Chapter Fourteen

She should have ridden the horse.

At least then the torture would have been shorter. They could have gone to the bridge and been back at the house in the amount of time it was going to take them just to walk one way. Possibly even faster than that. She’d been afraid to be in such close proximity to Lord Wharton, but now she had to manage his company.

And she hadn’t even managed to completely avoid his physical presence because the man was always there. His hand would appear, strong and steady, as she climbed over a root. His arm offered a stabilizing presence when she clambered through the undergrowth to avoid a particularly muddy patch of trail.

It was more nerve-wracking than the horse would have been. Riding together would probably have been like dancing. At least, that was what she’d been told when she’d learned to ride, to think of it as a dance with the horse. She missed dancing, but she’d done quite a bit of it before running away from London, so she was sure she could handle a horse.

She wasn’t sure she could handle this urge she had to rely on Lord Wharton, to lean into him as he helped her along the wooded path. But she could not let him take her security in her ability to do this on her own. He would leave. Even if the bridge were entirely submerged, it would only be a matter of days until he was gone.

And she didn’t want to feel like something precious had been ripped away from her when he left.

Worrying about what he’d do with the knowledge of their whereabouts was bad enough. She didn’t need to have resurrected and crushed childhood hopes keeping her awake as well.

“I’ve never seen woods like these,” Lord Wharton said as they passed under a sprawling oak.

“They’re beautiful,” Kit agreed. The trees were a safe topic. “When we first moved out here, Daphne and I spent hours walking in these woods, marveling at the peace and quiet.”

“A far cry from London.”

“Yes.” Was he going to press? Ask questions? The anticipation, waiting for him to say or do something that would bring her world tumbling down, was making Kit ill. Not even the sweet scent of trees and moss was enough to settle her insides.

A chilled, damp breeze trickled through the trees and across her neck, making her shiver.

“I’d offer my jacket, but I left it back at the house.” He sounded truly remorseful but a bit happy at the same time. “I have to admit, even though this shirt is feeling a bit stale, I’m enjoying the freedom. Even in the country I don a jacket and cravat every day. It, uh, seemed a bit pretentious here.”

“We live a simple life.” And it was a good life. Even if Kit needed reminding of that every now and then. It was good that she’d been given a life that allowed her to make amends for her past mistakes.

“What’s the house called?”

Should she tell him? She didn’t really want to, wasn’t sure anyone knew but the residents. Not even Nash’s paperwork held the name. She and Daphne had discovered it while going through the house. A sketch of the home had been labeled with the words Haven Manor, and it had felt like some sort of omen, a sign that the original owner would be happy with their intended use of the building.

“It’s called Haven Manor. I think the person who built it just wanted an escape.”

Graham looked around. “I can’t think of a better place to escape to.”

She braced herself for questions about the children, but he didn’t ask them. Instead, he asked about plants. The rest of the walk to the bridge, he pilfered her limited knowledge of the flora they passed.

There were botany books in the library, and she’d read them all, occasionally taking the children out to the woods with the books so they could try to identify some of the plants. She didn’t know the answers to half of his questions, though, so he spent several minutes speculating on whether or not sweeter-smelling flowers helped bees make sweeter honey.

How did a man of means and position develop such a unique outlook on life? He seemed truly happy to observe what was around him, soak in the atmosphere. By the time they reached the bridge, Kit’s emotions were a churning mess.

Much like the river water that had overtaken the bridge and road around it.

The bridge flooded often in the spring, but it hadn’t been changed or fixed because hardly anyone used this road on a regular basis. Over the years, the stone had been extended up the road a ways to prevent the swollen river from washing away the path, but that was the most anyone cared to do. It was part of the reason Haven Manor had felt securely hidden for so long.

She’d never seen the water this high before, though.

The surface of the stone bridge wasn’t even visible. Water rushed over the top and surged high up the surrounding banks, past the stones in the road, until she could see it wearing away some of the surrounding gravel and dirt.

There would probably be repair work needed after the water receded. How much was anyone’s guess. But one thing was certain. Lord Wharton wasn’t going anywhere.

Graham bit his cheek to keep from smiling in triumph over the state of the bridge. It was even better than he’d hoped. If he were desperate enough, he could take Dogberry and walk along the river until they found a place to cross. It would mean riding through farmland and across the countryside, but it wasn’t all that daunting.

Except that if he was desperate for anything, it was for a reason to stay.

