Drops of Gold(16)

He saw it—a sad, soggy leaf—spinning in the water caught between the exposed roots of the bank-bound oak. This was the prize she and Caroline were so desperately seeking?

“Please, Papa!”

Layton was no match for Caroline. He slipped his tan kid glove from his left hand, set his left palm against the cold, muddy bank for balance, and reached out with the ridiculous twig, all the while shaking his head at the picture he must be making, fishing a pathetic leaf from a river. But when he dropped it, dripping water, onto the blanket beside Caroline, she smiled brightly and threw her arms around his neck, exclaiming, “Thank you!” at least a half dozen times. Layton couldn’t help smiling himself.

“You are the hero of the hour, sir.” Miss Wood smiled at him, and he felt himself blush, something he hadn’t done since his Cambridge days.

“Now what”—he tried to produce an unaffected tone and succeeded to a vast degree—“did you two ladies want with this arboreal offering?”

“Abormeal?” Caroline asked.

“Arboreal,” Miss Wood corrected in the gentlest of tones. “It means something that comes from or is related in some way to a tree.”

“Spoken like a governess,” Layton said dryly.

“I certainly hope it wasn’t spoken like a scullery maid.” Just a hint of sauciness touched Miss Wood’s voice.

“If you’d used double dungers or guv’nuh, you would have sounded precisely like a scullery maid.” He then had the immense satisfaction of seeing Miss Wood blush every bit as much as he had only moments earlier. Redheads, it had been his experience, tended to turn blotchy when they blushed, clashing with their fiery hair. Miss Wood, however, turned a very even, rather adorable shade of pink.

“Do you think this is one of the Drops of Gold?” Caroline eyed the brown lump of leaf with an almost reverent look.

“Undoubtedly,” Miss Wood replied, looking at it in much the same way.

“Drops of Gold?” Layton had no idea what they were talking about.

Miss Wood looked up at him, smiling. “A story I told Miss Caroline last night.”

“It was a positively true story, Papa!” Caroline’s eyes grew wide, and she began bouncing again. “A story about a tree whose leaves turn to gold at the end of every summer and then drop one by one into the river all winter long. And they float all the way down the river and into the sea unless someone finds one and keeps it for their very own.”

“And this is a ‘positively true story’?” Layton had his doubts.

“Yes it is, sir.” Miss Wood lifted her chin defiantly in the air as if daring him to contradict her.

“A tree on which the leaves turn to gold?” Layton was not remotely taken in by the highly fantasized tale. “Where is this remarkable tree?”

“Derbyshire, sir. Upstream of here.”

Layton shook his head. “I sincerely doubt any leaves from that far upstream would survive a trip to the North Sea.” The leaf on the blanket before them had all but disintegrated already. “They likely would not even escape Derbyshire intact.”

“Then this isn’t a Drop of Gold?” Caroline sounded heartbroken.

“It most certainly is a Drop of Gold.” Miss Wood seemed unconcerned about contradicting him.

“And I can keep it forever and ever?” Caroline looked past Layton to Miss Wood.

“If we dry it sufficiently, it should last for some time.” Miss Wood rose to her feet.

Caroline cradled the leaf in her hands and stood as well. “Don’t you think it’s a Drop of Gold, Papa?” She turned those enormous blue eyes on him.

“Caroline,” he said, reluctantly, “leaves do not turn to gold.”

“They most certainly do.” Miss Wood put an arm around Caroline’s shoulders as if protecting her. Protecting Caroline from him? Ridiculous! “I have seen the tree, and unless you can say the same, you have absolutely no right to—”

“I have no right?” Layton threw back. “My daughter, Miss Wood. And my home. And you are my servant. It is, in fact, you who have no right to contradict me.”

Miss Wood’s lips pressed into a tiny, tense line, her slender hand clasped in a white-knuckle fist at her side. She didn’t say anything, just glared, hundreds of daggers in her look.

“Can we dry off my leaf now?” Caroline’s tiny childish voice broke through the tension. Layton had forgotten about her entirely. Again. But Miss Wood, he noticed, hadn’t removed her arm from Caroline’s shoulders.

She looked down at the wide-eyed child and spoke sweetly. “Of course, dearest. And we will set it on the windowsill of the schoolroom.”