High Society novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Nursery Drawer

The nursery was at the top of the house, behind a door that had not been opened in my lifetime.

Hugh turned the brass key and the lock gave with a groan.

Inside, the shutters were closed, and the light that came through the slats lay across the floor in bars.

A rocking cradle stood under the window with a sheet over it.

There was a small wooden horse with its paint gone, and a chest of drawers painted white.

Everything smelled of dust and lavender and cold.

"I was never allowed up here," said Hugh.

"My father said it was damp."

"It is not damp," I said.

"No."

He went to the chest and pulled out the third drawer on the left.

It came with a shriek of old wood.

Inside lay a folded child's shawl, a bundle of ribbon, and a small silver cup wrapped in a handkerchief.

Hugh took out the cup and turned it in the bars of light.

Letters were cut into its side, worn soft by a thumb.

"C.W. 1784," he read.

"Charlotte Wrenfield."

"She was real," I said.

"She was born," said Hugh, and his voice was not steady.

Under the cup lay a curl of fine dark hair tied with white thread, so small it would have gone through a ring.

Under that lay a ledger bound in green cloth.

He opened it on the lid of the chest and we bent over it together.

The hand was small and upright and very black.

It was the Dowager's.

Each page had a line for a year, a sum, and the same two words beside it.

"Foundling Hospital," I read.

"Seventeen eighty-five, ten pounds."

"Seventeen eighty-six, ten pounds."

"They go on every quarter," said Hugh.

I turned the pages with a finger.

The sums kept coming, in the same small hand, until the page for the year 1789.

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