Kit didn’t say a word. She simply whirled around and started back the way they’d come, her pace quicker than it had been on the walk to the bridge.

Graham jogged a bit to catch up to her. “How long until the water goes down?”

She sighed. “Two days. Maybe three. It happens a few times every spring, and it’s usually passable by the next day.” She glanced over her shoulder. “That’s a lot of water, though.”

Two days. He could learn a lot in two days.

Questions burned in his mind. Questions about Kit, about the children and Daphne and Jess. But the stiffness of Kit’s shoulders and the way she dug her heel into the ground with every step was a clear indication that she was on guard right now. She was probably expecting him to voice some of those questions.

Stiff shoulders and a guarded mind weren’t very fun, though, and Graham was determined to bring a little bit of levity into her world.

He bent to scoop a small limb off the ground as they walked back into the woods. “Were you really going to throw a knife at that man in the park?”

She stumbled a bit but righted herself before he could take her elbow. “If I had to.”

“Would you have hit him?”

The look she sent him was drawn in confusion. “Hardly. Did you see the size of him? My fist wouldn’t have been anything but a pesky fly to him.”

Graham grinned at the picture of her swinging her fists and screaming. “I meant with the knife. If you’d thrown it, would it have hit him?”

Confusion cleared and a splash of red touched her cheekbones. “Probably. Possibly. I’m fairly good at hitting a tree.”

Graham extended the limb toward her. “Hit that tree.”

Her pace slowed as she took the limb, holding it delicately as if she thought it would turn into a snake. “Which tree?”

“Any tree. Your choice.”

She stopped walking, slid her grip to the end of the stick, and launched it. It crashed against a tree several paces in front of them, sending bits of limb and bark flying through the air. “I choose that one.”

The impish grin she threw him brought Graham stumbling to a halt. Then he started laughing. Keeping the conversation away from the children while they walked might have been his best idea ever.

He kept at it all the way back to the house. The conversation would naturally lull, and he’d wait for her to start tensing up again, obviously expecting him to finally ask more about Benedict or the other children. But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled the most ridiculous questions he could think of from the depths of his brain. He was actually glad when the house came back into view because he’d resorted to asking if she thought beef or rabbit made a better cottage pie, and there really wasn’t anywhere else to go from there. As far as conversation topics went, that was scraping pretty close to the bottom of the barrel.

Kit obviously shared his relief at returning to the house, though probably for a very different reason, as she took off running as soon as they cleared the lake, leaving him standing alone on the lawn.

He let her go. He knew he had been flustered enough by the walk to need space, so she probably needed it even more. She was the one with secrets, after all, and he’d poked at her walls until she’d finally relaxed enough to laugh. Had that left her feeling vulnerable?

He rather hoped so. It would make it easier to peel back the layers and learn the truth, though it was debatable which truth he wanted to know more, Kit’s or the children’s.

They were likely tied together, so Graham might as well attack from all sides, and one truth he’d learned in his hours this morning was that it was going to be a lot easier to inject a bit of fun into the house through the children. And when people were laughing and having fun, they relaxed. And it was ever so much easier to get to know a relaxed person.

Kit had run to the house, so Graham wandered toward the barn. Off to the side, three boys were standing in the goat paddock.

When he was close enough, he saw they were milking the goats. He’d never seen the process, so he leaned against the barn wall and watched, asking questions and making comments about the funny way the one goat’s hair stuck out around her ears.

“It’s like a crown. Only a small one. Sort of like a goat earring,” Graham said with his head tilted to the side as if he were giving very serious consideration to the tufts of wayward fur.

John laughed and aimed a stream of milk toward Graham’s boot.

Graham jumped out of the way with an exaggerated yelp, but what he really wanted to do was cheer in victory. Fun was the siren call of the young, but he had a feeling that the women would follow where the children led when it came to personal involvement.

“What do you do after this?” Graham asked as the boys untied the ropes holding the goats in place.

“We do lessons in the afternoon,” Henry said, flipping his blond hair out of his eyes with the back of his wrist.

“Lessons?” Graham asked. Daphne had mentioned lessons earlier, implying that Kit needed to be present for them. Had the women taken on the role of tutor as well?

He cast a glance at the house, as if he could see through the smooth stone sides to the women working within. How was it possible that three women managed the upkeep of a place this large? The children were lending a hand, of course, but how much help could twelve youths be?

“Where do you do your lessons?”

“In the library,” Henry said.

“Stuffy,” Arthur grumbled.

