talent for food was to consume it. For most of her twenty-three years, she hadn’t known what a pleasure eating could be. Her ever-watchful nurse, Hilda Brunne, had insisted that anything with the smallest amount of spice would ruin her charge’s health.
After all the years of deprivation, she was still too thin, but she was slowly gaining.
Agatha nodded goodbye to the three ladies then continued on her way, leaning into the wind.
That hadn’t been so bad. In fact she felt proud, buoyant of step, even. Only a week ago she would never have approached them.
The choice to leave the only home she had ever known had been a good one. Very hard and frightening, to be sure, but it was what she had to do.
If she was ever going to be an independent woman who could stand on her own, she needed to face a fear that had been planted bone-deep in her.
It hadn’t been an easy thing to do, leaving her twin sister, Ivy, and her husband, Travis, and kissing their baby daughter goodbye. Truly, all she’d wanted was to sit in the shadow of her balcony and be safe.
What she had to remind herself, each and every hour it seemed, was that by hiding in her suite back at the Lucky Clover, she was not living life.
Life with all its tension and thrill, was what she needed—wanted—desperately.
With renewed purpose in her step, Agatha continued along the way to the cook trailer. It circled around outside of the circus settlement, the backyard, as Hugo Fin called it.
There had been a time, and not long ago, when Agatha could not even walk. For her own twisted reasons, her nurse had made sure to keep her helpless.
Now, if she had to march twenty miles a day to build her strength that was what she would do.
“Lady,” came a voice from between two trailers. “Can you help me?”
Agatha stepped into the shadow between the trailers to see a woman sitting on the ground, her back propped up by the wheel behind her.
A young coochie girl, by the looks of her. Agatha had heard enough gossip to know that the dancing girls who worked for Frenchie Brown did far more scandalous things than dance without their clothes.
What had happened to her in her young life to make her a slave to prostitution and addiction?
Poor thing. Agatha understood more than most people did, that life could take a person in a direction she would not have chosen.
She scanned the ground near the sallow-skinned woman, looking for a bottle. Yes, there it was, just under her hand.
“I’ve run out of laudanum.” The woman gazed up at her with unfocused eyes, her mouth slack. “Go into my trailer and fetch me another bottle, won’t you?”
Something dark, fearful, raised its head inside of Agatha, snarled its claws about her. As clearly as she heard the wind rustle the brush, she heard its seductive voice.
She backed away without answering the prostrate woman.
Even though her hands grew damp and her stomach nauseous, she was not going to pick up the laudanum. If she did, she feared she would find a dim corner and drink it down.
It was time for a visit to the elephant. She cut across the yard, rushing past the bull hand who guarded the huge pachyderms against curious townsfolk.
It was not those elephants she sought. It was the one inside the big top that drew her.
Pausing beside the entrance, she glanced behind her. In the distance she spotted a man making his way up the stony path toward town. Something about him, the way he moved, seemed familiar—reassuring.
That was odd since she could see nothing of him but the back of his coat as he huddled against the wind. Odder still, that a stranger could give her a sense of comfort.
Agatha hurried across the floor of the Big Top. Glancing about, she ducked behind the canvas where Gloria stood still and majestic even in death.
She wouldn’t visit for long. Mr. Brown did not like people near his elephant unless it was by a personal invitation or purchased ticket.
This was a rule that Agatha had ignored from the first moment she saw the beast.
“I’m not you,” she whispered to the hulking gray corpse.
But she had been. Under the influence of the laudanum that Hilda Brunne had kept her subdued with, she had been as lifeless as this elephant.
Dead inside, gray and still outside, appearing to have life but with no spark of animation.
Some people might think it strange that she likened her past to this petrified creature—she even thought so sometimes. But other times, when she was afraid, when simply giving a stranger the time of day made her want to hide away—she needed to be reminded that she was alive—to vow that she would never again be a slave to laudanum.
She feared this great hulking creature that seemed to represent life in death.
She feared herself, what she might have become without the help of William English.
Yes, Ivy had been the one to help her overcome her addiction, but it had been William who kept her from going back to it when, fearing her sister had died, she wanted to find oblivion again.
On that wicked stormy night, he’d placed a book in her hands and made her read it out loud to him. It hadn’t been easy to do, given that she was mightily distracted by the masculine scent of him, by the warmth of his arm and the lean muscle of his thigh touching hers while they sat on the couch waiting.
Of course, she’d had a crush on him for years. But whenever her young heart would begin to flutter, Nurse Brunne would point out that she was not fit for any man, especially not one like William English.
She’d been right about that. William was a prince and she had been—dead—like this poor elephant.
But she would not be again.
Today she was breathing, alive and getting stronger. No one, or nothing in a beguiling little bottle would take that new freedom from her.
* * *
The stew was not thickening as it should. No matter how long it cooked, it remained broth and not gravy.
The Fat Lady would hate it.
“I don’t know what’s wrong, Laura Lee.” The Fat Lady was not the only one who was going to be displeased. “Frenchie Brown will be angry.”
“I’m homesick,” Laura Lee stated as though Agatha had not spoken.
“He’s going to bellow at us if his food isn’t correct.”
“It’s been two months and I miss the Lucky Clover to my bones. I’m going home, tomorrow.” Laura Lee turned to look at Agatha, moisture glittering in her eyes. “Did you add flour?”
“Going home!”
She
