Drops of Gold (3 page)

Marion let out a long, deep breath. The housekeeper and butler had banished her to the nursery wing. Her employer, apparently, was ill humored, and the entire house shared in that defect. The happy, cheerful house she’d expected felt suddenly cold.

“Only because there’s no fireplace,” Marion told herself. Her stomach grumbled, reminding her of its empty state. She smiled, amused at her own body’s antics. “And because I’m hungry.”

The biscuit and preposterously weak tea she’d had in Newark the previous afternoon had long since proven insufficient nourishment. She eyed the toast and porridge Maggie had brought her. She hadn’t eaten porridge since her childhood.
Appropriate
, she thought. If she must be relegated to the nursery wing, being fed on child’s fare was exceptionally fitting.

After two bites, Marion decided she much preferred the watery tea. Perhaps Cook had been given the day off. She forced down the remainder and carried her empty bowl and crumb-strewn tray out of her room and across the dim schoolroom to the servants’ door, setting it on a nearby table. She hummed a Christmas carol from her childhood, the tune doing wonders for her outlook.

Using the candle from her room, Marion walked the perimeter of the schoolroom and opened the many curtains. The earliest hints of sunrise penetrated the cloudy sky as a light dusting of snow settled on the ground below. How she loved freshly fallen snow! She watched for a moment as flakes drifted aimlessly about, a quiet peacefulness enveloping the landscape.

“Quit dawdling,” Marion told herself after one last lingering look outside. She had work to do.

She spun around to survey her surroundings, and her jaw dropped. Toys and crumpled papers lay scattered in chaotic piles. Books were strewn about unnoticed and unheeded. Had no one bothered cleaning? Certainly the last governess hadn’t left such a deplorable mess, hasty departure or not.

Her own room required very little attention, so Marion relegated it to another time. ’Twas always best to tackle the difficult things first. She set herself to cleaning, humming as she did. Child-sized fingerprints smudged the pages of the scattered books. Miss Caroline, it seemed, had at least looked at her books before discarding them. Nearly every wadded piece of parchment had been scribbled on, the lines thick and almost dashed as if she’d used a charcoal pencil in dire need of sharpening. The toys sat haphazardly about the room, but not a single one was broken. The child did not seem naturally destructive but simply insufficiently looked after.

“Your hair is pretty.” The voice was no larger than a drop of rain and clearly belonged to a child still half asleep.

Marion turned toward the sound, uncertain of what she would find. The child who stood before her could well have been an angel. Her ruffled white nightdress nearly glowed in the morning sun spilling in through the windows. A mess of blonde curls framed her face in something of a halo, her enormous blue eyes wide in innocent anticipation. The girl couldn’t possibly have been more than four or five years old.
Too young for a governess.
Marion pushed the thought from her head. This was, undoubtedly, Miss Caroline’s younger sister.

“Hello,” Marion greeted the child, her smile emerging naturally. She dropped carefully to her knees, pulling her dress free at the last moment. She could scarce afford to replace her gowns should she manage to wear knee holes in them. “What is your name?”

“Caroline.” She scrunched her eyes in the bright sunlight.

Miss Caroline!
Her charge was a tiny child, the appropriate age for a nurse, not a governess. There must be a mistake!

“Are you my new nurse?” Miss Caroline did not look entirely sure of the arrangement.

“No,” Marion answered carefully. “I am . . .”
Well? What am I?
“I am to be your governess.”

“What’s a gubness?”

Don’t ask me.
But Marion smiled. “A governess teaches and tends to children.”

“Sounds like a nurse.”

“Except I will teach you to be grown-up.”

The girl stood frozen, obviously scrutinizing this newest arrival into her small world.

“Do you know how to curtsy, Miss Caroline?” She kept a cheerful tone in her voice lest the child think she was scolding.

Miss Caroline offered an awkward dip then watched Marion uncertainly for her evaluation.

Marion smiled more broadly, something she didn’t think she could have prevented herself from doing. “Very well done. You are quite a young lady, I see.”

A smile tugged at the girl’s mouth. That was the right approach, then. Most little girls wished to be thought of as grown-up.

