It sounded as if Claudia Martin was as prickly as a hedgehog this morning. She had had a night—well, a few hours anyway—to sleep upon her memories of last evening.
“I am thinking of selling the house in London,” he told Lizzie. “I am planning to take you to Willowgreen to live. It is a large house in the country with a park all about it. There will be space there for you and fresh air and flowers and birds and musical instruments and—”
“And you, Papa?” she asked him.
“And me,” he said. “We will be able to live in the same house together all the time, Lizzie. You will no longer have to wait for my visits—and I will no longer have to wait until there are no other obligations and I can visit you at last. We will be together every day. I will be home, and it will be your home too.”
“And Miss Martin’s?” she asked.
“Would you like that?” he asked her.
“I would like it ofall things,Papa,” she said. “She teaches me things, and it is fun. And I like her voice. I feel safe with her. I think she likes me. No, I think shelovesme.”
“Even when she is cross?” he asked.
“I think she was cross this morning,” she said, “because she wants to marry you, Papa.”
Which, he supposed, was perfect feminine logic.
“You would not mind, then,” he asked her, “if I married her?”
“Silly,” she said, clucking her tongue. “If you marry her, she will be my sort-of mama, will she not? I loved Mother, Papa. I really did. I miss her dreadfully. But I would like to have a new mama—if she is Miss Martin.”
“Not sort-of mama,” he said. “She would be your stepmother.”
“My sort-of stepmother,” she said. “I am a bas—I am yourlovechild. I am not your proper daughter. Mother taught me that.”
He clucked his tongue, took her firmly by the hand, opened the door, and marched her in the direction of the stairs. The dog trotted after them.
Claudia was still in the schoolroom. Julia Jones was not. She had finished playing the spinet and had gone about some other business.
“I need your opinion on something,” Joseph said, shutting the door firmly behind them as Claudia rose to her feet and clasped her hands at her waist, her spine ramrod straight, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Lizzie informs me that if you were to marry me, you would be her sort-of stepmother. Not her full stepmother because she is not my full daughter. She is only mylovechild, which she understands to be a kindly euphemism for bastard offspring. Is she right? Or is she wrong?”
Lizzie, who had removed her hand from his grasp, looked from one to the other of them almost as if she could actually see them.
“Oh, Lizzie,” Claudia said, sighing and relaxing and transforming herself all in one second from stern, starchy schoolteacher to warm woman, “I would not be yoursort-ofstepmother or even your stepmother except in strictly legal terms. I would not even be your sort-of mother. I would be yourmama. I would love you as dearly as any mother ever loved her child. Youarea love child in all the best meanings of the term.”
“And what if,” Lizzie asked while Joseph gazed unblinkingly at Claudia and she gazed unblinkingly anywhere but at him. No, that was unfair—she was looking steadily at his daughter. “What if you and Papa were to have children?Legitimatechildren.”
“Then I would love them too,” Claudia said, her cheeks an interesting shade of pink. “Just as dearly. Not more so, not less. Love does not have to be portioned out, Lizzie. It is the one thing that never diminishes when one gives it away. Indeed, it only grows. In the eyes of the world, it is true, you would always be different from any children your father and…and I might have if we were married. But inmyeyes there would be no difference whatsoever.”
“Or in mine,” Joseph said firmly.
“We are going to live at Willowgreen, the three of us,” Lizzie said, walking toward Claudia with her hands outstretched until Claudia took them in hers. “And Horace. It is Papa’s home in the country. And you will teach me things, and Papa too, and I will have all my stories written down and make a book of them, and perhaps some of my friends can come and visit us sometimes, and when there is a baby I will hold it and rock it every day and…”
The pink in Claudia’s cheeks had turned to flame.
“Lizzie,” she said, squeezing the girl’s hands, “I have a school to run in Bath. I have girls waiting for me there and teachers. I have alifewaiting for me there.”
Lizzie’s face was upturned. Her eyelids were fluttering, her lips moving even before she spoke.
“Are those girls more important than me, then?” she asked. “Are those teachers more important than Papa? Is that school nicer than Willowgreen?”
Joseph spoke at last.
“Lizzie,” he said, “that is unfair. Miss Martin has her own life to live. We cannot expect her to marry me and come to Willowgreen with us just because we want her to—because we love her and do not know quite how we will live without her.”
He was looking at Claudia, who was obviously in deep distress—until his final words. Then she looked indignant. He risked a grin.
