Chapter Twelve

Long rectangular windows marched across the top of the kitchen wall. Graham lay on his hard pallet and stared at them, willing them to lighten from black to grey. He was awake, had been awake for a while, but he refused to rise until at least some bit of sunlight made an appearance.

Mostly because getting up in the middle of the night wouldn’t make him anything but tired. Not that he’d gotten a whole lot of sleep. The pallet was hard and the kitchen had cooled as the fire died down. And he’d been alone. Probably more alone than he’d ever been in his life.

The women had bustled through the kitchen, cleaning as fast as humanly possible and saying as little as they could get away with. He tried to assist in the chores, his attempts the most laughable he’d ever seen. He hadn’t a single idea how to handle the menial tasks in a kitchen. Dress himself and care completely for a horse, yes, but wash a dish? It should have been simple, yet he’d found his shirt, which he’d managed to keep dry in the rain, as soaked as the little boy with the water bucket.

After everything was clean, the women left.

And he’d been alone. Truly on his own. No Oliver, no Aaron, no servants, no family, no social acquaintances. Just him.

Now he was tired of himself. He was tired of the smooth walls of the kitchen.

It was time to explore the rest of the house.

He dressed in his now-dry clothes and took the stairs up, keeping his tread light as he rounded the curve near the top of the staircase.

The door at the top opened into a large square front hall. Paintings draped in canvas covered the wall, but the canvas itself had been painted on as well. Some of the illustrations were little more than splatters of paint and odd shapes, while others showed more inclination toward something that could actually be called art. Other than the adorned walls, the room was empty. The checkered marble floor stretched out, a large open space flanked by wide corniced doors on two sides and an enormous archway across from the main door.

A glance through the archway revealed another empty room, broken by the two graceful staircases ascending to the next floor. Looking through that room into the next revealed an enormous dining table, but no one appeared to be in there.

The bedchambers were likely up the grand split staircase, so Graham turned away from those and chose one of the side doors off the hall.

He found a music room. A large, beautiful piano sat in the center of the room, while instruments of nearly every other style he had ever heard of lined the rest of the room. Some of them he didn’t even recognize. He squinted at a bundle in the corner. Was that a bagpipe?

Across the music room, another door stood open and the distant sound of voices drifted through it. Desperate for contact with people, even if they were short and confusing, Graham moved toward the voices.

Beyond the door, he found a short walkway lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that showed a rather nice view of a very overgrown front lawn, and he went into another room nearly as large as the front hall he’d just left.

It was also just as devoid of furniture.

In place of settees and tea tables, the room held toys and games. They were piled against windows and in the corners. Every style and interest he could imagine.

Faded squares on the walls showed that at some point this room had also been covered in paintings, only those had been removed instead of covered.

In the middle of the room were two children who had yet to notice his presence. One of them, a girl he’d seen flitting about in the kitchen the day before, crossed a set of sticks and balanced a hoop on them for a moment before sending the wooden ring floating through the air of the high-ceilinged room.

A boy he didn’t recognize shook his dark curls out of his eyes and reached out with one hand, extending a stick similar to the ones the girl held, and speared the hoop in midair.

Then the boy crossed his sticks and sent the hoop flying back across the room.

The girl turned to run after it but stopped suddenly when she caught sight of Graham. The hoop clattered to the floor.

Graham cleared his throat. “What are you playing?”

“Graces,” the girl said quietly. The boy came to stand next to her, puffing out his chest as if he wanted to look more like a man than a boy. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but Graham didn’t know what. A mere week ago, if someone had asked him if he felt he should pay more attention to the children of his various acquaintances, he’d have laughed until his side hurt, but right now he was wishing he knew a bit more about little people.

Of course, even if he had paid more attention to the children connected to his life, they would be aristocratic children. Experience with them wasn’t likely to give him a whole lot of knowledge about what to do with country children.

Although, this was an awfully fine house for a country lad. It was possible Graham had circulated with whoever owned this home. Whoever the parents were, though, they were incredibly prolific, and the children all looked astonishingly different.

“You’re the man who saved Henry,” the boy said.

