Drawing the small bundle she held protectively closer the young woman forced herself to walk through the impressive gate and toward the dimly lit, grand home that lay beyond. Before her hesitant hand could lift the impressive brass knocker the entrance door was swung open.

A young girl stood in the doorway, her strikingly beautiful lavender eyes shadowed and apprehensive.

"I've been watching you from my window," the girl spoke with a low, rapid voice, not nervous but none the less urgent. "You were trying to work up the courage to face Father, weren't you? Well, he's not home. He's gone out and I don't know when he'll be coming back. Go away, Anna. Far away, before he finds you here!"

The look of dismay her hard words brought to the young woman's face caused the girl's eyes to suddenly soften and when she spoke again her voice was gentle.

"Perhaps it wouldn't hurt if you were to come up to my room for a bit," she ventured, pulling the door open wider. "Only we must be very careful and you must be gone before he returns. He's apt to have been drinking, and it's always worse then."

The girl closed the door quietly behind them and then passed like a fleeting shadow across the hall to glide soundlessly up the carpeted stairway. Picking up her skirts in one hand and holding firmly to the sleeping baby with the other, Anna moved swiftly to keep up with the young girl's quick ascent up the stairs.

Having reached the first landing the girl veered to the left and went on until she came to an uncarpeted, narrow stairway. Quickly her slender legs carried her up the wooden steps, never pausing until she'd reached the large, attic like room above. Moving to the old dresser that stood in the middle of the room she lit a candle to ward off the approaching darkness.

The woman crossed the gloomy room to sink down on the edge of a narrow, sparsely blanketed bed.

The air was chilly and stale, she thought, looking about the frugal, dingy surroundings. Her eyes paused for a moment on the aged crib and the golden curls and pink flushed cheeks barely visible beneath the layers of blankets.

"Rose and I have missed you, Anna, but it would have been best if you'd stayed away." the girl told her soberly.

"I have no other place to go little Helen." the woman said sighing. "My Perry, he die last month. Now I must find a way to care for our little bombina."

As Anna spoke she gazed fondly down at the bundle she held so tenderly in her arms. In response Helen came forward, and gently lifted the blanket edge from the baby's face. Softly her slender finger traced the outline of the full, brown cheek.

"My chica, she look like me, no?" As the girl nodded the woman smiled and went on, her voice rich with warm memories. "When our Dortea, she born, my Perry he say she look like her momasitia, though the way she scream when she mad, Perry say she get from him."

After a time the young woman asked softly, "Your step-momma, she is gone now?"

The girl's flaming head nodded a brief affirmative and then both brown and blue eyes were drawn to the crib and the small child sleeping so quietly therein.

"Little Rose, she miss her momma?"

"I don't think so," the girl's voice dropped in response to the woman's hushed question. "Kathrine was ill for so long before she died that Rose got used to my taking care of her. She's a baby still, after all, only just turned three. And you know that Father never allowed us to go near Katherine after the accident."

"My poor motherless chicas!" the woman cried, reaching out to grab the girl's hand. "I did not wish to go and leave you as I did."

"I know. I understood, Anna."

The woman dropped the girl's hand and rose to suddenly pace restlessly back and forth across the small room.

"Your Papa, he would not leave me alone. Even though I am just maid for your ill step-momma." she paused for a fraction of a moment, but the girl's air of mature understanding seemed to encourage her to continue. "He make the love to me. He say soon as his ill wife die we marry. I grow afraid, but I stay. You need me here, I know! Then I learn that little Dortea she on the way. I know, too, that she is the child of my Perry, not your Papa. Perry he only come once a week to care for your yard, but he is a good and kind man. He love me too. He love me very much. When he learn little Dortea coming he say we marry right away. It the only thing to do. You see that, Helen?" she ceased her pacing to stand in front of the girl and look down with pleading, dark eyes. "You see why I leave you?"

"Yes, I see, Anna. But you've made a mistake coming back. You mustn't stay. Not after you left Father as you did. He'll keep you here, perhaps, because you're young and pretty. But after a few years, after he's broken you as he did Katherine, he'll find some way to be rid of you too. Perhaps he'll push you down the stairs as he did her. Then he'll call that an accident too and your own fault. Please Anna, for the sake of your baby if not your own, leave while you're able."

"My poor little chica!" the woman gasped as she sank back down onto the bed, more frightened by the child's cold, bitterness than by the words. "You not know what you say! Your Papa, he is strict man, yes, but he not kill your step-momma."

There eyes met then. Those of the protesting woman and the grave faced girl. It was the woman who looked away first.

"I will tell him the baby is his," she said. "Then he will let us stay. He will care for his baby."

