Chapter Eighteen

Kit could feel her heart pounding in her head. Thrum, thrum, thrum. A constant, steady barrage of spears to the middle of her brain that told her Jess was absolutely wrong on this one. Thinking about the past had only left Kit feeling wrung out and defeated. She didn’t feel empowered or whatever else her friend expected to happen.

There were a dozen other women out there getting a second chance to do life right, to make a difference, but Kit hadn’t managed to give the same to Daphne.

Kit went through her morning routine slowly, letting the steady movements and the calm of habitual patterns ease the pain in her head. By the time she actually made it to the dining hall, the table was already covered in wooden boxes and colored papers. Jess leaned over the shoulders of the boys, directing them which papers needed to be cut into long narrow strips.

Quills of various sizes were scattered across the table, notches cut into their ends to hold the paper strips. Daphne had one of the quills in hand, trying to show Pheobe and Sophie how to slide the paper into the notch and then roll it around the quill until it made a tight paper cylinder that could then be glued onto the box. Sophie was trying to create a coil of her own while Pheobe tried to shove one of the papers up her nose.

The older girls were rather more successful, creating short rolls of paper in sizes varying from a little larger than a pin to nearly half an inch in diameter. Some of the coils were pinched into other shapes before getting glued into the pattern forming on one of the boxes Benedict had crafted.

Kit was distracted from the paper filigree as Lord Wharton walked into the room, a smile on his face. His shirt was badly wrinkled and showing signs of having been worn for days, something a man like him had probably never experienced before. Kit couldn’t think of a single article of clothing in the house that she could offer him that would be more comfortable.

Clean clothes were one of the aristocratic luxuries she’d never been able to remove from her life. She washed her shifts with a frequency that would have stunned most of the other women living in the countryside, but she couldn’t help it. Just thinking of wearing the same cloth against her skin for that long made her itch.

“What’s this?” The man reached over Blake’s shoulder and picked up a thin strip of paper the boy had just trimmed off the larger sheet.

“Paper,” Arthur piped up.

Lord Wharton grinned. “I see that.”

“Boxes,” the little boy added.

Lord Wharton nodded gravely, taking a moment to look at the variety of boxes spread along the table: a tea caddy with rotating bins to hold more than one type of tea, a jewelry box with hidden compartments in the back, even a small model of Brighton Palace that contained several drawers and doors. Benedict loved to craft elaborate creations with moving parts and hidden openings. There were several normal boxes on the table as well, all of them just waiting to have the recessed panels filled in by the delicate paper filigree.

“The question is,” he said, “what are you doing with the boxes and papers?”

Several children started talking at once. Sarah pulled him down into a chair and shoved a quill into his hand. The feather portion was more than a bit ragged, but the slitted tip was usable.

Watching Lord Wharton try to slide the paper strip into the notch and then wind the paper into a tight coil was almost humorous enough to make Kit forget the tragic past she’d made herself relive the night before.

“I had no idea this was so difficult,” Lord Wharton murmured on his third attempt at making a small paper circle.

Eugenia, who was probably the best of the girls at this work, began laying out an elaborate design on the side of one of the boxes, gluing red, brown, and blue paper coils side by side on the box’s surface. Kit stepped next to her to assist with the glue, but her gaze kept straying to Lord Wharton. His clumsy attempts were drawing enough notice that the children obviously weren’t going to create as many items as normal this morning.

Kit bit her tongue to keep from pointing out that fact, though. After all, wasn’t it her drive for more that had sent Daphne to that ball all those years ago? Perhaps if she let life follow its course, tried to enjoy the little moments along the way, it would be better.

Lord Wharton wasn’t going to be here forever, and they still had two weeks before Nash came to pick up their items for market.

Today, she’d let the children smile and wouldn’t push.

Maybe Jess’s point about learning from the past hadn’t been completely wrong.

After two hours of work that had been more fun than it had ever been before, Kit dismissed the children to do their other morning duties so that they could go on the picnic.

No matter what fun outing was planned, there were still goats and chickens to see to, still daily household chores that needed to be done. It was all well and good to say that her focus on goals had ruined Daphne’s life, but maybe letting go of that completely wasn’t the answer.

Graham had no idea his picnic plan was going to cause such a commotion. Considering that the children spent most of the time outside and saw the lake every single day, a picnic shouldn’t have been so exciting. Yet there they were, practically running all over each other as soon as Kit released them from paper-rolling duty.