“Yes.” Graham gave a little laugh. “Though I don’t know that I would say I saved him—”

“Thank you.” The boy stepped forward and extended his hand. When Graham didn’t immediately shake it, the boy seemed to deflate a bit, revealing an insecurity Graham remembered all too well from his formative years.

Graham took a step forward and took the boy’s hand in a firm grip. “You’re welcome.”

The boy nodded before he let go and stepped back. Manly duties now completed, he didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. The moment hit Graham in a place he’d thought long hardened by the boredom and apathy of being an adult whose father was still alive and well. He could not let the memory of this moment be tarnished for this young man.

He glanced around the room until he saw a long wooden table against one wall with nine divots drilled in a grid on the surface. He’d never seen anything like it in a private home. Usually they were in taverns or public houses.

“You’ve a Bubble the Justice table?”

The boy nodded and ran over. “I’m the champion.” He pointed to a rough wooden board with names and scores written on it. “See? I’ve made it all the way through the numbers and then back up to five.”

Graham rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide a smile. “Well, it’s been a while since I played, but I’m pretty sure I’ve completed the circuit twice in a row before.”

The little boy’s eyes widened. “Twice? In a row?”

In truth, Graham couldn’t remember how well he’d done the last time he played this game, but he was sure he’d accomplished the feat at some point. Besides, all he really wanted right now was for the little boy to challenge him to a game.

It was much more fun seeing the lad be a boy than attempt to be a man. How old was he? Eight? Nine? Ten? Whatever the number, the boy was young. And apparently living in a house full of women.

The boy’s face screwed up into a determined frown. He grabbed a metal ball and sent it sliding down the table until it rolled gently into the divot labeled with a one. The little girl cheered and sent the ball back down the table.

Graham took his turn and missed the number one divot, rolling past to fall into the number four.

“I’m ahead,” the boy cheered, carefully lining up the ball to roll toward divot number two.

They took turns rolling the ball while the girl marked their progress on a slate. The game was simple. Roll the ball into the divots in turn, starting with one and ending with nine before starting over again. Nothing complicated. So Graham tried once more to have a conversation with a child that he had the potential of understanding.

“What’s your name?” Graham asked. Simple, nonthreatening. This could actually work.

“John.” He nodded to the girl with pale blond hair standing beside the game table, watching with wide eyes. “That’s Eugenia.”

Graham winced. Eugenia was a rather unfortunate name. At least the girl was pretty enough to overcome it. Graham picked up the metal ball. If he landed this one in the number nine slot, he would win. “Well, John, I think this turn may be the winning one for me.”

“Never!” John cried, and Graham jerked in surprise, sending the ball careening clear off the table.

John grinned. “Now it’s my turn to try for a win.”

Over the next twenty minutes, Graham and John took turns rolling the metal ball down the board as other children trickled into the room. Alice came in holding the hands of a very little girl and the young boy he’d met in the barn. Blake entered after them, rain clinging to the slick dark hair crowning his head. Finally, an older girl entered with a small child on her hip.

“What’s going on in here?”

“John’s about to win against . . .” The boy with the wet curls frowned at Graham as if just now realizing he didn’t know who the man was. “This old guy.”

Graham choked on a laugh. Old, was he? He’d barely tipped over the age of thirty.

“That’s the tree man,” Alice piped up. “His name is Wharton.”

Another laugh threatened to emerge at the idea of his peers in London seeing this rabble of country children using his title so casually.

“You’re rather good at that game, Mr. Wharton,” the young boy wrapped against Alice’s side said, a slight whistle accompanying the words.

“Just Wharton will suffice,” Graham said, “and thank you. I believe young Master John here has bested me, though.”

The children cheered, and John beamed under the adulation.

“Now, how about a game we can all play?” Graham lowered himself to sit on his heels. He didn’t know what was going on here, but as his little discussion with young Daniel in the town grocer’s shop had proven, children were a fount of information that adults would rather keep hidden.

“We like to play fox-in-the-hole.” A little girl with a long brown braid and enormous brown eyes popped her thumb in her mouth after making her request.

