Chapter Twenty-Two

He was gone.

She’d watched from the window in the girls’ bedchamber as he’d ridden away with waves and hugs for all the children. He’d looked around, obviously noticing her absence, but she couldn’t go down there, couldn’t let them see how much his leaving hurt.

Not that he could have stayed. She knew that.

But she missed him already.

When she regained her composure and went downstairs, it was obvious that his departure had left a pall over the entire house. Everyone moved a bit slower for the afternoon, but soon routine won over the sadness and by the time they sat down to dinner, life had returned mostly to normal.

For everyone except Kit.

“Mama Kit?”

Kit blinked down at the food on her plate before looking up at Sarah. “Yes?”

“I called your name four times. Are you well?”

Kit forced herself to smile. “Yes, of course. Just thinking. Did you finish changing the linens in the bedchambers today?”

Conversation fell back into its normal channels: discussing the daily tasks, telling funny animal stories, and trying to understand what Geoffrey was saying.

For Kit, the evening routine wasn’t any better than the afternoon had been. Somehow, Graham had insinuated himself into every part of the manor, and she saw reminders everywhere that made her think of him. She felt his kiss on her lips every time she swallowed.

This wasn’t any way to live her life if she wanted to move on.

So she grabbed a book from the library and slipped out the glass doors, careful to skirt far around the walled garden so none of the children working in the outbuildings or the stable yard would see her slipping away as the sun slid down the sky.

Not that any of them would say anything. Daphne and Jess were often after Kit to take more time for herself, telling her that constantly pushing herself was going to break her one day.

The truth was, though, that Kit didn’t particularly like being by herself. When she was by herself, nothing was loud enough to drown out the voices of worry and guilt that plagued her endlessly. Laughter drifted over the garden wall as Kit passed the corner. Daggers of pain stabbed her heart even as the children’s happiness soothed her like a balm. The constant emotional battle was one she’d become accustomed to most of the time.

Today, it felt like it was ripping her apart. The craving for what might have been clashed against the guilt for what she’d torn apart and the anger over the betrayal of the people who were supposed to protect her.

She hugged the book tighter, desperate to escape into another world.

The loud gurgling of the rushing brook announced that she was getting closer to her favorite spot. The tree trunks thickened and the carpet of plants and flowers beneath her feet thinned until she was treading on small sticks and pebbles, the ground too shielded by the canopy of intertwined limbs to grow much.

And then she was there. Her secret tree. Although apparently it wasn’t as secret as she once thought. A small circle of light where the sun slid through a break in the forest roof. A patch of flowers that surrounded a tree that had grown at a peculiar angle out of the steep bank, jutting out and then curving up toward the sun, creating a perfect reading nook. Like a magical boat that would carry Kit away from real life.

It took a few wiggles and a good deal of skirt adjustment, but in moments she was settled into her personal hideaway, opening the book and drifting away.

But she didn’t drift far. The hero’s golden-brown locks darkened in her mind until his hair was nearly black and a bit too mussed to be fashionable. She saw golden-brown eyes and a mouth that looked constantly on the verge of a smile, even though the character’s face was not described in such detail.

She slammed the book shut and rested her head against the tree. Yes, she’d spent her entire adult life exposed to the worst of London’s elite. Men who claimed the title of gentleman only when it suited them. Fathers who thought more about their reputation and ability to use their daughter’s hand in marriage as a bargaining tool than they cared about her health and happiness. A society that would trample in the dust anyone who didn’t conform to their expectations and leave them there to die, possibly quite literally.

There was no question that it had made her a bit jaded, convinced her that the entirety of the aristocratic world was corrupt and horrible.

And then Graham came along.

He’d abandoned London in the height of the Season to help a friend. A friend who was apparently consumed with more concern for his sister’s well-being than he was for the reputation of his family or his own amusements.

She wished she’d had the opportunity to know more men like that. It was nice to know, however, that the upper echelon of her country wasn’t a complete waste of breath, that some of them were good and noble as they were supposed to be.

Yes, it was nice to know. But it hurt, too. It hurt because she would never have anything to do with the good people, the upright people. They didn’t need her help or require her manipulation.