“How old are you?” Marion sat back on her feet, trying to seem unconcerned.

She held up four dimpled fingers.
Four! Furuncle.
Four was definitely too young for a governess. What was going on?

“Oh my!” Marion allowed her eyes to widen. This mess wasn’t the child’s fault. “How old do you think I am?”

Miss Caroline studied her for the better part of a minute, her eyes alternately narrowing and widening, her mouth pursing and twisting as she pondered the puzzle. Adorable!

“Ten?” Miss Caroline guessed.

“That is very nearly correct,” Marion replied. “I will be twenty years old in only a few weeks.”

The girl’s mouth formed a perfect
O
as her eyes grew wide once again. Marion nodded her agreement. Twenty must seem positively antiquated to a child of four.

“Are you leaving too?” Obvious uncertainty colored Miss Caroline’s tone.

“Leaving?”

“Everyone leaves,” Miss Caroline said quite matter-of-factly.

Not I!
For one thing, Marion had nowhere to go. For another, she had already begun to adore the fair-haired angel standing before her.

Marion used her best pondering face, going so far as to tap her lip with her finger. “I had planned to stay here for some time. Would that be acceptable, do you think? Or would it be better for me to leave?”

Miss Caroline shook her head so vehemently her curls bounced about.

“Then I should stay?”

“Forever and ever!” Miss Caroline declared before running across the room and throwing her arms around Marion’s neck.

Pulling the girl onto her lap, Marion held the angelic child in her arms. It probably was not very governessy, but it felt right. How terribly lonely the girl must be to take to a stranger so quickly, so desperately.

“Did you know today is Christmas Day?” Marion asked her armful. The girl nodded. “What shall you do with your family today?”

“Oh, they are all gone.”

Again, the unemotional explanation of an unusual situation. Perhaps Miss Caroline did not even realize that a household where “everyone leaves,” as well as having her family gone on Christmas Day, was an unexpected situation.

“Where have they gone?” Marion wanted more information about this unusual household. If she knew more, she might discover the reason she’d been hired as governess to a child far too young for the schoolroom.

“Papa is in Stuckfolk,” Miss Caroline said.

Fighting down a laugh, Marion corrected, “Suffolk.”

“Mm-hmm. With Grammy and all the boys.”

“Boys?” Mrs. Sanders hadn’t mentioned any boys in the household. Perhaps she was to teach them. They ought to have tutors though. No. Mrs. Sanders’s letter specifically said she was to be governess to Miss Caroline.

“Papa has lots of big boys,” Miss Caroline said.

“Do they live here?” Perhaps she’d been hired under false pretenses.

“No-o-o.” Miss Caroline pulled back enough to look Marion in the face. “They live lots of places.” She began counting off on her dimpled fingers. “With the horses.”
A groom?
“With the books.”
Hmm.
“With all the blue.”
What does that mean?
“At Painage and Beatin’. And Flip lives all over.”

“Ah.” Marion nodded her head as if the explanation was perfectly clear. “That sounds . . . exciting.”

Miss Caroline smiled brightly.

“I’ve brought you a ribbon for your hair. A Christmas present.” Marion was glad she’d chosen a blue ribbon during her wait for the mail in Southwell. The ribbon would nearly match the color of Miss Caroline’s eyes.

“Will my hair ever be like yours?” Miss Caroline asked, her eyes plastered to Marion’s ruler-straight fiery red hair with something akin to envy.

“Why would you wish for hair like mine?” Marion asked amusedly. “Especially when yours is so lovely.”

“Harriet said it was fuzzy.”

“Harriet?”

Miss Caroline shrugged. “She left. She said my hair was fuzzy every time she brushed it.”

“Curly hair can be fuzzy when it’s brushed.” Marion remembered vividly a childhood friend plagued with the same problem. “One must
comb
curls.”

The child pouted. “I do not have a comb.”

“Perhaps your mother does.”

“Mama is gone too,” Miss Caroline said. “Papa said she won’t come back.”

Had Miss Caroline’s mother passed on? Or were her parents estranged? She would not question Miss Caroline on such a potentially delicate subject.

“Well,
I
have a comb. It belonged to my papa. I think it will work well until we can ask your papa for one of your own.”

