Drops of Gold (11 page)

“Devious, Miss Wood.” Mr. Jonquil’s smile grew, his eyes never straying from her.

Under his scrutiny, Marion felt rather plain and shabby. If only she had her new blue dress on.

“You must be happy for the earl.” She hoped Mr. Jonquil didn’t notice her flaming cheeks.

“I am.” Mr. Jonquil answered perhaps a touch too quickly. He looked away from her, out over the river. “I’ve met Miss Kendrick. She and Philip are very well suited.”

“Then they’ll be happy?”

“Undoubtedly.” The wistfulness in his tone worried her. Why did Mr. Jonquil never seem happy?

“May I ask you a rather prying question?” she blurted before she could stop herself.

He looked back in surprise. Then, smiling as if he found her outburst amusing, he said, “I suppose.”

In for a penny, in for a pound
, she told herself. “Caroline has mentioned quite a few people to me in the month or so that I have been here, and other than Flip, who turned out to be an earl, no less, I haven’t been able to identify them. Would you mind . . . ?”

“Solving the mystery?” His smile grew to almost heart-shattering proportions. “I’ll do my best.”

He stepped away from the tree and casually sat on the blanket near her. The heart-fluttering began again, more pronounced than before.

“Who are these mysterious individuals?” Mr. Jonquil took his hat off, laying it on the blanket beside him.

Marion required only a moment to get hold of her voice again. “I’m fairly certain the names she gave me are not their actual names.”

“Oh, I am
entirely
certain. Caroline is famous for rechristening people. Yours seems to be the only name she regularly says correctly.”

Marion winced a little at that. “Mary,” after all, was not her correct name. But that was hardly Caroline’s doing. Marion had told the child her name was Mary. “Let me see if I can remember them all.” Marion bought herself a moment to regain her composure. “There was a Chasin’. A Stanby. Corbo. Someone she apparently finds so bewitching that she calls him Charming. And a Holy Harry.”

Mr. Jonquil’s bark of laughter was so unexpected, Marion actually jumped a little before sitting back and enjoying the sound of it and the sight of him with eyes crinkled in amusement, a smile so wide it split his face, the look of devastation gone from his eyes for once.

She smiled herself to see Mr. Jonquil’s transformation, and she fervently prayed that the racing in her heart, which had replaced the fluttering, wasn’t a symptom of her pending demise. It would be a shame to expire just then, when she’d accomplished so much with Caroline and her father.

“Yes, Miss Wood.” He reined in his laughter. “Those are my distinguished brothers. Jason. Stanley. Corbin. Charlie, who probably is a little too charming for his own good. And Harold.”

Marion laughed to hear their actual names, which were decidedly close to what Caroline had christened them. “And which one, pray, lives with horses?” She felt her grin grow. “Caroline assures me one of them does.”

“Corbin,” he answered without missing a beat. “He runs a stud farm about fifteen miles north of here.”

“And someone else lives with ‘all the books.’” Marion remembered well the conversations she’d had with Caroline.

Mr. Jonquil sat quietly for a moment, a look of contemplation on his face. Then he chuckled again. She loved hearing him laugh. “The brother who lives with the books must be Jason—Chasin’, according to Caroline. He is a barrister, and his office, which Caroline has visited, is absolutely crammed full of books.”

She grinned, enjoying their conversation immensely. “Flip, she told me, lives all over.”

Mr. Jonquil nodded. “As earl, he has more properties than he knows what to do with.”

“Someone else lives with ‘all the blue.’ I defy you to make sense of that one.”

“Blue?” That same look of concentration, forehead wrinkled, lips pressed together in a shadow of what must have once been a charismatic childhood pout.

Marion suddenly had a wholly uncharacteristic urge to kiss him. Was her mind going as well as her heart? She could feel herself blush, probably great splotches of bright red.

“Stanley,” Mr. Jonquil suddenly said, sounding almost surprised. “She must mean Stanley.”

“But why blue?” Thank heaven for the distraction. Perhaps Mr. Jonquil hadn’t noticed her heightened color.

“Stanley is a captain with the Thirteenth Light Dragoons,” Mr. Jonquil said, something like pride in his voice as he told her. “Their uniforms are—”

“Blue.” Marion knew the dragoon uniform well. Her brother, Robert, had served with the Fifteenth.

“Caroline and I saw several young officers from Stanley’s regiment in London earlier this year. Obviously, she remembered the uniforms.”