She didn’t deserve to be among them anyway. She deserved to be in the shadows, cleaning up life for other people. If it hadn’t been for her, Daphne would have been a nice squire’s wife by now. Possibly even the wife of a clergyman. She’d be quiet and respectable, spreading her good nature to her neighbors and a houseful of children she could actually claim as her own. Instead, she was here in the backwoods of a small English town, pretending her child was just like all the others so he wouldn’t feel different.

This was what Jess had been driving at. Kit may have made herself remember, but she hadn’t let herself feel, hadn’t let herself embrace the memories. She’d viewed them from a distance, as if they’d happened to someone else.

But now she couldn’t stop them. Everything flooded her brain at once, and it felt like all of it had happened yesterday. The ball, Daphne’s revelation, Graham’s kiss, all of it piled into one emotional mass. It had been years since she’d let herself cry, but since Graham’s arrival, the tears had pooled in her eyes as easily as laughter had come to her lips.

Salty drops of emotion spilled over her lashes for the second time that day and she couldn’t do anything to stop them.

So she sat in the tree. And sobbed.

Oliver was sitting in the inn’s taproom, staring into the fire and sipping on a mug of ale when Graham returned. Stopping in the doorway, Graham took a minute to compose his thoughts. What was he going to say to Oliver? Graham had never kept a secret before, at least not a big one. He’d have to find a way to tell Oliver where he’d been for the past several days without speaking about Haven Manor, Kit, or anything else he’d actually done.

Given the current mess his thoughts and emotions were in, that was going to be a tall order.

Oliver’s eyes widened when Graham stepped into his line of vision. “What happened to you? You’ve been gone so long I expected you decided to make the jaunt out to the white horse in Pitstone, but why take such a long journey without a change of clothes?”

Graham grimaced. Oliver didn’t know the half of it. The jacket and waistcoat that he hadn’t worn in the country were covering the griminess of his shirt. A bath and change of clothing were going to be his next order of business. “I thought I was just going on a ride through the countryside. The rain trapped me on the other side of the river.”

They’d traveled enough that Oliver accepted that explanation without issue. Weather had hindered them more than once. He grinned over his mug of ale. “Farmer’s hayloft?”

“Kitchen pallet.”

Oliver winced. “For three nights? And you’re still walking?”

“I’ll be happy to see my bed tonight.” He’d be even happier to have a bath.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter much that you didn’t go out to Pitstone. It’s probably as much of a wild goose chase as the carvings in Pewsey and Westbury were.” He offered his mug to Graham. “I’m not holding out much hope for the market tomorrow either. When I wasn’t riding out to neighboring towns, I walked this one end to end. There’s nothing. The solicitor is incredibly boring and annoyingly upstanding, with the exception of the chess set contract, which I can’t even really blame him for. If someone’s idiotic enough to sign that thing, they deserve to be fleeced.”

The solicitor was craftier than Oliver knew, but Graham couldn’t say anything without endangering Kit.

Being an open and honest person was certainly an easier life.

He drank the rest of Oliver’s ale while the man shared everything he’d done over the past few days. Graham listened with half of his attention. The rest of his mind was mulling over the chess contracts. How did the solicitor find time to handle Haven Manor, the strange chess pieces, and his normal clients? Or was everything more connected than he’d thought?

The chess pieces had rather slipped his mind while he was at Haven Manor. It had been difficult enough to keep remembering he was supposed to be helping Oliver and Priscilla. Did Kit know Mr. Banfield was involved in getting people to pay exorbitant amounts for simple chess pieces? He wanted to throw the mug in frustration. He was missing something, but he felt like he was missing something that he already knew. He just couldn’t quite solidify it into an actual thought.

“We’ll leave for London on Monday,” Oliver said with a sigh. “Maybe Father will be more amenable to talking since a few weeks will have passed.”

Graham nodded, because there was nothing else he could do. As much as he’d like to talk to the solicitor again, he could hardly tell the other man he knew about Haven Manor. Especially since Oliver wasn’t likely to let him talk to Mr. Banfield alone.

The bath and clean clothing felt as rejuvenating as Graham had expected and the night’s sleep in a bed even better.