The table was cleared as the paper and other materials were stashed in a cabinet that stood against one wall in the room.

Then they scattered. Off to the goats and the chickens and whatever other chores had to be done around a house every day. Graham had never really thought through the necessary daily tasks before. He wandered to the kitchen where the women prepared the food.

Daphne lifted a large basket in the air to avoid one of the children as he ran through the kitchen. She was laughing as she set the basket on the large worktable. “They’ve never moved this fast before.”

Jess slid a second basket onto the worktable. “They’re afraid it’s going to disappear.”

The frown on Daphne’s face reflected the way Graham felt about the statement. As far as he could tell, the children didn’t have much, at least not much by Graham’s standards. There were no horses, no tutors, no trunks full of clothing so that ruining shirts and pants weren’t a worry. Yes, they had space and toys and food, but they also worked around the manor for most of the day. Was a life like that enough to make them worry that something as simple as a picnic might be too far out of their reach?

“We’re not going to let that happen,” Daphne said with more conviction than Graham had heard the soft-spoken woman possess in the entire time he’d been at the house. “I don’t care if the sky opens up and God tells us to build an ark. We’re having a picnic.”

One of Jess’s eyebrows lifted as she turned from where she was slicing bread at the side table. “If the skies were to open up today, I think it’d be a bit late to start building an ark.”

Daphne tried to maintain her indignation, but the trembling pull on one side of her mouth gave her away. “Oh, go slice your finger off.”

“Who’s slicing a finger off?” Benedict said as he walked into the room to collect a basket to carry.

Graham had finally stopped jolting every time he saw the boy, but he hadn’t been able to stop the emotional kick he felt. Was it because Benedict was about to leave the safety of this place?

Daphne smiled. “Jess is.”

Benedict snorted. “Not likely. She trimmed the chicken feather off John’s boot the other day from twenty paces.”

The bundle in Daphne’s hands tumbled to the table, and Benedict jerked to catch it. She swallowed hard. “He wasn’t wearing them at the time, was he?”

Jess’s shoulders shook as she wrapped up the sliced bread. “Yes, Daphne, I’ve taken to throwing knives at the children now, but only when I find them extremely vexing.”

“You throw them at everything else,” Daphne grumbled before reaching out and hugging the small blonde as she placed the bread in the basket.

Jess didn’t look entirely comfortable with the embrace but leaned her head into it anyway, pulling away as soon as Daphne relaxed her arms.

Something about the interaction reminded Graham of how he and his friends interacted. Without a doubt, if Graham were to say something negative about Jess, Daphne would be the first in line to frown at him.

After Jess threw her knife at him, of course.

Kit charged into the kitchen. “Have we packed a blanket?”

“Yes,” Daphne said, patting the basket in Graham’s arms. “As well as plates and cups, and everything else.”

The assurance of “everything else” didn’t stop Kit from running down a list of everything they’d need for the picnic.

Graham held on to whatever they gave him but gave his attention to watching the women. There were secrets here, inside every feminine head, but it was Kit who most fascinated him. He’d never worked so hard to get to know someone in his life, not even when there’d been language barriers during his travels. His biggest effort then was having to find and hire a translator.

Unfortunately, he didn’t think Kit interpreters were something that were very easily found.

The last time Graham had gone on a picnic, there’d been tables and chairs, tablecloths, fine china, and a servant making sure no one’s wineglass was ever empty.

Even though this one consisted of several blankets spread across a grass carpet, he had to fill his own glass of lemonade, and most of the meal was eaten from whatever could be piled onto a slice of bread, Graham found himself having a better time.

Arranging everyone so that he had a spot beside Kit had been simple. Most of the children were running hoops up and down the glen, pausing to occasionally stop by the blanket and stuff their mouths full of whatever they could reach. Daphne had eaten and then waded into the middle of the fray to make sure no one ran into anyone else. Jess was leaned up against a tree, eyes half closed, as if contemplating taking a nap in the warm afternoon sun.

Graham nudged a tart in Kit’s direction. “Try one. They’re delicious.”

She picked it up and pulled a small crumb of crust off the edge. “Why were you in the forest two days ago?”

Honestly, he was surprised it had taken this long for her to ask him. As far as he’d been able to tell, there was nothing else out this way other than a few patches of farmland, likely populated by people much too busy to care about the house in the middle of the forest.

He broke off a piece of his own tart, watching her closely to see how she responded to his answer. “I was looking for Henry.”

