Drops of Gold(50)

“Did you and Caroline ever have your birthday cake?”

The question was so unexpected and so quiet that Marion looked up at him. He wasn’t watching her; his eyes were instead fixed on the glowing coals in the fireplace. He looked bothered by something.

“No, sir.” She’d managed to convince Caroline that she’d had too much cake of late, what with Caroline’s birthday, and that they ought to postpone the treat. She didn’t happen to tell Caroline she intended to postpone it indefinitely.

“You should.” Layton’s eyes turned toward her. “It would certainly be an acceptable indulgence.”

An acceptable indulgence? This after his speech about the unacceptable friendship that had arisen between them? He watched her, his expression unreadable. Was it possible he was laughing at her? That he knew what she’d come to imagine about his feelings for her and found it amusing? Amusing that the governess of all people fancied him in love with her?

Marion lifted her chin a fraction, forced her lips to not quiver, and summoned the tiny shred of dignity she felt she still possessed. She focused her eyes somewhere over his left shoulder as was proper for a servant. “I know my place, sir. I have been quite firmly put back there, and I assure you I have no intention of wandering from it again.”

“M—”

“If I may be excused, sir. I will need to pack a few things for Caroline if she is to be away from her room tonight.”

There was a long, heavy pause. Marion didn’t allow her gaze to shift or her posture to slip. The increasingly familiar sting of tears behind her eyes grew tenfold, but she didn’t allow a single drop to fall. She tensed her jaw to keep it from quivering and managed to keep her head held high.

She thought she heard Layton sigh. Then, in a somewhat strangled voice, he said, “Of course, Miss Wood. I am certain you have many things to do.”

How she managed to reach the nursery wing without running or crying, Marion never knew. But when she saw her thrice-daily tray sitting beside the door bearing her usual cold midday offering, the tears began flowing anew. She would take another meal alone at the school table. She’d been received coldly by the staff before, but after her questionable inclusion in the family dinner on Caroline’s birthday, she’d been positively unwelcome below stairs.

So much for her goal of gaining entry into that world, knowing she’d also lost claim to the one above stairs. Layton’s attentiveness in the two months she’d been at Farland Meadows had lulled her into thinking she hadn’t entirely lost her grip on the Polite World. Oh, how she’d been shown the folly of that assumption. As penance, she would now be entirely alone.

Caroline was five, so Marion could plan on spending the next eleven or twelve years closeted in the nursery with absolutely no one but the child for company. No wonder so many nurses had come and gone at Farland Meadows. It was a lonely, miserable existence, made vastly worse by her own poor decisions.

For a fraction of a moment, she was tempted to seek out another position in a household with less animosity amongst the servants and with anyone but Layton as her employer. But then Caroline’s innocent, pleading face filled her thoughts, along with the heartwrenching question she’d asked the day they’d met: “Are you going to leave me too?” Marion knew she could never leave. She’d simply endure the isolation and love the child and hope it was enough.

* * *

Marion brought Caroline to the drawing room of Lampton Park shortly after dinner that evening. Only two ladies were present: Lady Lampton and a new arrival, Lady Cavratt. All but the youngest two Jonquil brothers were in residence, along with Lord Cavratt, who was considered an honorary member of the family. It was assumed, Marion overheard Lady Lampton say to the pretty young lady sitting beside her, that the gentlemen would linger over their port just as though they hadn’t seen one another in years rather than the handful of weeks it had actually been.

The countess, however, was mistaken. Within seconds of Marion and Caroline’s arrival, the gentlemen—a whole covey of them—stepped into the richly and tastefully appointed room.

“Papa!” Caroline cried out upon spying her father among the men whom no one with eyes could fail to identify as his brothers.

The Jonquils were all tall, golden haired, blue eyed, and, except for Layton, sleekly built. Where his brothers were trim, Layton was broad. The contrast made him stand out but not, in Marion’s admittedly biased opinion, unflatteringly so.

The one darker-haired gentleman in the group crossed almost immediately to the woman seated at the countess’s side, their mutual smiles of affection quickly identifying them as the married couple whom Lord Lampton had described at Caroline’s birthday dinner as “nauseatingly in love with one another,” though Marion was certain she’d detected a smile at the back of the earl’s eyes as he’d said it. Captain Jonquil had remarked that he’d been ill more than once when forced into the combined company of Lord Lampton and his betrothed.