Chapter Thirty-Four

They stood in silence as the sun began to fade from the room. Disconnected from the main part of the house as they were, the noises of children going about their evening routines were muffled and easily ignored.

Graham wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t even sure what to think. She’d canceled the contracts. What did that mean? Did it mean anything? Did it mean she’d changed or just that she got scared because he’d found out?

In the end, Kit broke the silence first. “I’m glad you found Priscilla.”

Graham leaned against the wall near one of the windows so the fading sunlight streaming in the uncovered window would illuminate her features, hopefully allowing him to see something of the Kit he thought was there. “Actually,” he said with a grin, “she found us. We followed the one and only clue Mrs. Corbet was able to give us and then we stumbled around until we couldn’t think of anything else to do, so we sat down for a cup of tea. She decided to join us.”

A small grin emerged from Kit. “That sounds like Priscilla. I was surprised when Margaretta brought her to us. She wasn’t like most of the women we helped. She was upset and scared, certainly, but the fact that she had nowhere to go and that her father was sending her away didn’t seem to devastate her.”

“Is that how you find the women you help? Through the solicitor’s wife?”

Kit bit her lip and looked away. “Er, yes. Margaretta keeps in contact with a select group of women in London. They know the gossip and the people involved. They’re the type of women who somehow know what’s going on before everyone else does.”

Why was she suddenly uncomfortable about this? He smiled, trying to comfort her. “That sounds like my mother. She never seems surprised by a scandal.”

His comment didn’t seem to set her at ease. If anything, she looked a bit more sickly.

“Care for a cup of tea?” he asked. Perhaps if they both had something to do, something to look at, this conversation would be easier.

She nodded and followed him down the stairs. The kitchen was empty when they got down there, but Graham’s pallet had reappeared and the fire was still burning low. Graham set about heating water for tea while Kit sat on a stool by the worktable, watching him with a lopsided grin. “How very domestic of you.”

Graham grinned as he gathered two teacups. “It’s one of the only chores in this house I actually know how to do. And that’s only because I’ve seen it done so many times.”

They fell into silence again as the water boiled, but this time it felt a bit more comfortable.

“Oliver wouldn’t have let her go, you know,” Graham said quietly as steam started to rise from the kettle. “If she’d come to him instead of her father. Oliver would have helped her—is helping her now.”

Kit nodded. “We didn’t know that when we talked to her, although I’m surprised the—er, Margaretta’s connections didn’t think about it. I suppose we’re all guilty sometimes of assuming our problems are too big for those around us to handle.”

She continued talking as she scooped the tea into the cups while Graham retrieved the kettle. “Most of our girls are broken. We set them up in homes with women willing to nurse the baby when it’s born, and they’re usually too sad and disturbed to do anything else but wait until the baby is born. I try to stay aware of what happens to them, but it’s difficult because we don’t have any communication. In some ways that makes it harder, but in other ways, a complete break has been easier for both the child and the mother. The child can grow up without any false expectations, and the mother can find a way to salvage her future.”

Graham took a sip of tea, wishing there were sugar to put in but knowing they couldn’t afford it. “What about your future, Kit?”

“This is my future.” She drank deeply of the tea. “You were right, you know. God wasn’t impressed with my attempts to earn forgiveness. Daphne forgave me a long time ago. I don’t think she ever even blamed me. And even if God was interested in my penance, well, I don’t think He approved of the method.

“Still, I can’t leave Daphne. I can’t abandon these children to work in the same poorhouses I saved them from. Even if we never take in another child, it will be years before the ones we have are old enough to be on their own. By then . . .” She shrugged. “By then my best future would probably be me and Daphne finding a way to move into a little cottage in a small village, selling paper boxes and goat cheese.”

Graham bit his tongue to keep from saying she could have a better future with him. He might be able to forgive her one day—maybe sooner than he would have imagined—but he wasn’t ready to go back to where they were, to the thoughts he’d had when he kissed her in the woods. He was sure she wasn’t ready either. Might never be.

So he changed the subject. “What is your favorite picture from the portrait room?”

She laughed and ducked her head as a slight blush crept over her cheeks. “You’ll laugh at me. I actually liked it so much that I put it elsewhere in the house when we moved the paintings out to protect them.”

Graham grinned and leaned forward. “What is it?”

“A dog.” She smiled. “I’m telling you, it looks like he’s grinning at you. It’s the most ridiculous portrait ever, especially nestled among all the somber faces.”

From there the conversation flowed freely. They talked about silly things, occasionally venturing into the serious but never far enough to break the mood. They talked about food and dances, about which children had a knack for musical instruments and which ones were confined to playing the triangle. They talked about everything in a way they hadn’t managed to do when he’d been here before. Was it the lack of secrets between them?

When she was blinking slowly and nodding her head, he guided her up the stairs to her bedchamber. He planted a kiss on the top of her head before pushing her toward her room.

“Sleep well, Kit.”

Her smile was soft and her eyes droopy as she looked back at him. “You, too, Graham. And thank you.”

He retreated to his pallet and was surprised by how easily his own eyes slid closed.

As the house got put back to rights, Kit marveled at the small treasures she’d forgotten about, like ornately carved boxes and gilded vases. The sorts of things she never looked twice at in London and had put away when they cleaned out the house. Seeing the items that were so similar to her old life taking up space in the home where she lived her new life threw Kit a little off balance.

Seeing Graham didn’t help matters. The kitchen door was propped open as she worked with Jess to prepare food for the day, and every time he walked by with a piece of furniture, he’d smile and nod. The four oldest boys trotted after him with arms similarly laden down, like a strange game of Follow the Leader.