“Oh, could we really?” Excitement lit her eyes.

Marion nodded.

One half hour later, Miss Caroline was dressed, her hair carefully combed, the cobalt-blue ribbon tied in an adorable bow over one ear. Over the course of the ministrations, Marion learned that Miss Caroline had experienced the departure of at least six nursemaids (
she
being the only governess so far), none of whom stayed long, by a child’s reckoning, at least. Her father, though away at the moment, had been present enough to make a favorable impression on his daughter. Miss Caroline spoke highly of him and the time they spent together. Such a contrast to the less-than-flattering description Maggie had offered earlier.

“Papa is wonderful!” Miss Caroline explained as they crossed the schoolroom to the child-sized table. “He doesn’t call me Miss. I like that.”

Marion attempted to explain. “Your father need not call you Miss. The servants do so because they respect you.”

“Couldn’t they like me instead of ’specting me?”

Marion hated to disappoint her, but the girl needed to understand how these things worked. “I do not think that would be a good idea.”

“Can you not call me Miss? I don’t want you to. Please!”

Marion sensed an aching loneliness behind the protest. “Perhaps when no one else is present.”

Caroline nodded eagerly. “What should I call you?”

That was a good question. If she were a nursemaid, which would be more fitting, she would probably be called Mary. As a governess, she would be Miss Wood. But Caroline was so young and so obviously lonely.

“Perhaps ‘Mary’ would do when there is no one else around. But Miss Wood otherwise.”

“I like you, Mary.” Caroline smiled so brightly, Marion had to smile back.

“And I like you, Caroline.”

“You will stay, won’t you?” Caroline looked quite intensely at Marion. “You won’t run away?”

“Why would I run away?” Marion asked with a slight smile.

“All the others did.” Caroline was perfectly serious.

As Caroline ate her breakfast, Marion pondered her words.
All the others ran away. Ran away.
Why would Caroline believe her other nurses, for surely that was who she kept referring to, had fled and not simply left? And what exactly would have driven them away?

Curious. Very curious.

After three days on the road, Layton desperately wanted to be home. He’d opted to ride from Newark-on-Trent. A few hours on horseback was precisely what he needed after the confinement of the carriage.

As he approached Farland Meadows, the scent of pine hung heavy in the air, an aroma he would always associate with his childhood. It was strongest at that time of the year since everything else was stripped bare by the cold of winter.

Bridget had left him in the summer when the smell of flowers mingled with grasses and herbs, when one scent was impossible to distinguish from the rest. So many aromas were now associated with her. Pine was one of the few that did not immediately bring to mind that horrific summer. It made Farland Meadows bearable. Pines and Caroline.

As he turned onto the carriageway that led to his home, Layton heard a squeal, a childish, delighted squeal. His mouth turned up ever so slightly.
Caroline.
Layton pressed his mount to a fast trot. He’d missed her terribly. She was the sunshine in his dark existence.

As he emerged from the thicket of trees surrounding the carriageway, a second squeal met his ears, followed by the most wonderful sound he could imagine.

“Papa!”

In less than a moment, Layton dismounted and wrapped his gelding’s reins around an obliging branch. Two long blonde braids beneath a knitted woolen cap bounced across the snow-covered lawn toward him. Smiling as only his little angel could make him, Layton held his arms out and scooped Caroline off her feet, her joyful giggles filling his ears.

“Papa, you’re home!”

He laughed. “Of course I am, dearest. I told you I would be.”

“I am better now, Papa.” She smiled, her dimples deep and charming. “Not a single spot.”

“Not a single spot.” He mimicked her declaration with a chuckle and tapped her wee nose. “Grammy missed you and wished you could have come.”

“And Flip?” Caroline’s enormous blue eyes grew ever larger.

“And Flip,” Layton acknowledged. “And Corbo and Chasin’. Stanby. Charming.” Caroline’s butchered versions of his brothers’ names had always been endearing.

“Holy Harry?” She smiled wider.

“You know he doesn’t like to be called that.” Layton pulled her closer, loving the smell of childhood that always surrounded her.

“You and Flip call him that,” Caroline reminded him.