“Because Marmaduke needs to be around other boys. Didn’t his father put his name down for Eton?”
“I can’t let him go.”
“You must.”
“You don’t understand,” Winnie wailed. “Darling Marmaduke is all I have left of John. You just don’t know how hard it is to be widowed and all alone!”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I didn’t mean that,” Winnie said hastily. “Of course, you know; you’re a widow too.”
“But it’s different for you,” Eugenia said. “For me, it’s been seven years.”
“That’s what I meant,” Winnie said, blowing her nose. “I just want my son home with me, where he belongs.”
“He belongs with other boys. This is the third time you’ve been to see me in as many weeks, isn’t it?”
Winnie nodded. “That thing that happened to the cat—its fur is growing back in, thank goodness—and after that, the title pages of the hymnals. Yesterday the vicar greeted me in a wretchedly stiff manner. And my Uncle Theodore still believes that we have a monkey as a pet; I daren’t tell him what really happened to his corset.”
Eugenia wrapped her arm around Winnie. “Eton,” she said firmly. “Write a letter to them saying that Marmaduke will attend Michaelmas term. I’ll send you a tutor, a young man who can take your son fishing when they’re done with studies.”
“His father meant to teach him to fish, just as soon as he returned from Malta,” Winnie said, hiccupping and dissolving back into tears.
“I’m so sorry,” Eugenia whispered, easing Winnie’s head onto her shoulder. When she had opened the registry office six years before, she’d had no idea that she’d find herself at the center of many domestic crises. She could write a book about the hidden dramas of polite society.
Though when it came to widowhood, one’s birth or place in society was irrelevant.
Her desk was piled with letters, and there were undoubtedly mothers waiting to see her. Eugenia rocked Winnie back and forth as she watched Marmaduke scampering around the back garden.
“I suppose I’ll take him home now,” Winnie said damply, straightening up. “Nanny will not be pleased by what’s happened to the nursery curtain.”
“I think tea and cakes are in order,” Eugenia said. “Eight-year-old boys are always hungry.”
“I couldn’t! You don’t want him to sit on your lovely chairs.”
That was true.
“Take him to a tea garden,” Eugenia suggested. “You can sit outside, which means Fred won’t cause a commotion either.”
“Only if you come with us.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I have appointments this afternoon.”
Winnie’s eyes widened. “Oh no, I’m sorry!” She scrambled to her feet and snatched up her reticule. “My dear, you are such a comfort to me! Send me a tutor!” she called as she trotted out the door.
Eugenia ought to have returned to her desk, but instead she stood at the window and watched as Winnie chased her son, still faintly blue, around and around the fountain where Fred was enjoying a bath.
Even through the beveled glass, she could hear Marmaduke’s screams and Winnie’s laughter.
It seemed to her that widowhood would be bearable if your husband had left behind a child, a part of himself.
The door opened behind her. “Ma’am, may I send in Mrs. Seaton-Rollsby?”
“Yes,” Eugenia said, turning about. “Certainly.”
Chapter Two
Later that afternoon
Theodore Edward Braxton Reeve—Ward, to his intimate friends—climbed the steps to Snowe’s Registry Office thinking about how many governesses he’d chased away as a boy.
He had vivid memories of the sour-faced women who had come through the door of his house—and what their backs looked like as they marched out again.
If his father and stepmother hadn’t been in Sweden, he would have dropped by their house to apologize, if only because his young wards seemed capable of topping his score, and it was a pain in the arse to be on the other side.
Frankly, his half-siblings, Lizzie and Otis—whom he hadn’t even known existed until a few weeks ago—were hellions. Devils. Small devils with trouble stamped on their foreheads.
Their governess, a Snowe’s governess, had been in the household for only forty-eight hours, which had to be a record.
The registry wasn’t at all what Ward had expected, from the burly guard posing as a footman to the unoccupied waiting room. He had envisioned a cluster of women sitting about, waiting to be dispatched to nurseries—and he had planned to choose whichever one most resembled a colonel in the Royal Marines.