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had had those things, and yet she had not been happy. What could have happened to change her from an exuberant bride to the angry woman who had written those final letters?
    With a sigh, she got up, pulled on the borrowed wrapper, and crept down the rear stairs, intending to heat a bottle for Victoria.
    She found Maisie already there, up and dressed, her thin, flyaway hair groomed, her eyes bright with prospects all her own. Jasper sat at the table, dallying over a bowl of butter-drenched oatmeal.
    â€œMornin’,” Maisie greeted her with a smile. “You look some better, I don’t mind sayin’.”
    Susannah smiled. “Thank you,” she replied, amused by the unassuming bluntness of the remark.
    â€œIs my sweet’ums awake yet?” Maisie asked. “I’ve got her bottle started.”
    Susannah shook her head. “She’ll be awake any moment, though. I’ll need diapers, pins—”
    â€œSet them right there for you,” Maisie said, pointing to a bureau near the back stairway. “Fetched them from Mr. Fairgrieve’s room just this morning.”
    â€œHe isn’t—here?” Susannah asked, and then could have bitten off the end of her tongue.
    â€œBed ain’t been slept in,” Maisie replied matter-offactly. “Here, now. Sit down and have some coffee and a bowl of this oatmeal. You’ll hear sweet’ums right enough when she wakes up.”
    Susannah hesitated, then accepted the offer. Maisie promptly brought the promised breakfast.
    â€œWas Mr. Fairgrieve unkind to Julia?” she dared to inquire after several minutes of silence. There were men who abused their wives, both physically and verbally. Perhaps the handsome Aubrey was such a one, for all his charms and graces.
    Maisie took a few moments weighing her answer. “They shouldn’t have married up in the first place, the two of them. They was too different, one from the other. Mrs. Fairgrieve, she liked parties and dancing and fancy clothes. As for him, well, I think he thought she was somebody else entirely from who she really was. He wanted her to be home at night, readin’ and sewin’ and waitin’ for him. It got to be a real sad situation.”
    â€œHe seems to believe—” Susannah swallowed, started again. “He seems to believe that Julia was unfaithful. Even promiscuous.”
    â€œI ain’t sure what that last word means; the first one’s clear enough, though. She tended to her own business, the missus did, and I tended to mine, and we sure never talked about such as that.” Maisie made a sound that might have been a chuckle, though it held more sorrow than humor. “Oh, no. Mrs. Fairgrieve never confided inme, ’cept to ask me to send for you.” She sighed. “She was a fragile little thing, homesick for the life she knew in Boston.”
    â€œDid she have other companions? Women, I mean?”
    The older woman gave a forceful sigh. “Not many, truth to tell. She had a way of lookin’ down her nose at folks that didn’t win her much in the way of admiration.”
    Susannah closed her eyes for a moment, exasperated even in her grief. Julia had always thought well of herself, or pretended to, at least, and she had never had many friends. Still, when she fell so wildly, romantically in love with Aubrey Fairgrieve one spring day and soon after eloped to Seattle, Susannah had dared to hope that her friend’s happiness would inspire her thereafter to take a more generous view of the world. Instead, something had spoiled her joy, turned her love for Aubrey to bitterness.
    Maisie lingered at the stove, raised one of the lids, stirred the embers with a poker, and added two hefty logs from the basket on the hearth. A lovely, crackling blaze rose, casting light onto the whitewashed walls. “Mind you, if you go out, take a warm cloak,” she instructed Susannah. “I’ve seen the