“You’ll have to teach me,” Graham said, even though he remembered the game well from childhood, having chased many a boyhood friend around the lawn. The more he got the children talking, the more he was likely to learn. The knowing smiles that passed among the children told him his morning was going to be interesting indeed.

The pallet was a twisted disarray of blankets. An empty, twisted disarray of blankets. Kit slid the basket of freshly collected eggs onto the table and glanced around the kitchen, as if their not-exactly-welcome guest was hiding in the larder or something.

Daphne slipped through the door on tiptoe, a half-full bucket of milk in her hand. “Is he still sleeping?” she whispered.

“He’s not even in here,” Kit answered, lifting her shoulder to wipe a few raindrops off her cheek. It wasn’t pouring down rain anymore, but a lingering mist remained. Just enough to make a person feel like they’d walked through the rain but not enough to require a change of clothing.

After setting the bucket on the floor, Daphne wiped her face with the corner of her apron. “Where do you think the children got off to? Benedict said no one else showed up to help with the goats this morning.”

“I’m more concerned with the whereabouts of our guest.” Or more importantly, if the question of where the children were and where Lord Wharton was had the same answer. Kit slid her apron off and draped it on a hook near the kitchen doorway. “Jess should be along in a moment to help with breakfast. I’m going to see if I can find out what’s going on.”

Daphne’s apron flew across the room toward the hooks but missed and slid down the wall instead. “You’re not going off without me. I’m not sure you’re thinking straight when it comes to this man.”

Kit rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “What is there to think? He’s here. We need him elsewhere.”

“Is it so very bad that he’s here?” Daphne’s voice was low, barely above a whisper as she picked at the edge of the worktable.

“What do you mean?” Kit fought the urge to sigh and pat Daphne on the head. Sometimes it was hard to believe that they were the same age, had been through the same turmoil, had been handed the same raw deal by life. Of course, it wasn’t Daphne’s fault that they’d ended up here. It was Kit’s. Maybe that made all the difference in how soft her heart remained.

“I mean,” Daphne said as she pushed away from the table and came to stand before Kit, “that perhaps we don’t have to remain quite so isolated. What’s the worst that could happen?”

A hundred horrible scenarios ran through Kit’s head. If Jess were here, she could probably increase that number to a thousand. Regardless, there were plenty of reasons to keep these children safe until they could make their own way in the world. “Daph, these children are secrets. Secrets that could put very powerful people in very precarious positions. Secrets we’ve promised to keep. Secrets we’re being paid to keep. All it takes is one person learning where these children came from and everything we’ve built here becomes endangered.”

“That made sense twelve years ago, Kit.” Daphne picked at the edge of her thumbnail. “But they’re getting older. Benedict will be starting an apprenticeship soon. We can’t hide them forever.”

It was a truth Kit didn’t want to acknowledge, hadn’t wanted to think about even as she’d finalized the apprenticeship agreement with a local woodworker. Benedict could already make wonderful items out of wood, and with a little bit of guidance and instruction, he could become amazing. Even sending him to live with a woodworker in Marlborough, a man who knew about and supported Haven Manor, sent a tremor of fear through Kit. Ben would be exposed, away from the protection that secrecy provided.

But Kit had to believe that having him established, having more than a decade of years between the indiscretion that had brought him into existence and his entry into the world, would be enough to keep him safe. “We can hide them until they’re ready.”

Kit didn’t wait for Daphne to answer. She turned and ran up the stairs as if she could leave her worries about their changing future behind with the eggs and the milk.

Loud laughter and the sounds of a jovial ruckus met her as she topped the stairs and entered the front hall. Given the number of walls between her and the old portrait room they’d emptied for the children to play in, they must be having a grand time indeed for the shrieks and cheers to be so loud.

It made Kit smile. The children had such a limited time to live a carefree life. Practically speaking, they would need to start working around the age of thirteen. And with a job came all of the worries and responsibilities of being an adult. They had so few years to truly be children that Kit couldn’t quite find it in herself to be mad that they’d skipped a morning of chores.

