Drops of Gold(29)

She sighed, her eyes focused off in the distance. “I didn’t think so at the time.”

“How many of us do?” Layton could remember feeling quite grown-up and invincible at ten. “Tell me, Miss Wood, was your mother’s care left entirely in your hands? Was there no one else to tend her?”

She nodded wearily. “Until that last night. My father left to fetch my brother home.” A look of contemplation crossed her features. “In retrospect, that should have been another clue, I suppose. Father thought her condition serious enough to warrant bringing Robert home from Harrow.”

Harrow? Layton wondered momentarily. A family of some means, then.

“He told me to care for Mother. That he’d be back soon.”

“Did he return in time?” A familiar dread clung to his heart.

Miss Wood shook her head, the slightest tremble in her lips. Layton squeezed her hand, only then realizing he still held it. Somehow, her hand fit so snugly in his, it felt natural there. “And so you felt you’d let down your father and brother?” She didn’t answer his rhetorical question. He hadn’t expected her to. “Believe me, Miss Wood, I know how that feels, many times over.”

She sat silently. Layton didn’t release her hand but told himself he would if she seemed to want him to. He desperately hoped she didn’t.

“How did your father die?” Miss Wood asked quietly.

“His heart,” Layton answered simply. “It was quite sudden, I understand, though he’d been more tired and pale than usual the last time I’d seen him. He had even joked about his children giving him heart spasms.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“Precisely, Mary,” he cut across her words. “I couldn’t have known. I couldn’t have helped or prevented what happened. No more than you could have with your mother.”

Miss Wood’s slender fingers closed tighter around his own, and he felt the clasp clear to his heart.

Caroline shifted again. Miss Wood moved to the bedside to dab a soothingly cool rag along the girl’s forehead. Layton watched her, already missing the feel of her hand in his and wondering what it was about the woman that had captured his attention when nothing else, no one else, had in years.

He wasn’t overly worried about Caroline. She was feverish, yes, but slept soundly with hardly a stir.

He did, however, feel uneasy about his own emotions. This was his child’s governess. Everything, her position in his household, his code as a gentleman, the distinction of class, forbade any pursuit. Yet he yearned to do just that, to further their acquaintance, to try to discover what had so captured him. But he owed Caroline a life without further scandals and whispers among the gossipmongers.

Layton kept his eyes on Caroline’s sleeping face as Miss Wood returned to the seat beside him. He reminded himself that Miss Wood was out of his bounds. Any connection between her and himself would be scandalous for her as well—far more than she probably realized.





Chapter Twelve



Caroline issued the occasional cough but little else. Three weeks had passed since her fever broke, and Doctor Habbersham assured Marion that Caroline would recover completely. Even so, January had been exhausting. Marion slept on a pallet on the floor in Caroline’s room, afraid that if she left, the girl would take a turn for the worse and no one would be there to tend her.

She found that being close enough to hear the girl’s every movement made sleeping difficult. By some miracle, Mrs. Sanders had granted her a half day, saying she looked too tired to be performing her duties properly what with all the coming events and that she should take her morning off to rest.

So Marion sat on a blanket on the banks of the Trent, a second blanket, heavy and woolen, pulled around her shoulders. Winter necessitated the extra layer.

Mr. Jonquil had received a letter from his brother “Flip,” whom Marion had discovered was actually “Philip, Earl of Lampton.” It seemed Lord Lampton was to be married on the seventeenth of March, and the entire Jonquil family, which she was given to understand was quite vast, was to descend upon the neighborhood shortly, Lampton Park being the estate directly northeast of Farland Meadows along the river Trent. Thus, “the coming events” had the household in something of a frenzy.

Caroline had been promised a new dress specifically for the occasion, something Marion was sure sped her recovery along. Marion had decided to buy herself a dress length of muslin in town in honor of the occasion. She did have an extra quarter’s wages waiting to be squandered. Furthermore, for some unaccountable reason, she found herself wishing again and again since the night she and Mr. Jonquil had held vigil at Caroline’s sickbed that she looked more presentable.