Pride burned in Donald’s molasses-brown eyes. The Great Dane opened his powerful jaws and dropped Throckmorton at Mrs. Wiggins’s feet. It was a soft landing.
Sprinkles of white flour dusted the cook’s sturdy shoes. Her kingdom—Eastcliff’s kitchen—smelled warm and rich and yeasty.
Her kitchen smelled like home.
A broad smile creased Mrs. Wiggins’s face. She petted Donald’s head and scratched his ears.
“No more outdoor dog house for you, good boy.”
She dug a meaty shank bone out of the icebox and offered it to the grinning dog. She folded an old patchwork quilt and fashioned it into a dog bed in the corner by the stove.
“Well,” she said with a shrug, “at least until Judge Easterling gets back from London.”
Until the judge gets back from London?
Hip, hip, hooray!
Throckmorton hadn’t missed the party after all.
The cook scooped Throckmorton up off the floor. She held him over the kitchen sink and shook off the clingy crystals of snow. “You’re one naughty sock monkey, disappearing like that,” she scolded.
She laid his body lengthwise across the pipes of a radiator. “Now, dry yourself out before I take you up to see Annaliese. Poor thing, she’s been worried sick, as if she weren’t sick enough already.”
Annaliese was sick?
How sick?
The disturbing news took all the joy out of Throckmorton’s resurrection.
The radiator’s steam heat slowly saturated Throckmorton’s stuffing. He heard Mrs. Wiggins humming as she kneaded dough for a loaf of bread, Donald chomping on the crunchy shank bone, and the crackle of a radio announcer’s voice warning of postblizzard temperatures of twenty degrees below zero.
Then the telephone rang.
“Thank goodness,” Mrs. Wiggins exclaimed, dashing to answer it.
Underneath Throckmorton, the radiator pipes were getting warmer.
Then hot.
Then hotter.
Soon puffs of steam rose up and around his damp body.
Take me off! he pleaded silently. My skin is singeing!
“Whoops!” Mrs. Wiggins hung up the phone.
She whisked Throckmorton off the radiator in the nick of time. She tucked his dry body under her arm, poured a cup of coffee, and placed it on the table in the breakfast nook.
Then she positioned Throckmorton upright on the bench across from where she sat.
“This is the situation,” Mrs. Wiggins confided, as if they were the oldest and dearest of friends. “We’re snowed in. We can’t get out and the doctor can’t get in. And Annaliese is as sick as any child I’ve ever seen.” Her voice wavered. “Between you and me, Monkey, I’m worried.”
Now Throckmorton was worried too.
Really worried.
“Not to mention, this birthday party . . . it’s going to be the death of me. Those P sisters are the bossiest bunch of busybodies, why, I tell you.”
Mrs. Wiggins rubbed her palms up and down her deeply wrinkled cheeks. “Yesterday, I blew my stack. Prudence, who’s in charge of decorations and who I never did like, had the nerve—the nerve!—to imply that I had stolen the monogrammed silver candlesticks that went missing last Christmas.”
Apparently Judge Easterling’s sisters were carrying out Great-Grandmama’s specific orders: Her ninetieth-birthday party must rival the splendor of those she’d once thrown at Eastcliff. When it came to honoring her sock monkeys, the P sisters were told to spare no expense.
“It’s a cardinal sin,” Mrs. Wiggins griped, “during times like these when folks are out of work and children are out begging.”
Mrs. Wiggins carried Throckmorton up the once-elegant and greatly admired center hall staircase, pointing out all the recent changes.
Everywhere he looked, party preparations were under way.
In the foyer, the black-and-white marble tiles gleamed. Above the landing, the chandelier’s crystals sparkled like thousands of tiny strikes of lightning. In their newly dusted picture frames, even Annaliese’s grim ancestors seemed more cheerful.
On Eastcliff’s second floor, the doors to the east and west wings—locked for years to save on heat—opened wide. Fires burned in the fireplaces of each and every bedroom they passed. For the first time since Olivia left, the manor house felt alive and downright toasty.
However, serious trouble roosted elsewhere.
Mrs. Wiggins tiptoed into Annaliese’s bedroom.
Annaliese was in bed, propped against a stack of pillows. Her eyes were shut, her mouth open, and her head drooped to the side. Her split upper lip was still puffy. Scraggly strands of unwashed hair hung across the shoulders of her flannel nightgown.
Throckmorton’s first thought was that his sweet keeper was—
No!
STOP!
Throckmorton wouldn’t allow himself to even think the word.
Miss Pine sat in a rocking chair pulled close to Annaliese’s bedside. Her heavy-lidded eyes lit up when she saw Throckmorton.
“Donald found him,” Mrs. Wiggins said quietly. “Don’t ask me where or how.”
“That’s the best news we’ve had in days.”
“How is she?”
“Worse,” Miss Pine replied. “A little while ago, the poor child tried to tell me something, but she started coughing so hard, she almost choked to death.”
“The doctor phoned up,” Mrs. Wiggins told the distraught nanny. “The county road will be plowed soon. I told Max to hitch up the horses, drive the sleigh down to the end of the lane, and wait for him.”
Miss Pine dropped her voice to a whisper. “Shouldn’t we try to reach Judge Easterling? What if . . .”
“A fat lot of good his worrying’s going to do. Worry doesn’t count for much when a child’s as sick as this one.”
Miss Pine drew Throckmorton’s body out of the cook’s hands and pulled back the bedcovers. “Perhaps if she knows that her sock monkey’s been found . . .”
Imagine his shock when Throckmorton spied Sir Rudyard lying on Annaliese’s left side and Miss Beatrice on her right. Captain Eugene slept peacefully on her stomach.
Throckmorton couldn’t contain his jealousy.
What were they doing in his spot with his keeper?
Miss Pine nudged Annaliese, but couldn’t rouse her.
Wake up! Wake up! Throckmorton pleaded with every thread of his being. It’s me . . . I’m home . . .
Miss Pine lifted Captain Eugene off Annaliese’s stomach and shifted him and Sir Rudyard into spots next to Miss Beatrice. Then she nestled Throckmorton into the crook of Annaliese’s left arm, right next to her heart.
Annaliese’s breathing sounded labored. A moist pungent heat radiated through damp diaper cloths packed on her chest. Her cough made a harsh, brittle, heartbreaking sound.
Not good, Throckmorton despaired. Not good at all.
Finally, Annaliese opened her eyes and smiled feebly.
“Donald found your sock monkey,” Miss Pine said tenderly. “You don’t have to worry anymore. Throckmorton’s here to help you get well.”