Her smile only grew as she passed through the music room and the short corridor. The noise increased to near deafening levels as she reached the door of the old portrait gallery, which they now called the Rainy Day Room. Running children came into view. They were dodging right and left, obviously avoiding someone on the other side of the room.

The view that greeted her when she stepped fully into the room knocked her smile flat. The game was one she recognized easily, having played it herself with the children. The “fox” tried to catch the “chickens” and take them back to the den. Once there, the person who was caught turned into a fox as well. Currently, the fox wasn’t Sarah or John or one of the other older children. It was Lord Wharton.

He stalked slowly across the room, letting the children run around, taunting him. His arms were raised and his hands curled into claws as he screwed up his face in a vision of comic mischief. Henry cheered from a chair on the side, his ankle still splinted, calling for his fox to bring him a chicken. The rest of the children right down to two-year-old Pheobe were scattered around the room, squealing and looking as if they were having the time of their lives. A quick count of heads in the room revealed that the only child missing was Benedict, who had been out helping with the goats earlier.

So much for keeping Lord Wharton away from John.

A loud growl ripped through the room as the man pounced on Alice and swung her high into the air. Kit’s heart stopped, and behind her she heard Daphne’s breath shudder until Alice was secure on Lord Wharton’s back, her little hands wrapped tightly around his neck as he stalked his way back to the chair where Henry sat kicking his legs in glee. Alice dropped to the floor, and Henry performed some strange sort of knighting ceremony before the little girl joined Lord Wharton in his prowling.

He snatched up Blake next, tossing the boy even higher than he had Alice before snagging him out of the air and throwing the boy over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Alice tackled Sarah around the knees and pushed her toward Henry.

The chaos made Kit’s head pound, and she gave serious thought to just slinking back out the way she had come. The man had already encountered the children. Any display of umbrage on her part would only make him suspicious.

“See?” Daphne whispered in her ear, leaning in until her breath tickled Kit’s neck in order to be heard. “He doesn’t know a thing.”

Lord Wharton really did seem to think them a passel of country children. While he had to consider the whole situation strange and probably had a dozen questions lurking in his mind, he didn’t seem to be suspicious about the children themselves. Kit’s muscles released a bit of the tension they’d been holding, and a small smile curved her lips once more.

The children were so happy. That was worth a little bit of discomfort on her part, wasn’t it?

Only one “chicken” was left in the room. Little Pheobe toddling around on her chubby legs, brown curls bouncing as she jogged in a tight circle that anyone could have snagged her from. Instead, they all made a show of running into each other and missing her by mere inches. She squealed in delight and suddenly broke from the pack to dart straight toward Kit. Before Kit realized what was happening, Pheobe was buried in her skirts and a grown man and nine children of various ages were creeping steadily across the floor in her direction.

Lord Wharton grinned. “Well, well, foxes, looks like we’ve another chicken in the henhouse.”

“Let’s get her!”

Kit didn’t know which child had sounded the battle cry, but suddenly she was surrounded, being hugged, pulled, and pushed, until at one point she wasn’t even sure her feet were on the ground. She glanced over to see that Lord Wharton had abandoned the game entirely and was just standing in the middle of the floor, laughing until she thought he might be driven to tears.

At last she was in front of Henry and experiencing the fox knighting for herself. It didn’t make any more sense at close range than it had from across the room, but it made Henry happy and let him be a part even though he couldn’t run on his injured ankle. Whoever had come up with it was rather sweet. She scooped Henry into her arms. “And who made you the keeper of the fox den?”

“Wharton!” Henry smiled in triumph. “He said that becoming a fox was something special and deserved a bit of ceremony.”

Kit looked over at Lord Wharton, who shrugged and folded his hands behind his back. His smile still stretched wide across his face.

What was she supposed to do with that?

Nothing. There was nothing she should do with Lord Wharton. She had children to raise. “Well. Now that we’re all a passel of foxes—”

“Foxes are called a leash,” Eugenia said, blue eyes wide and earnest. “I read it.”

“Now that we’re a leash of foxes,” Kit corrected, “it’s time we see to our neglected morning chores. Those bedchambers aren’t going to dust themselves. Then we’ve a lot of boxes to make since it’s still wet outside.”

