Promise Me Tomorrow by Candace Camp Page B

bedroom. She undressed quickly and efficiently, hanging her dress in the wardrobe and placing her thin slippers in the neat row on the floor of the wardrobe. She pulled on a plain cotton nightgown, at odds with the expensive dress she had worn this evening, then set about the task of taking down her hair and brushing it out. Before she got into bed, she opened the small japanned box on her dresser. Inside lay her small assortment of jewelry. She lifted out a compartment and reached underneath it to pull out a locket. It was a gold locket on a simple chain, not the chain that had come with it, for that had long since been too short and she had replaced it. But the locket itself had been with her since she could remember; she had kept it through thick and thin, refusing to sell it even when she was starving. It was all she had of her past life.
    The front of the locket was engraved with an ornate M, and when she slid her thumbnail between the edges, it came open to reveal two miniature portraits. Marianne sank down on the stool in front of the dresser and gazed at the man and woman pictured inside the locket. She was certain that the couple were her parents, though she could not be sure that she actually remembered them or only thought she did from having gazed at the pictures so many times. Sometimes she fancied she saw a resemblance in her own chin and mouth to the woman in the portrait, but she could not be sure whether it was real or only wishful thinking. Certainly neither one of them had her flaming red hair. Still, she knew they must be her parents—even though a cynic would have pointed out that parents wealthy enough to have miniature portraits drawn for a locket would have been unlikely to have left no provision for their child.
    This locket had been her talisman all through the dark, dreary days at the orphanage. She had worn it under her dress every day and even slept with it on. As the years had passed, she had gradually forgotten whatever her life had been before the orphanage. She thought she remembered the woman in the portrait laughing, and she remembered a permeating sense of fear, of running and being so scared she thought her heart would burst. That, she thought, must have been when she was brought to the orphanage. But she could no longer remember arriving at St. Anselm’s or who had brought her there, and, of course, the matron had steadfastly refused to answer her questions about the event. She was not even sure if Mary Chilton had been her real name or merely one the orphanage had given her.
    Marianne rubbed her thumb over the delicate tracery in an old habit, remembering the stories she had made up about her parents to help sustain her. She had imagined them wealthy and noble and very loving. A wicked man had stolen her from them and taken her to St. Anselm’s, but she knew that her parents were still out there looking for her. They would never give up.
    She smiled a little sadly and set the locket back into its case. Children’s stories, that was all they were. No one was searching for her to bring her back to her family. Her only family was here: her daughter, Rosalind, and Winny and the others. Yet, as she climbed into bed and settled down to sleep, she could not quite still the ache in her heart for the family she had never known.
     
    L ORD L AMBETH GAZED DOWN INTO THE brandy snifter, circling it idly in his hand, and watched the liquid swirl around the balloon glass. Marianne Cotterwood. Who the devil was she?
    He found it decidedly irritating that she had managed to slip away from him. Justin was not accustomed to being thwarted, least of all by a woman. Women usually hung upon his every word, smiling and fluttering their lashes, eager to be the one on whom he decided to settle his sizable fortune. He was cynical enough to realize that while his good looks might make the effort more palatable, it was his money that was the real lure. Marriageable girls had been after him since he reached his