her. Matthew’s mother.
Not knowing that Matthew was from Boston, Finnea hadn’t put them together until he had showed up at dinner, stilling her heart in her chest. Making her want to reach out to him, despite her need to forget she had ever seen him before.
Emmaline Hawthorne was a lovely woman, one of the few women Finnea had met in the short time she had been in America. Her husband, Bradford Hawthorne, was dark and forbidding. He reminded her of an African, a warrior—bold and direct, fierce. Not a man to cross lightly.
They lived in a spectacular house on Beacon Street in the part of town known as Beacon Hill, one of the oldest and finest addresses in all of Boston. With meandering streets lined with neat brick walkways that matched the redbrick facades of the prestigious row houses, Beacon Hill was very different from the newer section only blocks away where her mother lived. The Back Bay was made up of an orderly grid of streets where town houses were generally larger and didn’t conform to the redbrick sameness of Beacon Hill.