Daphne bustled into the kitchen with the eggs, and Kit decided to take the moment to talk, since finding any time where it was only the three of them had become nearly impossible. “I’ve been thinking.” Kit took a deep breath and then plunged on. “We’ll have to move to the caretaker’s cottage as soon as may be.”

Jess crossed her arms. “The building’s not that large. If we cram all the children in there, we won’t last a week before it becomes unbearable.”

“I know.” Kit swallowed. “Which is why I think, for at least a time, we’re going to need to split up. Daphne can take the cottage with half the children. Benedict was set to move in with Mr. Leighton full time in a month anyway, so that should be easy enough to move ahead.

“I’m sure Mrs. Lancaster would let one of us stay in her upper rooms with two of the children. That means we only have one adult and three children left to find space for. I can take three of the boys and bunk up in the barn for a little while. It shouldn’t be too bad in the summer. That’d be a bit tight, but doable.”

“As miserable as that sounds,” said Jess dryly, “with the exception of Mrs. Lancaster’s rooms, that only works until the new owner is on the premises. We could keep a few children at the cottage after he’s here, but he’d notice three cherubim living in his barn.”

Kit sighed, knowing what Jess said was true. “We’ll have to come up with somewhere else, then. Unfortunately we can’t use the attic until we get the roof repaired. In the meantime, we’ve got the cottage and the downstairs servant rooms. It will be a bit cramped, but we can manage for now.”

The other women nodded.

Inside, Kit gave a quiet sigh of relief. Jess wasn’t saying she intended to leave.

Graham poked his head in the door, his arms now emptied. The smile he gave Kit reminded her of the way he’d smiled at her those first days he’d been trapped here by the rain, before it had all fallen apart between them. “Where do you want the bedframes?”

Kit rose to join Graham and the boys in their endeavors. “We’ll talk more about it later,” she said to Daphne and Jess.

Working side by side, without secrets and worries between them, Kit found herself craving the teasing, the closeness, the anticipation that had been between her and Graham during his first visit. Even if nothing ever came of it—and realistically, nothing ever could—she wanted that light back in their relationship.

But since she was the one who had broken his trust, she was probably going to need to be the first to reach out.

She needed to do something fun. Not just for her and Graham, but for the children. They knew that this furniture wasn’t for them, and while they’d tried to pretend everything was the same, everyone knew it wasn’t.

The only problem was, she didn’t have any idea what to do.

Graham slowly set the chair he was carrying down in the front hall. What was going on? The ropes they’d been using to haul the furniture were strung everywhere: twisted around furniture and around each other, slinking along the floor through doorways. There were even a couple draped through an open window.

The children each had their hand on a rope and were giggling as they worked their way around and between each other and the furniture to follow their rope.

Blake got to the end of his rope first and found a piece of candy attached to the end.

He gave a loud whoop and then ran around the house showing everyone his prize. The children renewed their efforts to follow their own ropes to the end.

Graham couldn’t help but smile at the scene.

On the other side of the front hall stood Kit, smiling and laughing along with the children, tickling the little ones as they went by. She looked like the woman in the green dress again, who teased him about plants and names. No, she looked more alive than the woman in the green dress he’d met that first night. She looked free.

“We made you one, too, Wharton.” Graham dropped his gaze to see Alice holding up a rope. “You have to keep one hand on the rope at all times and then you get a treat at the end.”

“Is that right?” Graham asked as he took the rope. “What happens if I let go?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. Mama Kit didn’t tell us that. We just all kept our hands on the rope.”

So it had been Kit who threw together this impromptu little game. “I think that sounds like an excellent plan.”

Graham wrapped one hand around the rope and began to follow it. It got a little tricky to keep his hand on the rope when it went under a chair, but he managed. Across the room, he saw two other children handing Kit a rope as well.

It was so much fun watching Kit follow her rope that he almost forgot to follow his own.

But then his hand met Kit’s.

They stood in the middle of the front hall, a mass of chaos around them, hands touching as they held the same length of rope.

“I suppose you are my treat,” Graham said with a smile, enjoying the blush that crept across her cheeks.

The children around them dissolved into giggles.

Graham gave them his widest grin. “What exactly am I supposed to do with her?”

“Tickle her!”

“Tie her up!”

“Kiss her!”

“Make her do your chores!”

Graham slid a hand over his mouth to hide his smile as his gaze met Kit’s. He didn’t really have any chores, and while kissing her was certainly appealing, the state of their relationship wasn’t such that he could really consider doing such a thing. Tickling was rather the same problem. Tying her up it was, then. “The little pirates have spoken,” Graham said. “You’re going to have to walk the plank.”

He grabbed the rope and wrapped it around her several times before taking both ends in one hand and leading her across the floor, laughing the entire way.

“What do you say, mateys?” Graham asked the crew of children pressed in around him. “Shall we toss her overboard?”

“Yes!” the children cried before running out to the front porch.

Graham hauled Kit out to the low balustrade surrounding the raised front porch. “Up you go.”

Kit’s eyes widened as she looked over the side. “You can’t be serious.”

He leaned close until his nose almost touched hers. It was a bad idea. It made him think about claiming little Sophie’s suggestion that he kiss her. Instead, he asked, “Do you trust me?”

She stared at him for less than a second before turning and stepping up onto the low stone wall.

Graham’s heart pounded in his chest. He had to clear his throat twice before he could speak. “On the count of three, mateys!”

The children cheered mightily. A few of them ran down the steps to stand on the ground below her.

“One! Two! Three!”

Graham grabbed Kit around the waist with one hand and lowered her over the railing until she was dangling from the ropes he’d wrapped around his other arm. Then he let her go and lowered her the rest of the way to the ground, where she was met by a swarm of children who tackled her and did the tickling for him. The laughter was glorious and infectious.

A little piece of Graham’s resolve melted away.