Marion pulled her thoughts from her brother, knowing such musings would only lead to tears. She had no desire to cry on a sunny, crisp day when she might otherwise enjoy the company of a handsome gentleman who looked happy for the first time in weeks.

“One of your brothers,” Marion pressed on, “I am told, is a disciplinarian of the worst sort, while yet another is, apparently, afflicted with some kind of painful condition. I have not yet determined if these two circumstances are related.”

Now Mr. Jonquil looked thoroughly confused. “A disciplinarian?” He shook his head. “No. I can’t say any of them could be described that way. The painful condition could very well be Stanley—he suffered a very painful injury in the war.”

Marion didn’t think so. “It would have to be the last two brothers, sir. She counted them off as she said it. All six.”

“Only Harold and Stanley are left. Harold is to take holy orders soon.”

“Let us hope, then, he does not espouse beatings as Caroline seemed to imply. Such a thing would hardly recommend him to his parishioners. And Charlie?”

“Seventeen and still at school.”

“Harrow?”

“I should think not!” Mr. Jonquil blustered theatrically, pulling a deep laugh out of Marion. “We are an Eton family, Miss Wood. Harrow? Hah!”

They sat there on the blanket chuckling and smiling as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Marion wished it really were, that she were a well-appointed lady seated beside this charming gentleman rather than the plain governess she knew herself to be. ’Twas so enjoyable to pass a morning this way, laughing at such things as school rivalry and childish mispronunciations.

“You still have not solved the mystery, sir,” Marion said lightly, smiling across at him. “Caroline specifically said that two of your ‘big boys’ lived in Painage and Beatin’ and—Oh no!” The answer suddenly hit her. “The pronunciation is a little odd, but, I believe she means—”

“Cambridge and Eton,” they said in unison before dissolving into further whoops of laughter.

“Poor Harry,” Mr. Jonquil said. “To be so unjustly accused of mean-spiritedness. He considers himself something of a model of saintliness and clerical kindness. I absolutely
have
to tell Flip about this.” He wiped a tear of amusement from his eyes. “He and I christened Harold ‘Holy Harry,’ you know. He’s been bound for the church from birth and has acted the part every day of his life.”

“Much to your obvious amusement.” Marion smiled.

Mr. Jonquil’s only response was a faintly reminiscent laugh. “Well, Miss Wood, I seem to be quite a hand at solving riddles today. Have you any others to which I might apply my expertise?”

Hundreds, she thought, watching him as her heart thudded alarmingly in her chest. He looked so entirely different. Amusement had replaced discontent in his eyes. The lines on his face had softened. His perpetually stern mouth turned up in an easy smile. She knew, in that moment, what she needed to ask, what mystery she wanted him to solve for her, but she felt suddenly shy.

“I am certain I have pried quite enough for one morning.” Marion studied her hands as they twisted the corner of the blanket wrapped around her.

“Come now, Miss Wood. Do not suddenly turn missish on me.”

“You would probably find it an impertinence,” Marion warned.

“Then I will have no one but myself to blame, will I?”

There went her heart again, even as her brain registered how unbelievably handsome this man seated beside her was.

“Caroline has mentioned . . . that is, she told me that . . .” The question proved harder to pose than she’d anticipated. “Three or four times since I have arrived, Caroline has spoken of her mother.”

She saw Mr. Jonquil flinch. She’d been afraid it would not be an easy subject. Still, she pressed on. It had weighed on her thoughts for weeks. “All she will say is that her mother is gone. She either doesn’t wish to tell me or doesn’t know where her mother has gone. I have narrowed down the possibilities to two. Either she has physically left, that the two of you are separated. Or she is no longer alive.”

Mr. Jonquil sat silently, his eyes focused far out over the river, his jaw noticeably tense. Had she made a terrible mistake? Or finally stumbled on the reason for the unhappiness so prevalent at Farland Meadows?

“Bridget,” Mr. Jonquil said, his voice tense and steel edged, “my
late
wife, died four months after Caroline was born. I assure you, Miss Wood, Caroline knows as much. I am not such a lamentable father that I would not tell her about her own mother.”

He picked up his hat, stood, and walked away without a backward glance or a word of good-bye.

“Oh, Mr. Jonquil,” Marion whispered, “I believe I
have
found the problem.”

