Chapter Five

Nash’s interruption provided the perfect opportunity for Kit to slip out of the house and retreat to the barn under the guise of sending the children to assist with the unloading of the wagon. Plenty of hands were already helping, but it was the fastest way to escape from Jess’s knowing smirk.

It also let her relieve the weight of the cloak still draped across her shoulders. Every time she moved, her hip bumped the thick stack of papers still tucked in the depths of the cloak’s pocket, a reminder of the necessary but unpleasant side of providing a life for these children and a future for their mothers.

The chickens clucked at the children as they raced out of the barn and up the slight hill to the house. A goat bleated in the remaining silence, but otherwise the barn soon grew still. Satisfied that she was alone for the moment, Kit slid the bound sheaf of papers from her cloak pocket and entered the empty stall at the end, the one they milked the goats in when it was raining.

She reached into the unused feed bin and felt around for the short iron bar hidden in the crevices of the worn boards. With practiced efficiency, she pried up the loose floorboard beneath the feed bin, revealing an old wooden chest. The lid didn’t have to be opened far for her to slide the papers inside, hiding away the proof of Lord Charles’s dealings with smugglers. They would remain hidden as long as the agreed-upon payments kept coming, just like all the other secrets she’d dug up over the years. Men who were dishonorable in one area of their lives were just as willing to break the rules in other areas.

The lid fell closed faster than she’d intended, sending a sharp crack through the quiet barn. But Kit didn’t want to see the contents of the box, didn’t want to think about why they were there. If she dwelled on it, she’d become angry all over again. Angry that people who did those things, who had every intention of abandoning those who couldn’t care for themselves, still lived lives of elegance and ease.

It wasn’t fair, but it was life. And if she could bury the ugly side of life under the floorboard in the barn, then it didn’t have to touch those she cared about, living a few hundred feet away in a manor home that had been all but abandoned. Just like her. Just like the children. Just like all of them.

Kit slid the floorboard back into place and stomped on it for good measure. The deed was done, another child’s future secure. The pull of the cloak on her shoulders felt lighter as she returned to the house to change out of the ball gown she’d been wearing for two days.

Once simple muslin floated around her body once more, she drew the first full, deep breath she’d drawn since departing London.

As she left her room, she glanced at the tall clock that sat in the saloon that they’d converted to a large dining hall. Thin strips of coiled paper covered the inlay of the clock cabinet, decorative swirls pressed together in a colorful pattern, a project from their early days in the manor house, when Kit and Daphne had only one child to watch and plenty of time in the evenings to indulge in the sorts of activities they’d done when they’d lived genteel lives in the city.

Now with a dozen children in the house, a garden, and a business making goods to sell at market, there wasn’t time for such indulgences.

Nor was there time to sit around staring at them.

In half an hour, Kit would need to gather the children in the library for their lessons.

She bit her lip and looked warily at the door leading down to the kitchen. Leading down to Jess. Who had certainly not forgotten she had suspicions still to voice. It wouldn’t hurt to start lessons early today. After all, there wasn’t really anything useful Kit could do in a mere half an hour.

And if the time she spent with the children allowed Jess to forget a thing or two she wanted to say, well, that was all the better.

If the multiple excuses Jess found to walk through the library during the children’s lessons were anything to go by, she hadn’t forgotten a thing and had perhaps added a statement or two to the list. Every time she passed through the room, or simply found a reason to stick her head in the door, she glared at Kit.

Given the way the library was situated at the side of the house in its own private wing, there was little doubt that her visits and her glares were quite intentional.

Kit ignored her. At least, she tried to. She gave all her focus to little Sophie, wrapping her hand around the child’s small chalk-wielding fingers and moving their joined hands in a fluid motion over the slate. “There’s two humps in an M, Sophie. Not one.”

“I don’t think this is right, Mama Kit,” six-year-old Henry said, kicking his feet back and forth underneath the table the younger children used for lessons. “Because if three away from seven is four, that means John stole one of my marbles yesterday.”

Kit looked up from the wobbly M on Sophie’s slate to the youngest boy in the cluster of older children studying books they’d found in the house’s extensive library. The subjects covered everything from farming to philosophy, and at that moment, John had a book of advanced mathematics propped open on his chest.