A few grumbles replaced the cheers and giggles from earlier, but none of the children dawdled as they left the room. Blake let Henry ride on his back with the promise that he’d set up the injured boy sorting the linens.

And then all that were left in the room were Kit, Daphne, and the increasingly mysterious Lord Wharton.

Without the children, the room seemed cavernous and empty.

And strange. This room, more than any of the others, revealed the unusual conversion they’d made to the house.

Long ago, they’d put everything of value into storage. Partly because no one wanted to take the time to clean it but also because children could be destructive without meaning to be. The last thing Kit needed was to add more guilt to her life because her charges had carved a gouge into a priceless table leg.

“Interesting group of children,” Lord Wharton said, nodding to where the children had disappeared through the door.

Kit narrowed her eyes and inspected the man’s words for judgment or censure. She only found curiosity. “Yes.”

He lifted his brows. “Parents?”

“Irrelevant.” The lie choked Kit. Their parents were probably the most relevant detail about these children. It was what had brought them all together under this roof.

“Hmm.” He looked around the room. “I like what you’ve done with the place.” His gaze speared back into Kit, showing the first edge of something more. “It’s a nice house.”

“Yes, it is.” Kit swallowed. What could she tell him about the house? Certainly not the truth. It was nearly as strange a story as the children’s.

She cleared her throat. “It was built by a gentleman several decades ago. He didn’t have a title or anything, simply wanted a home away from everything.”

That much was true. The man had a great deal of money, though Kit wasn’t sure from what, and had built this house as a retreat.

“His heir didn’t want to live quite such a reclusive life.” Also true. To a point. Given the fact that the son had eventually lost the neglected house in a poker game, she wasn’t entirely sure what the man’s motives had been for living in the city instead of the country.

“So, instead of letting the house sit empty, it was placed into our care.” Kit forced herself to keep her gaze steady, focusing on a single lock of curly hair just to the right of his eyes. The implications of that statement weren’t exactly true. Could probably even be considered false. The man who’d won the house hadn’t cared about it. It had taken three years for his secretary to find a local solicitor to arrange a caretaker of the place.

That solicitor had been Nash, who had decided that the caretaker didn’t have to be a man or live in the caretaker’s cottage or really even have to be a group of adults.

It was a very liberal definition of caretaker, but it made Haven Manor possible.

Lord Wharton said nothing, simply tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling of the tall room. It was nearly as tall as the middle portion of the house, which boasted a second floor of bedchambers and a small chapel.

“I’ll put away the toys the children got out this morning, shall I?” Daphne said as she rushed across the room, head bent to avoid looking at anything or anyone.

Kit tried to act as if her friend hadn’t just fled the conversation looking like a guilty criminal. “Once it stops raining, we can go out to the bridge and see what condition it’s in.”

They both knew—well, Kit at least knew and Lord Wharton likely suspected—that the bridge was going to be unusable, but walking out to view it would keep Lord Wharton away from the house for several hours.

He gave a huff of silent laughter as he nodded. His mouth opened as if he was about to say something, but the sound of footsteps coming through the corridor to the room stopped him.

“Mama Kit.” A young male voice preceded the owner into the room. “I hate to tell you this, but we’ve got another leak in the roof of the boys’ room.” Benedict entered, pail in hand, his hair and shoulders showing a fresh coat of rain.

Another leak was hardly what they needed. Given the busyness of spring, it would be months before one of the men who helped them maintain this place was available to come fix their roof. Then there was finding the money for the necessary supplies. The stipend Nash received to care for the house didn’t cover major repairs. He would have to write and request additional funds for those, something they tried not to do, if possible, as it only served to remind the owner about the house and possibly prompt him to do something with it.

Still, she’d just told Lord Wharton that she was the caretaker of this estate, so she needed to at least appear prepared to handle such a situation. When she looked his way, though, he wasn’t paying her the slightest bit of attention.

He was staring at Benedict.

And the look of stunned suspicion she’d thought they were actually going to avoid was firmly on his face.