Layton didn’t go far, a hundred feet perhaps, before leaning against the trunk of an obliging tree, arm up, head resting on his forearm. What had possessed Miss Wood to ask about Bridget? He’d been quite thoroughly enjoying himself up to that moment. He hadn’t spoken so easily with another person since before Bridget had left him.

“Left him.” That was how he always referred to her death, finding it easier somehow. But Caroline knew what he meant. Didn’t she? Layton felt nearly certain he’d told her quite clearly that her mother was dead, not simply off visiting. But as he reflected on her versions of his various brothers’ occupations and places of residence, his confidence began to slip.

Caroline was only four years old. Which, he told himself, was part of the problem. How much had he told her? How much ought he to tell her? Should he be blunt or careful? Detailed or vague?

“Stupid fool,” he muttered. “You have no idea what you’re doing.”

“Mr. Jonquil?” Miss Wood’s voice was quiet, uncertain, and only a few feet behind him.

“What is it, Miss Wood?” he asked rather curtly.

“I am sorry, sir. I would never have . . . If I’d known . . .” Layton heard her take a deep breath. “You said I could ask you anything, that you wouldn’t mind the impertinence.”

“Perhaps I underestimated your presumptuousness.” Layton moved away from the tree and closer to the riverbank, slapping the brim of his hat against his thigh.

“Caroline has asked me about her.” Miss Wood stood near the tree he’d just abandoned.

“Miss Wood—”

“And I do not know what to say,” she continued on. “She wants to know if her mother was beautiful. What color her hair was. If she told Caroline stories or sang to her. She wants to know if her mother loved her. And I don’t know what to say.”

Layton spun around to face the intrusive woman, more frustrated than he’d been with her yet. “She was lovely. Her hair was light brown. She told Caroline not a single story, nor sang her a single note. And I seriously doubt she loved the child.”

He saw her flinch at his angry tone and felt suddenly sorry. “I cannot tell her that, sir.” Miss Wood’s eyes lowered, her hands clasped in front of her.

“Blast it, don’t start acting the well-behaved servant now,” he snapped.

Tears started down her face, and he felt like a churl. He sighed and crossed back to her. With that ridiculous blanket wrapped around her shoulders, she almost looked like a child snuggled up in bed. No. Not like a child at all, he corrected himself as he looked into her face. And he’d made her cry.

“My apologies, Miss Wood. I have been unforgivably short with you.”

“I hope I haven’t offended you, sir.” A crease marred her porcelain forehead, and he longed to wipe it away, knowing full well he’d put it there. “I only wish to understand, to know how I can help Caroline.” Her cheeks colored slightly. “And you, sir.”

“Me?” Layton watched her rising color and felt his pulse quicken involuntarily. “You wish to help me?”

She nodded. “When I first came to Farland Meadows, I envisioned a place of warmth and joy.”

“Which you most certainly did not find,” Layton muttered, turning away a little.

“But I
have
seen both here. There have been moments when this has felt like a home, sir. I want that for Caroline. For you. There should be happiness here.”

Layton sighed. “There used to be.”

“Before your wife died?”

He nodded. He felt her hand gently touch his arm, and even through the heavy material of his jacket, he felt the warmth of that contact.

“Please tell me, sir.”

“It is not a fairy tale with a happy ending,” Layton warned, careful not to pull his arm away from her soft touch.

“Not all stories have happy endings.” She sounded as if she knew that all too well.

“Shall we walk while I bare my soul, Miss Wood?” He tried to laugh but didn’t quite succeed.

She smiled at him, her eyes empathetic and caring. With the first step, Miss Wood pulled her hand back from his arm and tucked it into her blanket.

“Why a blanket, Miss Wood?” he asked, suddenly wondering. “Is your coat so insufficient?”

“It is not my turn for stories, sir. It is yours.”

“Ah, I’ve been put in my place.” He smiled, and the gesture came more easily than he would have thought. He took a series of deep breaths. Miss Wood didn’t press or hurry him, for which he was grateful. He was about to talk of things he seldom allowed himself even to think about, and yet it felt natural to do so—difficult but right.

“I married Bridget—Bridget Sarvol, she was then—when I was twenty-one and she twenty.” How old was Miss Wood? he wondered. Nineteen, twenty, perhaps. He forced himself back to the task of telling his sordid history. “We’d known each other our entire lives and had grown up together: friends, at times rivals, but never with any romantic attachment between us. When she reached twenty and had no prospects, despite having had three London Seasons, her father decided to take matters into his own hands and began arranging a match for her.”