Drops of Gold (6 page)

“Thank you, sir,” Miss Wood said, her voice uncharacteristically subdued. “I wasn’t sure to whom I should apply to acquire my wages. Mrs. Sanders is the one withholding them, and the butler is—”

“Her husband.” Layton understood the dilemma immediately. Blast, his head was starting to hurt. He’d not been back home more than a couple of hours and already found himself faced with a household crisis. Philip had never indicated such difficulties at Lampton Park, not that they discussed much anymore.

“Now I am particularly embarrassed over my behavior earlier,” Miss Wood said.

He looked up to find her smiling amusedly.

“I must be a complete nodcock to have been so disrespectful to the one person in this house who stood between me and a fortune.” She sounded on the verge of laughter.

“Seven pounds, ten.” Layton nodded. That was a significant amount for a servant.

“At the moment, that is a fortune,” Miss Wood said. “Thank you again, sir.”

He nodded his reply.

She watched him closely for a moment, an evaluation he found deucedly uncomfortable. She seemed to grow more amused. “I think Miss Caroline was correct.”

“Correct?” he asked a little warily.

“She told me you were only scary because you’re a giant,” Miss Wood said.

“
A giant
?” he repeated after Miss Wood had left. Is that how Caroline saw him? Not only a giant but something frightening?

He dropped his head into his hands and sighed.

“I found one, Mary! I found one!”

Layton stopped at the sound of Caroline’s voice.

“Let me get it, dear.” Miss Wood’s voice joined his daughter’s.

Layton stepped toward them. He found Caroline kneeling on a wool blanket on the banks of the Trent along the east end of the Meadows. Layton made a habit of walking along the river—had come there nearly every day since Bridget had left him. He’d never once come across Caroline during his walks, nor anyone else, for that matter.

Caroline sat watching Miss Wood, who was kneeling on the riverbank, scooping at the river with a long twig and laughing as she did so. She always seemed to be laughing.

“Ooh! Ooh!” Caroline bounced up and down, clapping her mittened hands. “You nearly have it, Mary. Just a little farther!”

“A little farther, and I shall fall feet over face into the water, and that, I assure you, would not please anyone. Least of all myself!” Despite her declaration, Miss Wood’s tone remained lighthearted. “Perhaps if we wish hard enough, my arms will grow another few inches in the next ten seconds or so before the current pulls it entirely out of my reach.”

“You cannot let it get away, Mary!” An uncomfortable amount of emotion entered Caroline’s voice. Layton’s heart wrenched to hear it. “It’s the first leaf we’ve seen all morning!”

Layton watched Miss Wood turn her face back from the river to look at Caroline. A look of such affectionate concern lit the governess’s eyes. Layton caught his breath. He realized with a great deal of regret that none of Caroline’s nurses had shown even a fraction of such genuine attachment to her.

“Please don’t let it get away!” Caroline cried, now jumping to her feet.

Miss Wood turned back to her task, leaning dangerously far over the water. Another inch and she’d tumble off the bank. The Trent, as Layton well knew, was unpleasantly frigid by the end of December. “I simply cannot reach,” Miss Wood said.

“But I am wishing ever so hard. Are your arms longer yet?”

“Perhaps we should wish for something else.”

“My arms are far longer than Miss Wood’s.” Layton’s words surprised even himself.

“Papa!” Caroline cried out as Miss Wood let out a yelp of surprise and flailed her arms for a moment to keep her balance.

Layton stood close enough to their blanket to drop down beside them both. He quickly wrapped his arm around Miss Wood’s waist and pulled her back from the water’s edge. A tingle ran up his arm and through his entire body, and he found himself strangely reluctant to let her go.

Layton realized, to his chagrin, that she was laughing again. He snatched his arm away, though she didn’t seem to notice or care. “Save the leaf, sir!” she implored as she gasped out another full-lunged laugh. She put her twig in his hand. “Right there, tangled in the roots of that tree.”

He saw it—a sad, soggy leaf—spinning in the water caught between the exposed roots of the bank-bound oak.
This
was the prize she and Caroline were so desperately seeking?

“Please, Papa!”