She choked on air as he popped the bite he’d broken off into his mouth, fighting a smile. He loved surprising her. The touch of color that streaked across her cheeks was adorable.

“Henry?” she gasped.

He nodded. “I met a young boy named Daniel in a shop in town. He told me about his friend Henry who lived in the trees on the north side of town.” He shrugged. “Curiosity got the best of me.”

“Oh Daniel.” A small chuckle accompanied the shaking of Kit’s head. “And that’s all it took for you to strand yourself on the other side of the River Og? Curiosity over the musings of a six-year-old boy?”

“He’s six?” Graham asked, avoiding mentioning that he’d been trying to connect the boy’s father with the missing Priscilla. “I’d wondered. I haven’t spent enough time with children to have much of a guess as to their ages.”

“No children of your own?” she asked.

“I’m not married.”

She cast a slow glance around the glen at the running, giggling children. “I haven’t noticed that stopping everyone.”

He didn’t want to get pulled back into a discussion about the children. He wanted to know about her. Sadly, he was probably going to have to use the children to do that. He’d like to think that one day soon he wouldn’t have to resort to such tactics, but he was running out of one days. “How long has Benedict been in your care?”

“Twelve years.” She sighed. “He was our first. It’s hard to believe that he’s practically a man. The master woodworker is a friend of ours. He’s helped out at the manor a time or two, so he knows Ben’s situation. I trust him, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry about what will happen to Benedict when he leaves here.”

Twelve years. So Graham had been in school when the boy had been born. And when Kit had started taking care of other people’s children.

And that was probably the strangest thing of all. What made a young woman leave society behind and bury herself in the country with children? There wasn’t any roundabout way to ask. He peeked at her face, the features relaxed, a soft smile on her lips as if she were happy without even realizing it. “Why do you do it?”

Would she pretend to misunderstand? Give him some sort of vague answer?

“Because I owe it to someone,” she said softly. It wasn’t what Graham had expected. He had to admit, he’d wondered for a moment if it was possible Benedict was her child, if she’d been forced to run away, but something about that didn’t quite sit right with him. She was too strong, too blunt to have fallen into such a situation. Of course, he had no idea what she’d been like thirteen years ago.

“Who?”

Her gaze cut across the glen and then dropped to her half-eaten tart. “It doesn’t matter. The only important thing is that I made a mistake, pushed someone into a bad situation, and I had to do whatever I could to rectify it.”

The result of the bad situation had to have been Benedict. This wasn’t the sort of endeavor a woman simply took up because she felt like it. “And why do you take in the others?”

She broke off another small crumb but ground the pastry between her fingers until it turned to dust. Her voice was quiet when she finally spoke. “Because my life was already ruined. There wasn’t any reason for someone else’s to be. I think, on some level, it was what I thought God wanted me to do. That He’d entrusted me with this idea, then this place, then these children. Day by day, He lets us keep doing it, so we do.”

What could he possibly say to that? Of all the things, of all the reasons, he hadn’t expected that. He’d thought she’d say something noble, something profound, maybe even something biblical since it was obvious that Bible teachings were a frequent part of their life here. But that she had also included the admission that she retreated here to get away from a ruined life, and that she wanted to save other women from a similar fate, knocked his conversation plans askew.

The argument he’d overheard in London, about her promising never to return, suddenly made a bit more sense.

Still, he didn’t know what to say. So he said nothing at all. He could see the tension in her shoulders, could feel her closing him off. If he’d had all the time in the world, he’d have made a joke, put her at ease, but he was leaving soon. If he was going to return to London with his curiosity satisfied enough to get her out of his head, he had to get his answers now. There wouldn’t be another chance.

And he really didn’t want her plaguing him after he returned home. The few days when he’d known her only as the lady in green had been bad enough. What would it be like now?

“Where’d you get the green dress?”

She looked up from her crumbled tart pastry and then glanced down at her rough blue calico muslin. “What green dress?”

He leaned closer, invading her space the way he had that night at the ball. “The one from the ball.”

Her voice chilled, and her eyes dropped away from his. “From an old friend. I wear it to honor her. As a promise. It’s needed a few alterations over the years, but I don’t wear it often.”

Graham tilted his head and looked at her. The dress might not have been hers originally, but there was no question it was hers now. She was the type of woman who would wear green in a ballroom.

The kind of woman he’d been desperately looking for at the ball not so long ago.

He’d never dreamed it would take a friend’s family crisis and a flooded river for him to find her.