Still, he wrestled with the idea that he knew something. Never before had he felt like he didn’t know his own mind.

Overnight, the sleepy little town erupted. Oliver and Graham stepped out of the inn and into the colorful, noisy world of Marlborough’s market.

They strolled among the selling stalls and crowds of people on High Street, looking for, though not really expecting to find, a clue as to Priscilla’s whereabouts. Graham really wasn’t sure what such a clue would look like unless they stumbled across Priscilla herself. And if she’d gone into hiding, she was smart enough not to come out on market day.

Graham stopped at a stall displaying boxes covered with paper filigree. Colors and patterns he recognized spread out across the table before him on tea boxes, jewelry trays, and even a chipboard reticule. One box was angled to display a hidden compartment in the back, very similar to the ones the children had been working to cover a few days ago.

He resisted the urge to buy the entire lot.

Oliver looked over Graham’s shoulder. “Are you planning on buying something for your mother?”

“Yes,” Graham said, partly because he needed an excuse after being found gawking over the boxes, but mostly because it would at least give him a reason to buy one, to support the children in some small way.

He chose a tea caddy with a large flower on the front and swirling leaves extending out across the sides. The exposed wood was pale gold in color and the flower seemed to grow from within the little box. Which child had made the design? Eugenia? She’d certainly had a flair for laying the swirls and loops just right.

“That’s a fine one.”

Graham looked up into the smiling face of the old woman who ran the store where he’d met Daniel. Graham cleared his throat. “Yes, it is.”

She named him a price, and Graham handed her a few coins that more than covered the number she listed. “Make sure the artist gets a little something extra,” he said quietly. “Maybe a box of those chocolate diablotins I saw on the shelf in your store.”

The old woman’s eyes widened and her smile fell a bit. Her composure recovered quickly and the smile righted itself. “I’ll see to it.”

He nodded and tucked the tea caddy under his arm before walking through the rest of the market.

Oliver was almost as anxious to return to London as he’d been to leave it. Then again, Oliver threw himself headlong into everything he did so it wasn’t a complete surprise.

His energy had an edge to it, though, that worried Graham. A desperation. He wouldn’t have understood it before, but he thought maybe he did now. He found himself fretting over what would happen to the children as they got older, particularly Benedict and Sarah.

And their future wasn’t as questionable or imminent as Priscilla’s possibly was.

Graham’s view of nearly everything had changed.

When he arrived home, he was met by a servant who took Dogberry to the mews, where the horse was competently brushed, fed, and cared for. Never before had Graham considered where the people performing those tasks had come from or the amount of work they put into having his horse healthy and ready whenever he wanted to ride.

When he strode into the house, he was met by another servant who took his hat and luggage and promised a hot bath and tea tray would be delivered to his room shortly.

In his room was a perfectly tucked feather mattress on a perfectly strung bedframe. There would be water for a bath and delicious food that he’d more than taken for granted.

With his every need and comfort seen to, he should have finally been able to get a good night’s sleep.

But he didn’t.

Even when he’d returned from his unorthodox travels, he hadn’t been this aware of every benefit life had given him. Today he was, though. He was aware of every blessing, every minutia that birth had bestowed upon him that made his life good.

And he was thankful in ways that he never had been before.

Because for the first time he realized that it wasn’t birth, it wasn’t a right, it wasn’t some special ordination from God—it was a blessing. A gift. Yes, God had put him on this earth in a position of title and power, but it wasn’t because Graham was special or more important. The very idea that anyone would tell Benedict or Blake or young, quiet Arthur that they were curses who never should have been born made Graham’s hands curl into fists.

It could just as easily have been Graham learning to milk goats and planning on living a life in trade.

When he’d been at Haven Manor, he’d felt a bit guilty that what he’d once considered hardships were nothing more than inconvenience, but the long ride home, blocking out Oliver’s constant rantings about his father, he’d had time to think about it. He didn’t feel guilty anymore, but he did feel incredibly, unbelievably blessed.

The thing about living an incredibly blessed life, though, was that it gave him the means and the opportunity to do something. He could make life better for the children of Haven Manor, for the women raising them.

For Kit.

The only problem was that he didn’t know how.