Layton was no match for Caroline. He slipped his tan kid glove from his left hand, set his left palm against the cold, muddy bank for balance, and reached out with the ridiculous twig, all the while shaking his head at the picture he must be making, fishing a pathetic leaf from a river. But when he dropped it, dripping water, onto the blanket beside Caroline, she smiled brightly and threw her arms around his neck, exclaiming, “Thank you!” at least a half dozen times. Layton couldn’t help smiling himself.

“You are the hero of the hour, sir.” Miss Wood smiled at him, and he felt himself blush, something he hadn’t done since his Cambridge days.

“Now what”—he tried to produce an unaffected tone and succeeded to a vast degree—“did you two ladies want with this arboreal offering?”

“Abormeal?” Caroline asked.

“Arboreal,” Miss Wood corrected in the gentlest of tones. “It means something that comes from or is related in some way to a tree.”

“Spoken like a governess,” Layton said dryly.

“I certainly hope it wasn’t spoken like a scullery maid.” Just a hint of sauciness touched Miss Wood’s voice.

“If you’d used
double dungers
or
guv’nuh
, you would have sounded precisely like a scullery maid.” He then had the immense satisfaction of seeing Miss Wood blush every bit as much as he had only moments earlier. Redheads, it had been his experience, tended to turn blotchy when they blushed, clashing with their fiery hair. Miss Wood, however, turned a very even, rather adorable shade of pink.

“Do you think this is one of the Drops of Gold?” Caroline eyed the brown lump of leaf with an almost reverent look.

“Undoubtedly,” Miss Wood replied, looking at it in much the same way.

“Drops of Gold?” Layton had no idea what they were talking about.

Miss Wood looked up at him, smiling. “A story I told Miss Caroline last night.”

“It was a positively
true
story, Papa!” Caroline’s eyes grew wide, and she began bouncing again. “A story about a tree whose leaves turn to gold at the end of every summer and then drop one by one into the river all winter long. And they float all the way down the river and into the sea unless someone finds one and keeps it for their very own.”

“And this is a ‘positively true story’?” Layton had his doubts.

“Yes it is, sir.” Miss Wood lifted her chin defiantly in the air as if daring him to contradict her.

“A tree on which the leaves turn to gold?” Layton was not remotely taken in by the highly fantasized tale. “Where is this remarkable tree?”

“Derbyshire, sir. Upstream of here.”

Layton shook his head. “I sincerely doubt any leaves from that far upstream would survive a trip to the North Sea.” The leaf on the blanket before them had all but disintegrated already. “They likely would not even escape Derbyshire intact.”

“Then this isn’t a Drop of Gold?” Caroline sounded heartbroken.

“It most certainly is a Drop of Gold.” Miss Wood seemed unconcerned about contradicting him.

“And I can keep it forever and ever?” Caroline looked past Layton to Miss Wood.

“If we dry it sufficiently, it should last for some time.” Miss Wood rose to her feet.

Caroline cradled the leaf in her hands and stood as well. “Don’t you think it’s a Drop of Gold, Papa?” She turned those enormous blue eyes on him.

“Caroline,” he said, reluctantly, “leaves do not turn to gold.”

“They most certainly do.” Miss Wood put an arm around Caroline’s shoulders as if protecting her. Protecting Caroline from
him
? Ridiculous! “I have seen the tree, and unless you can say the same, you have absolutely no right to—”

“I have no right?” Layton threw back. “
My
daughter, Miss Wood. And
my
home. And you are
my
servant. It is, in fact,
you
who have no right to contradict
me
.”

Miss Wood’s lips pressed into a tiny, tense line, her slender hand clasped in a white-knuckle fist at her side. She didn’t say anything, just glared, hundreds of daggers in her look.

“Can we dry off my leaf now?” Caroline’s tiny childish voice broke through the tension. Layton had forgotten about her entirely. Again. But Miss Wood, he noticed, hadn’t removed her arm from Caroline’s shoulders.

She looked down at the wide-eyed child and spoke sweetly. “Of course, dearest. And we will set it on the windowsill of the schoolroom.”

“By your father’s comb?” Caroline asked.

The governess nodded. A tiny smile tugged at Caroline’s mouth. She rarely smiled, not remotely enough for Layton’s peace of mind.

Miss Wood turned Caroline toward the house and marched her away, keeping her arm around her charge’s shoulder. Neither seemed concerned about leaving him behind. Caroline hadn’t even bidden him farewell.