He slid down a bit lower in his chair but grinned at Kit over the top of the book. “You’re always telling us that real-life lessons teach more than books. Now he’ll know to always do the math himself, right?”

Kit left Sophie’s side and crossed the room to lower herself down to John’s eye level. She ran a hand lightly through his light brown hair. “I think we can make our real-life lessons effective without scarring anyone or stealing anyone’s marbles, don’t you think?”

“But he won’t forget it!”

“And neither will I.” Kit bit her lip to keep from smiling at the adorable conniver. “You’ll be cleaning out the goat shed this week.”

John groaned while five-year-old Arthur cheered. It had been his week to clean out the goat shed and she’d just given the task away. He gave her a wide grin. “Eggs?”

Kit bit her lip, knowing the quiet younger boy was asking if he could take John’s job of collecting the eggs. But Arthur wasn’t ready to collect eggs on his own, was he? Wasn’t he too young? There were so many children in her life that sometimes it was hard to know when each one was ready for something new, for more responsibility. They depended greatly on those eggs. What would happen if they ended up in a heap on the ground?

“Yes,” Kit finally decided. After all, what were broken eggs compared to a little boy taking one step further in becoming a man? “You can collect the eggs. Sarah can help you.”

Perhaps she wasn’t quite ready to let Arthur grow into a man on his own yet, and Sarah was good with the children. She would make an excellent governess one day. Or she would have, if she’d been able to grow up with respectable parents and connections. As it was, she’d be fortunate to find a life in service, working her way up to the position of parlor maid, and one day possibly a housekeeper. She was already eleven. In a few years, they would have to start looking for that first position for her, to help her get started in a job that would allow her to support herself.

That had always been the plan—to raise and educate them until they were old enough to work and then make way for more children—but now that the oldest children were reaching that age, it was hard to imagine actually sending them out into the world.

Jess slid back into the room, but instead of passing through or performing some imaginary errand, she simply stood and gave Kit an expectant look. “Sarah, could you help the younger ones with their work for a while? I need to speak with Mama Kit for a moment.”

“Of course, Mama Jess,” Sarah said as she rose from where she’d been burying her small, pointed nose in a biography of Mozart.

A brief wince flashed across Jess’s face, and it almost made Kit smile. She’d never quite felt comfortable being called Mama Jess, having tried to stay away from the children when she first arrived, trying to create a role somewhere between servant and friend. But Haven Manor wasn’t just a refuge, it was a family, and the children hadn’t allowed her to lurk on the fringes.

The first time one of the children had called her Mama Jess, the normally unflappable woman had paled and nearly passed out in the middle of the kitchen.

What Kit wouldn’t give for one of those spells of weakness right now.

Jess stared at Kit across the library, eyebrows raised in an unspoken threat that if Kit didn’t come now she’d be removed from the room by force. Kit held no illusions that the four inches of height she had on the other woman would keep Jess from hauling Kit anywhere.

With a sigh, Kit followed Jess through the short passage that connected library to the parlor in the main block of the house. Then Jess kept going, leading Kit through the front hall, past the stairs to the upper floor, and on through the dining hall, all the way into Kit’s room.

Daphne, who’d run away from London with Kit all those years ago, sat on the bed, blue eyes wide in her round, gentle face.

“What has happened?” A thread of worry but also relief coursed through Kit. Perhaps this had nothing to do with her trip to London, after all.

Jess crossed her arms over her chest and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, trapping Kit in the room. “This way you only have to tell us the story once. Since it’s obvious you don’t want to talk about it, I thought I’d save you the trouble of telling us separately.”

Kit swung her gaze to Daphne, who still looked fresh and young as if the past thirteen years of learning how to work for a living hadn’t changed her at all. She shrugged. “Jess told me to sit here, so I sat.”

“Kit is going to tell us what happened in London,” Jess said. “And she’s going to do it while there’s still time for someone to catch the mail coach back to London if we need to.”

Even though it was futile, Kit gave evasion one more effort. “Lord Charles signed the papers.”

“And?”