Graham was growing to really like Arthur and his short sentences. The boy managed to convey quite a bit while saying practically nothing. He’d have done well in London.

Henry shrugged. “It can get a bit crowded with all of us in there, but Mama Kit says if she had to teach us in shifts she wouldn’t get anything else done.”

Was there anything that woman didn’t do? “Don’t Daph—er, Mama Daphne and Mama Jess teach you anything?”

“Sure,” Henry said, standing and attempting to pick up his full milk pail. Arthur tried to do the same, but remembering the disaster the water pail had been, Graham stepped forward and picked up the younger boys’ pails.

The boys grinned at him, and Arthur skipped ahead, leading the way back to the house.

John took his own pail and fell in step beside Graham. Henry came along Graham’s other side, limping a bit as he favored his ankle. At least he was walking on it.

Walking well enough to kick at a loose pebble on the path, anyway. “Mama Daphne teaches us music and sewing,” he said with the bored disdain only young boys can muster. “She doesn’t make the boys sew much but said we didn’t know where life was taking us and there might not always be someone to fix a seam.”

Music and sewing. Skills a woman raised in a genteel setting would have in spades. Had both she and Kit fled from London? “And Mama Jess?”

Henry and John both grinned. Arthur spun around and walked backward a few steps. “Fighting.”

“And cooking,” John added.

Henry nodded, making his hair flop into his eyes. “She’s even more adamant that boys learn alongside the girls than Mama Daphne is. Says she knows plenty of men who would have starved if they hadn’t known how to make their own food.”

“Is she a good cook?” Graham asked, though he was really more curious to know if she was any good at the fighting. There was something about her that made him feel like he should walk a little more carefully. And someone had to have taught Kit how to throw a knife, even if the lesson hadn’t fully taken.

He had a feeling that someone had been Jess and that the little blond woman wouldn’t have had any trouble hitting the footpads with the knife if she’d been the one cornered in the park.

The boys made noises of affirmation, but Henry, of course, had more to add. “I think it’s because it involves knives. Mama Jess really likes her knives.”

Graham rolled his shoulders in reflex at the thought of Jess having an affinity for sharp cutting tools. The feel of his open shirt collar rolling against his neck was strange. He supposed dressing simply, as the boys did, was something he would become accustomed to, but while he enjoyed the freedom of an open collar, there was something uncomfortable about the unfamiliarity.

Probably not as much discomfort as the boys would experience when they had to add cravats and waistcoats to their adulthood wardrobes, though.

The steady sound of metal on wood greeted them as they entered the kitchen. Jess stood at the worktable, cutting vegetables with an efficiency that gave credence to Henry’s knife theory.

John stepped forward to show Graham where to put the pails, and Graham was a little glad it was on the other side of the room from Jess and her knife.

She glanced at the pails and nodded in his direction but didn’t say anything. What was she thinking? How did she feel about having him here? Was she happy about it the way Daphne seemed to be, or was she thinking of ways to replace those vegetables with his fingers?

As far as he could tell, her only goal was to ignore him as politely as possible.

Her gaze flitted to the children, the knife not stopping while she looked up. “Lessons in the library in half an hour.”

“Globe!” Arthur cried and grabbed Graham’s hand to drag him toward the stairs.

Henry seemed just as excited about the prospect of looking at a globe. John rolled his eyes and sighed, but he headed toward the stairs as well.

Graham followed because the alternative was to rip his hand away from the little fingers clasped around it. The sensation of that little hand grabbing his left him a bit wobbly in the knees. It was so small. It couldn’t even grab his hand correctly, instead wrapping itself around two of Graham’s fingers.

Henry’s hand curled into Graham’s free one, and the sensation hit him in the gut all over again.

Graham was happy to head up into the main part of the house again. That was where Kit was, after all, and she was the one he really wanted to learn more about, to the point that it was becoming a bit of an obsession.

Who was he trying to fool? He’d been obsessed when she’d been dressed in silk and hiding in a London ballroom. Now that she’d taken on the additional persona of country maiden happily ensconced in her unreachable house, he was even more intrigued.

Why had she been in London in the first place?

It had to have something to do with the children because everything she did seemed to revolve around them. But why London? What could she possibly need to do in London on behalf of twelve tiny country people?

Benedict was already in the library, book open on his lap, one foot propped on a footstool while his knee jiggled back and forth. Exactly the same as how Kettlewell would lounge around the common room reading. The similarity set Graham’s wits to woolgathering once more. Perhaps the tiny people weren’t all country folk.

