Drops of Gold(28)

So he held her more tightly, listening to her breathing slowly steady as his heart began to thud more erratically. He couldn’t bear to hear her cry any longer. No woman should cry that way.

“I was ten years old,” she said from against his chest. “I was so frightened.”

“You were only a child. What could you possibly have done?”

“Oh, I know, I know.” She pulled back and out of his arms, dabbing at her eyes with the cuff of her dressing robe.

Layton instinctively reached for a handkerchief in the pocket of the jacket he was not wearing. She smiled. “Sorry.” He smiled back. “I gave my last square of linen to a precocious young lady who hasn’t yet returned it to me.”

“The little scamp.” Miss Wood managed the slightest laugh, wiping another tear with her cuff. She took a deep breath and seemed to compose herself. “I realize now, looking back, that I couldn’t have done anything for my mother, but . . .” Her words trailed off.

He wanted to reach out, to wipe that last tear from her face. He didn’t, of course. That would be decidedly improper and, more likely than not, unwanted on her part.

Caroline moaned in the bed beside them. Miss Wood moved as quickly as he, lightly touching the back of her hand to Caroline’s forehead.

“Still warm, sir, but not worse.”

“‘Watchful waiting.’ That’s what Mater would say,” Layton said.

“Mater?”

“My mother,” Layton explained. “We’ve always called her that.”

Miss Wood smiled up at him, but the smile looked a little forced. He pulled the chair he’d occupied a few minutes earlier around to her side of the bed, beside the one already situated there. “Please sit, Miss Wood.”

After tucking the blankets more closely around Caroline’s shoulders, she did.

“Will you allow me to tell you a story?” He could hardly believe himself.

“Do you know stories, sir?” Some of her characteristic playfulness returned to her voice.

“Oh, I have a few.” He tried to match her tone and succeeded to a degree.

“I love stories.” A look of encouragement entered her chocolate-brown eyes.

“Once upon a time,” Layton said with a self-deprecating smile. “Isn’t that how I’m supposed to begin?”

She smiled back. “It’s your story. Tell it however you choose.”

“It’s not that kind of story, anyway.”

“You mean it is a ‘positively true’ story?” Miss Wood asked with an ironic raise of her auburn eyebrows. “Even that kind can be told with a ‘once upon a time’ beginning, you know.”

“Are all of yours true, then?” He had wondered about that. The family in her stories seemed quite real.

“I have always said they were” was all the explanation Miss Wood offered.

“Hmm.” He watched her for a moment, half expecting her to elaborate further, but she didn’t. “I was away at school when my father died.” It was an abrupt beginning, he knew. Layton had never considered himself a storyteller. “I was eighteen, which is, I grant you, older than ten but still far too young to lose a parent.”

Miss Wood offered an empathetic smile, her eyes never leaving his face. Gads, had he ever talked to anyone about those days after Father died? He didn’t think he had.

“All the way home, I kept asking myself over and over, what could have been done, what might I have done differently to prevent his death.” The weight of that misplaced guilt sat heavily on him again.

“But you weren’t even there when your father died.”

“And you were only ten years old when your mother died, but that didn’t keep you from taking the responsibility of it on your shoulders,” Layton pointed out.

She winced ever so slightly, his words obviously hitting home. “That is true enough.”

“Seeing the whole family in blacks and Mater teary eyed made it that much worse,” Layton continued. Miss Wood nodded, obviously remembering a similar experience after her mother’s passing. “I spent weeks, months, to a lesser degree years, going over every encounter I’d had with my father before he died, wondering if I could have—should have—seen symptoms or some indication that he was ill.”

“Did you find any?” Miss Wood asked quietly.

“Of course. The signs were there, and after the fact, the puzzle was not difficult to piece together.”

“Just like looking back now, I can see how very ill my mother truly was.” Miss Wood nodded as she spoke. “At the time, it was not so obvious.”

Layton instinctively took her hand. “Perhaps the grave nature of her illness escaped you because you were little more than a child. You were so very young, Miss Wood.”