Drops of Gold(62)

The library was empty, just as Marion had hoped. She sat down on a royal-blue brocade window seat and pulled Caroline onto her lap. For a moment, she simply held the girl and looked out over the snow-covered grounds of now-familiar Lampton Park. She liked it nearly as well as Tafford, where she’d grown up, but not as much as she adored Farland Meadows. Despite the staff who disliked her and the initial feeling of suffocating sadness in the house, she had grown to love it and rejoice in the slow transformation she’d seen there.

“Is this story about that family?” Caroline asked, snuggling close to her.

“Mm-hmm.” She hugged Caroline tightly for a moment. “That family in all of our stories is my family, Caroline. My real family.”

“Really?” Caroline sounded amazed.

“The handsome young man is my father. The kindhearted young lady is—”

“Your mother?” Caroline guessed.

“Yes. The strapping son is my brother, Robert. And the loving daughter is—”

“You!” Caroline said in obvious amazement.

“And all the things I told you about the Drops of Gold and the silly pepper and so many other things”—she squeezed Caroline as she said it, and the angel-child giggled—“are all true things that actually happened to my family while I was growing up.”

“You told me they were positively true.”

Marion realized Caroline had never doubted her claim. Ah, the faith of a child! “Well, I need to tell you some things about my family, dearest, so you will understand why I cannot be your governess anymore.” Marion felt Caroline nod her head silently. She could tell the poor girl was nervous. “When I was a young girl, several years older than you are, my mother became very ill. Though we cared for her and did our best to make her well again, she didn’t get well.”

“Did she die?”

“She did,” Marion answered plainly, honestly.

“Were you sad?”

“Yes, I was. I still am sometimes because I miss her.” Marion held Caroline and thought of times like this with her own mother, being held when she was confused or tired or sad or happy. It was both a comforting recollection and a painful one.

“But I still had my father and brother, and we were happy together. When my brother was all grown-up, he decided he wanted to be a soldier and help the other soldiers who were fighting in the war.” Marion pushed down the burning lump in her throat.

“Like Stanby?”

“Yes, dear,” Marion whispered. Tears stung her eyes, and her throat felt like it was closing off. She sat silently for a moment, trying to regain enough composure to continue. Marion was determined that Caroline know she was not being abandoned and that Marion’s change of situation in no way meant she had stopped loving her. “My brother Robert was brave. He wanted so badly to keep his family and his country safe.”

“Was he a good soldier, Mary?” Caroline asked.

She hesitated as she thought back on his letters. “I think he was,” she answered frankly.

“I know he was,” a voice declared.

Marion looked over her shoulder. Captain Stanley Jonquil stood watching her, a look of pain on his face. Marion wiped at a tear trickling down her cheek but didn’t release Caroline. “You knew my brother?”

“Lieutenant Robert Linwood, Viscount Yesley. Fifteenth Light Dragoons,” Captain Jonquil confirmed, crossing the room to sit on the wide window seat then turning to look at her and Caroline. “We all called him Bobert.”

Marion nodded. “He wrote about his nickname.”

“Everyone called him all sorts of a fool for joining up, he being the heir to a marquess and no spare. But none of us would have felt as confident going into combat without him there. I fought with the Thirteenth, but I knew him well.”

The tears flowed faster, pictures of a smiling boy pushing her in a swing, teaching her to snatch sweet biscuits from under Cook’s nose, running across Tafford with his loyal dog, returning wet-cheeked without it. He still seemed so real to her, as if she would turn a corner and he would be there laughing at her look of surprise.

“He fell at Orthez,” Captain Jonquil said.

“Yes,” she choked out. Marion felt Caroline’s short arms wrap around her neck, an act of childish comforting that kept Marion from being overwhelmed by the grief she’d been too at a loss, too overwhelmed, to fully experience nearly a year earlier.

“He saved the life of his commanding officer,” Captain Jonquil said authoritatively. “I don’t know if you were told that.”

Marion shook her head.

“He was a good soldier. And a good man.” Captain Jonquil handed her a handkerchief. Marion dabbed and wiped, trying to get herself under control.