There was nothing for it. She was going to have to tell them about the men who’d chased her. It was probably necessary, since it would remind them all to be a bit more careful for a while in case Lord Charles decided to pursue her beyond London. Nash’s office in Marlborough wasn’t that far from Haven Manor, and while no one had ever found the house, aside from the handful of trusted men who occasionally helped with maintenance around the house, that possibility always existed.

“And . . .” Kit drew the word out, hoping to make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal. If the other two women dug too deeply into why Lord Charles was having her chased, they’d find out that her persuasive skills relied more on extortion than any sort of convincing logic. And while Jess probably wouldn’t care, Kit wanted to protect what remained of Daphne’s naïveté and innocence. “He tried to get the papers back by having two footpads chase me through London.”

“What?” Daphne shrieked as she surged to her feet.

Jess simply raised her blond eyebrows into two perfect arches.

“I managed to evade them once, but they caught up with me again, so I threatened to throw a knife at them if they didn’t leave me alone.” Kit almost smiled. Apparently it wasn’t going to be as difficult to leave Lord Wharton out of her story as she’d thought.

Jess snorted. “You can barely aim at the side of the barn. You certainly couldn’t throw with enough accuracy to take down a grown man.”

“Yes, but they didn’t know that.” Kit crossed her arms over her chest and pulled herself up to her tallest height, trying to look confident and imposing. “I threw a stick at them first to show them I knew what I was doing.”

“How much did that miss by?” Jess asked with a grin, all traces of alarm cleared from her features while Daphne continued to fret on the bed, chewing on her bottom lip as she twined her fingers together.

Kit blushed but forced herself to keep her chin up. “I aimed for the chest of one and instead hit the ground between the feet of the other, but again, they didn’t know I’d missed.”

“And that’s all that happened?” Jess paused before narrowing her eyes. “Nothing else?”

Had Jess somehow spied on Kit while she was in London, or was there really something different about her? “Yes,” Kit said with as much calm as she could muster, “that’s the only thing of note that happened.”

Because meeting a charming, handsome gentleman had no bearing on her life whatsoever. It really wasn’t worth discussing. Kit tried to smile in Jess’s direction. “You’ve already said you don’t care about the wobbly coach wheel.”

There was silence for a few moments as Jess and Kit stared at each other. Finally Daphne spoke up. “We should warn Nash.”

Kit shook her head. “Nash is always careful, especially during the weeks after new contracts are signed. Most of the men send someone to visit him at least once.”

“We could spread more brush at the road, though, disguise the entrance better,” Jess said.

Kit nodded, more because doing so would get her away from Jess than because she thought the entrance to the manor was in any real danger of discovery. “The children should be finished with their lessons. Why don’t you take the boys and cover the entrance? Daphne, the girls, and I can go see about the garden.”

Jess looked like she wanted to say something, but instead, she nodded and abandoned her post at Kit’s door, only to stop and poke her head back inside. “Oh, and Kit?”

“Yes?”

“Knife practice. This afternoon. If you insist on continuing to handle the contracts this way, I want you prepared. Next time you might not be able to bluff your way out of it.”

Kit’s throat tightened as Jess disappeared to collect the boys. What if there was a next time? She’d considered this encounter an exception, an oddity, but what if more men decided to try it?

What would happen if she didn’t make it back from London next time? What would happen to Daphne? To the children? To the women like Priscilla who wouldn’t know the first thing about surviving on their own? Didn’t have the ability or skill to do so? Haven Manor was too much work for Daphne to handle alone, and there was no guarantee that Jess intended to stay forever.

Without Haven Manor, the children would be forced to work in the poorhouse, destined for a life of poverty without any hope of finding respectable work. Half of them wouldn’t survive a year in those conditions.

It was enough to make Kit’s stomach roll but also to shore up her resolve.

Her hand fumbled on the door latch as she pulled it closed, the mental image of young Sophie’s hands wrapped around a loom instead of a piece of chalk enough to make Kit shake. She’d never known fear like she knew the other night, running through London’s streets to save her very life.

She’d thought she was prepared for anything, but maybe Jess was right. Maybe it was time to rethink things.