“Miss Wood.” He called after her in as stern a voice as he could produce.

She turned back, a look of sheer defiance in her eyes.

“Ask one of the chambermaids to sit with Miss Caroline when you return,” he instructed. “I would have a word with you in my library.”

She bent the tiniest of curtsies in his direction before turning back and continuing to lead Caroline away.

“Papa sounds cross,” Layton heard Caroline say in a voice so heavy with nervous emotion it tugged at his heart.

“He is probably just cold, dearest.”

“He didn’t like that I took the leaf. Maybe I should put it back.”

“Your father will not begrudge you your leaf,” Miss Wood said. Layton thought he saw her squeeze Caroline’s shoulder. “A child must have some pleasures in life.”

Those words echoed in his mind as Layton walked slowly to the house, bringing with him the blanket Miss Wood had left behind. He settled before the fire in his library. “A child must have some pleasures in life.” Caroline had plenty, he told himself. The reassurance, however, sounded hollow.

In the few days since his return to Farland Meadows, he’d grown accustomed to the Caroline he’d found upon his arrival: the bright-eyed girl who smiled and giggled and talked. Caroline had blossomed.

Someone rapped lightly on the door of the library.

“Come in,” Layton called out, not rising from his seat near the fire.

Miss Wood walked in, her eyes still snapping and a tenseness emanating from every inch of her. She, who had never seemed anything but cheerful, entered the room noticeably angry. At the sight, Layton grew angry himself. He’d known she would be trouble. She didn’t know her place as a servant in his household.

“You wished to see me, sir.” A certain edge to her voice belied the humble demeanor she obviously attempted to adopt.

“Did Caroline’s leaf survive its journey to the house?” Layton watched her haughtily, giving her a chance to stew.

“I am pleased to say it did.” His scrutiny did not appear to shake her in the least. “Drops of Gold are notoriously hardy.”

“Tell me, Miss Wood”—Layton leaned back in his chair and formed his features into a look of mocking civility—“does my daughter truly believe that soggy mess is a gold leaf?”

“A Drop of Gold, sir,” Miss Wood answered without a hint of unease in her voice or stature. “There is a significant difference.”

“Perhaps you should explain this remarkable fable to me, Miss Wood. So I can decide what is to be done about it.”

“Done about it?” Now she looked uneasy.

“I have no argument with Caroline developing her imagination,” Layton said. “But to believe such a ridiculous tale as entirely as she obviously does concerns me greatly.”

Miss Wood looked as though she were barely biting back some retort. Layton found himself strangely wishing she’d spill her thoughts. Why he enjoyed brangling with her, he couldn’t say. He’d never argued with Bridget.

“Do you really wish to hear the story, sir?”

“If you please.” Though he hadn’t intended to, he sounded mocking.

Miss Wood certainly caught the tone. She looked immediately affronted. Her chin raised a fraction.

“Once upon a time”—She gave him an equally mocking smile, and Layton had to bite back a laugh—“a handsome young man met a kindhearted young lady. They fell quite exceptionally in love with one another, wishing never to be parted for the remainder of their days. They were married on the fairest of spring days, sweet flowers blooming in the air. The young man planted a tree for his new bride: an extraordinary tree, whose broad leaves would turn gold as summer turned to autumn. The tree grew larger and taller, its branches spreading over the banks of a wide river.”

Miss Wood spoke as though the words were committed to memory, not extemporized. Her tone had changed as well, growing soft and nostalgic.

“The loving couple was blessed in time with a strapping son and a loving daughter. They spent their summers—the small family—beneath the shading branches of the growing tree, listening to the river. As each summer ebbed away, they watched the leaves slowly turn to gold. One by one these Drops of Gold fell from their branches, swaying in the chilled air as they drifted to the waters below. Away the current would carry them, past fields and flowers, houses and fences. Some would continue their journey down the river until dropping into the North Sea. Still others were collected by people downstream of the tree. All who found one of these Drops of Gold were blessed with joy in life and reason to be hopeful, just like the handsome young man and his kindhearted bride.”

Miss Wood finished her story and stood silently, looking out the window of the library, out across the back fields toward the River Trent. Layton found himself entirely unable to speak or reply. Though the story was a happy one, he felt himself unaccountably saddened by Miss Wood’s telling of it.