“And tell me, Miss Darrington, how are they?” As soon as she had begun to speak of the little girls, Mrs Evans’ eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, Mrs Evans, they really are the most beautiful little girls I have ever set eyes upon. And they are so sweet in their natures and so keen to learn.”
“That is just how I remember them, Miss Darrington. Oh, they were so precious to me. They were so precious to everybody here.”
“This town suffered very badly from the infection, did it not?”
“It did suffer, and that’s the truth. But none suffered more than this household. There was none who lost everybody, only the Thomas family.”
“It is such a great tragedy, Mrs Evans, that I can hardly bear to think about it. How the girls must have suffered, and how you must have suffered, my dear.” Georgette laid a comforting hand on the older woman’s arm.
“There is many a day I wake up, Miss Darrington, and wonder at the point of it all. With my own husband long gone, and no children of my own, I had come to see Mr and Mrs Thomas as my own family. And their little children, I love them as if they were my own flesh and blood.”
“I truly am so very sorry.”
“And then, when their grandparents were taken too, just days later, I had never seen such confusion and grief in such little girls in all my life. I thought I should never recover from it.”
“Their Nain and Taid,” Georgette said sadly.
“Yes, Miss Darrington. Tell me, do the girls still speak of them?”
“Yes, it is Eleri and Ffion who taught me the words.”
“They told you of their family?”
“In bits and pieces, yes. I daresay it is because they are so very young that they simply tell me odd pieces of information here and there. They told me once that their mother had walked up Mount Snowdon before they were born and that she had gone up there with their Nain and Taid. It was then that the girls told me exactly what the words meant.”
“They still have a little Welsh then?”
“They have a lot of Welsh, Mrs Evans. I have been most keen that they should continue with their own language. And I have learned a great deal myself.” Georgette gave a self-deprecating laugh.
“So, you are allowed to teach them? Welsh, I mean?”
“Well, not exactly.” Georgette winced, not really knowing how much she ought to say.
“The Duke, Mrs Thomas’ brother, seemed not to like the idea at all. I mean, the idea of Mrs Thomas falling in love with Mr Thomas and marrying him.”
“Yes, I believe that is quite correct, Mrs Evans.”
“Forgive me for asking, Miss Darrington, but what is it that really brings you here?”
“You have been so very kind to me, Mrs Evans, that I can do no other than be honest with you,” Georgette said, wondering quite where the notion had come from. “The Duke, it seems, had long since recovered from his own little concerns over his sister’s marriage. Unfortunately, he rather left it too late to make that known and, before he had a chance to reconcile with the sister he loved so dearly, she and her husband had died.”
“Oh dear, that is so very sad.”
“I think so too, Mrs Evans. And it affected him so greatly that he can hardly bear to look upon the girls. They look so much as their mother did at that age, by all accounts. And whenever he hears them speaking in Welsh, he is reminded of everything he has lost. And he is more greatly reminded that the reason he had lost his sister in the first place was of his own doing.”
“But the poor man could not have known that he would lose her so completely. He could not have known that he did not really have time to set things right between them, could he?”
“No, Mrs Evans, he could not. And that is why I am here.”
“To put things right?”
“In a manner of speaking. If I can, that is.”
“But how?”
“I do not know what I really expect to find. I think I am just looking for some tangible piece of evidence that Josephine Thomas did not despise her brother in the end. You see, that is the thing which pains him most. That is all he can think about whenever he looks upon Eleri and Ffion. If only I could find something that would dispel the notion, something that would let him know that, despite their differences, his sister still loved him.”
“And she did, Miss Darrington,” Mrs Evans said with absolute certainty.
“Did she talk of him often?”
“My dear, I think I heard every single minute of her childhood. I can’t think that any young lady has grown up with a brother she adored more than Mrs Thomas adored the Duke. It broke her heart to stand in our little chapel without him there to give her away on the day she wed Carwyn Thomas.”