"Care for her!" the contempt in the child's voice startled the woman. "If you mean he'll see that she has enough clothing to cover her body, enough food to keep her from starving to death, he will. Anna, Anna! Did you live with us all those months and still not understand? Haven't you seen how he treats his daughters? Is that what you want for you little bombina?"

For a moment Anna found herself questioning Stephen Nelson. Questioning his claims that his daughter wore rags around the house because she was incorrigibly rebellious and enjoyed provoking her father. That the only time the child could be forced to dress in the brighter, well fitting clothing more suitable to her family's financial station was when they were to socialize with others. It had never occurred to the maid that it might have been the fathers doing that had prevented the child from dressing differently. That the children had been boarded in this remote room far from the comfort and warmth of the main house had been easily explained. Stephen Nelson simply hadn't wished them disturbing his ill wife who was unable to handle the noise and confusion their activities would cause. When he had explained all these thing in his smooth, charming manner, Anna had thought how good and kind he was. Good to be so patient with his daughters strange ways, kind to be so thoughtful and considerate of a wife who was too ill to fulfill her wifely duties.

Yet she had come back to find the children, for some reason, still living in this remote section of the house. Living here even though the wife had died and winter was drawing its cold breath ever nearer.

Anna gazed thoughtfully into the eyes of the watchful girl. Eyes that were too shadowed for one so young and tender. No, she corrected herself. Not tender. For the young girl's face, still lightly dusted with freckles, lacked the carefree quality that should have been there in one of her age and station. Seldom had she seen the child smile and never had she heard her laugh. She had suppose that the child's sober attitude had been brought on by her step-mother's illness and the responsibility she felt toward her little half sister. Even now, she supposed that Helen Nelson's fears and anxiety stemed from the grief she was experiencing.

Someday Helen would surely be a beautiful woman, Anna concluded, moving to place a loving hand under the child's chin. A chin that bore a resent scar which caused Anna to remember again how accident prone the girl could be. Someday the girl's red-gold hair would catch the light and her brilliant, blue violet eyes would dance and flirt. But not now. Now the child seemed to be wrapped in a mysterious cloak of imaginary evils and unfounded dangers.

Stephen Nelson had warned her of his daughter's tendancy to fabricate wild and unbelievable stories. Stephen Nelson was a firm man, who liked his children to be seen and not heard, that was undoubted true. But he wasn't the monster this girl thought him to be.

Maybe he didn't love his children as he should have. But that was, perhaps, because they had been born daughters rather than sons. Anna had seen such things happen before. Helen, poor love starved, motherless child, had felt and resented her father's disapointment. She had started making up stories to explain away his cold behavior.

Still, there had been times when the young maid had seen a spark in his eyes that had disturbed her, and times when she had been caring for his hauntingly beautiful wife that the dying woman had spoken of her children as though, in spite of her husband's claims, she wanted them near. Times too when the woman had asked after her husband in a manner that seemed to suggest she still loved Stephen Nelson and it were he who had rejected her and not she that had driven him into another woman's arms, as he had claimed.

"You don't know him the way I do," the girl spoke as if reading the woman's troubled thoughts. "He'll take you in, perhaps, because you're young and pretty. But he'll never marry you."

"If he care for my Dortea he not have to marry me!" the small woman said lifting her head proudly. "But I stay little Helen. I stay and, if you have spoken true, I will be here for you. We face your Papa together. We work and care for this house together. We learn to sing and laugh together, no matter what happens in our lives. Si?"

A spark of longing appeared in the young girl's eyes, but when she spoke her voice was sober. "All right, Anna." she said, her words heavy and deliberate. "Together then. And if anything should happen to you, I promise I'll take care of your baby. She'll be another Rose to me. As long as I'm able to stand between them Stephen Nelson shall never lay a hand on her or Rose. I promise you Anna."

Anna couldn't help but be touched by the child's solemn promise.

Perhaps she could help teach the girl that her father was a man to admire, not a man to scorn and fear. He was, after all, known throughout the town as a gentleman of some importance, having both wealth and social standing. She would confide her concerns and he would explain the things that had begun to disturb her, for his smooth words and touch had always had the power to make even the most impossible excuses seem logical.

She must remember that, in spite of her adult demeanor, Helen was, after all, just a child. The girl feared her father and loved her sister. She would love little Dortea too, Anna knew. But it was unrealistic to think that anything would happen to the baby's mother. Anna saw no way she should be rid of and Helen left with the care of the babies. The idea was utterly ridiculous. At that moment there was a loud crash of thunder and the strom broke with full fury.

An e-magazine for the family with children's literature, romance, fantasy, mystery and science fiction stories in serial by authors past and present. New postings monthly by Antelope Publishing.

Copyrighted © 1996 by Antelope Publishing All rights reserved.

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