Ah, God, this was getting out of hand. Millicent and Elspeth were whipping themselves up into a veritable meringue of anxiety. She had to nip this panic in the bud before it turned into something much worse. “There is no need to worry,” she declared firmly as she strode toward them. “We shall not have to leave Synne.”I hope, she silently amended. “He is not here to reveal our location to our father.”He’d better not.
Too late, however, she realized she had erred, and horribly. Both girls stilled as they stared at her.
“How do you know that?” Millicent asked.
The soothing smile she had been attempting froze on her face as she recognized the dawning realization in her sisters’ eyes. “I’m sorry, what?” was her horribly pathetic response.
Elspeth straightened away from Millicent and crossed her arms over her chest. “How do you know the reason for that man being on Synne? In fact, why are you not surprisedto see him here at all?” And then hurt replaced her confusion. “You already knew he was here, didn’t you?”
What else could she say to that? “I did,” she admitted with reluctance.
“When did you learn of his arrival?”
Seraphina winced. “Yesterday?”
“Yesterday!” Elspeth demanded.
“And you did not think to warn us?” Millicent looked wounded in a way Seraphina had never seen directed at her. Which made her feel as if she had kicked a puppy.
She removed her spectacles and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I was going to tell you. But there never seemed a right time.”
Elspeth threw her hands up in the air. “A right time? We live together, work together. When is there a wrong time?”
“Especially with something of this nature,” Millicent added.
“You’re right,” Seraphina said quietly, replacing her spectacles and clasping her hands together before her contritely. “Of course, you’re right. And I am sorry, truly.”
Her sisters looked at each other, in that way they had showing they understood one another better than anyone ever could. Even Seraphina had never been privy to that level of closeness with them. No, that wasn’t true, was it? She had been part of that private inner circle once upon a time—before her life had been torn apart and she had closed herself off forevermore to anyone else, even her beloved sisters. One of the many things that had been stolen from her.
“I think we both know you would not purposely put us in harm’s way,” Elspeth said softly, turning back to Seraphina. “You have done everything in your power to protectus and provide for us in the past thirteen years—even to your detriment.”
Was there a mournful bit of knowing in her sister’s eyes at that? For a moment anxiety and a deep shame reared up in Seraphina’s breast, old companions of hers. Could her sisters possibly know just how detrimental some of the things she’d had to do for their survival had been? Could they know what lengths she had gone to in order to protect them?
She gave herself a little shake. No, she had been careful. They could not possibly know. Her heart thumped heavy in her chest. Yet another thing she had kept from them, all to ensure they were safe and loved and happy. And she would do it again, in a heartbeat.
Elspeth, blessedly unaware of what was going through Seraphina’s head, narrowed her eyes in thought, a small line forming between her brows. “You and he struck up a friendship of sorts, didn’t you?”
Seraphina was trying to figure out just how to answer that when Millicent chimed in.
“Yes, I remember that as well.” She turned wide eyes on Seraphina, who could fairly see memories appear out of the mist of time in her gaze. “Then Father let him go one summer, and you cried. You kept to your room for days. They tried telling us you were ill. But we could hear you sobbing through the door. I think that is the last time we ever heard you cry.” Her expression became troubled. “That wasn’t long before you disappeared for that year.”
Seraphina’s head swam as images bombarded her, recollections of a time she had tried so hard to forget. So overwhelmed was she by the sheer number of memories, so dim did her vision go, she feared she would topple over on thespot. Until a sudden rush of wind disturbed her hair, and a warm weight settled on her shoulder, and a small body pressed against the side of her head. Phineas trilled in her ear, the comforting sound he made when she was particularly troubled, and she found her chest relaxing in response, air filling empty lungs, head clearing. Or, if not clearing, at least allowing her to better manage what filled it.
“Yes, we were friends of a sort,” she said, purposely ignoring any mention of her crying or of that year apart from them—she involuntarily shuddered—focusing instead on her sisters’ memories of Iain. “And you are also correct that Father let him go. So you see, he does not owe Father any allegiance. There is no threat from him in regard to our location or our new identities.”Or, at least, there had better not be.And she would do everything in her power to make certain that remained true.
But her sisters, who had lately begun to push back against the safe boundaries Seraphina had created for them, adopted now familiar, mulish expressions at her attempt to placate them.
“We should invite him in then,” Elspeth said with a determined glint in her eyes, looking to the window, though Iain must be well out of view by then. “We can quiz him ourselves, make certain we’re safe—”
“No!” The word burst from Seraphina’s lips, sending Phineas launching from her shoulder in a burst of startled feathers. Seraphina leapt forward, sprinting for the door, planting herself in front of it, arms and legs spread like a starfish. It was only as she looked at her sisters’ alarmed faces—and Phineas staring in avian effrontery at her from the curtain rod—that she realized how excessive her reaction had been.
And then she hurried to explain the reason for her reaction—and made things so much worse.
“He won’t be here for long. We leave in just two days, and with everything that has to be done there isn’t time for a visit—”
“We?” Elspeth demanded. “What do you mean,we?”
Seraphina nearly groaned aloud. Ah, God, what a bungle. She was tempted to send a curse Iain’s way. It was because her sisters had spied him that she was in this particular pickle.