Arthur pulled him over to the globe. It was large, resting on an elaborately carved three-legged base. The piece reminded him of the globe in his father’s study in Grandridge Hall, his Staffordshire estate.

In fact, everything in this room looked like something he could find at Grandridge Hall. What he’d seen of the rest of the house was simple, even a bit rough, but in here, the furniture was of a high quality. Walls of floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with books, and above the double-glass doors leading out to the lawn, a stained-glass scene of cherubs danced.

“Look at all the ocean,” Henry said as he spun the globe gently and with a measure of awe in his tone. “I wonder why God made so much water.”

“Noah,” Arthur grunted, softly running his own fingers across the surface.

Graham bit back a chuckle, but another one sounded from across the room. Benedict rose from the sofa and crossed the room to join the group at the globe. “You were listening to the story last night, Arthur. Good for you.”

Benedict, who was tall enough that his head nearly reached Graham’s shoulder, ruffled the little boy’s hair. Arthur beamed up at him before turning his attention back to the globe.

Graham made himself look at the globe since he assumed staring at Benedict for too long would make the boy nervous. India swung slowly by as the boys turned the wooden orb. Graham reached out his hand and planted a finger in the middle of the country. “I’ve been there.”

Three sets of wide eyes swung his way. “You have?”

Graham nodded. “Shall I tell you about the time I witnessed two elephants fighting?”

The boys all nodded, and soon Graham was telling story after story of the places he’d been, making sure to point out every location on the globe. The group around him grew until he was fairly certain he had the entire household of children at his feet, listening to him talk about the icy expanses of the Canadian tundra.

“I apologize for my delay, children, I—” Kit said as she entered the room, only to be shushed to silence by several of the children.

Graham didn’t miss a word of the story he was telling, but he couldn’t prevent a smile from curving his lips as he met Kit’s surprised gaze.

She sank into a chair that was situated a little bit behind the children and listened as he finished his story about fishing through a hole in the ice.

“D’you get sick on the boats?” asked Geoffrey, a very little boy with dark hair and round cheeks. “Sometimes Benedict swings me round p’tending I’m a boat, and it makes my stomach feel funny.”

A swirl of pride brought a grin to Graham’s face as he realized the child’s strange shortening of words was becoming easier to understand. “I’ve never gotten sick on the boat, but my horse was never exceedingly happy about riding on one.”

Graham had never been sure if the horse actually disliked riding on boats or if Dogberry knew that huffing and snorting got him coaxed onboard with a lump of sugar or whatever fruit happened to be close at hand.

That single question, though, opened the floodgates, and soon Graham was digging around in his brain for facts about ships that he wasn’t sure he even knew.

He hadn’t a clue how they spliced the ropes together because he’d never needed to care, but he had watched them hoist the sails several times and was able to give an accurate accounting of the practice that seemed to satisfy the children.

He talked so much that his throat began to itch, and his mouth felt thick and dry.

After he’d had to clear his throat three times in one sentence, Kit stood and clapped her hands. “I think Lord Wharton has taught us enough for one day.”

“So we don’t have to do lessons?” one of the girls asked.

Kit shook her head. “No. But Mama Daphne still wants to have music after dinner.”

The children ran from the room as if their shoes were on fire, and it drew a chuckle from Graham’s scratchy throat. Rich or poor, it seemed there were some traits all children had in common. Graham could remember escaping before his nanny could change her mind about something.

With all the children departed, however, it left Graham and Kit alone in the library. The warm and rich atmosphere of books and comfortable furniture made it feel more intimate than their walk through the woods.

She must have felt the same way, because she couldn’t seem to stop smoothing her hands over her skirts. Why didn’t she bolt the way the children had? Did she not trust him in the room that seemed to contain the only riches in the house?

Whatever it was, Graham wasn’t about to let this moment go to waste. For all her apparent nerves, she seemed softer than she had on their walk, more open. And he wasn’t above taking advantage of it. As much as he wanted to learn information as they felt comfortable telling him, he did only have a few days. At some point, he was going to have to push a little if he actually wanted his curiosity satisfied.

He rose from the chair he’d pulled over to the globe at some point in his story-telling extravaganza and propped himself on the back of the sofa Kit was standing beside.

He swallowed, trying to generate enough moisture in his mouth to talk without choking or coughing, holding her in place by holding her gaze. “I think it’s time you tell me who they are.”