“May I be excused to follow them?” Louisa asked.
“You may. Do not dirty your dress and do not go beyond the gardens. The mere is out of bounds,” Winston said, firmly.
“Yes, Papa!” Louisa dashed away.
“Does she yet know how to swim?” Adeline asked. “If not, she should learn. It will make the mere safer.”
“I would rather she went nowhere near it,” Winston said.
“But if she knows how to swim…” Adeline persisted.
“She will stay away from the mere!” Winston snapped. “And so will you. It is a…haunted place. I do not care for it.”
“Haunted by what?” Adeline asked, perplexed by the out of character response.
“It is enough that I have ordered it,” Winston replied.
“You seemed afraid of the mere, last night,” Adeline said.
Winston’s eyes flashed and his nostrils flared. Then he seemed to find some equilibrium.
“For understandable reasons, surely. My daughter was sleepwalking towards it.”
“Yes, of course.” Adeline sipped tea and found her eyes drawn to Winston’s hands, where they lay on the table.
So strong, so firm. Yet so gentle and deft when he wanted to be. When the moment called for soft intimacy. The memory made her breath catch. She raised the teacup again only to find it empty. Winston’s eyes were hard upon her, and as she lowered them, she could not stop herself from blushing. Was there the hint of a smile on his marble visage?
“Louisa told me she dreamed of her mother last night. Of walking with her,” Adeline said. “She said that in the dream she feared she was doing something wrong.”
“What would be wrong with walking with one’s mother?” Winston said, but Adeline could hear the guard in his tone.
When the conversation moves to his former wife, he hauls up the drawbridge. Why?
“It made me wonder if there had perhaps been some…” Adeline began.
“Some prying into my marriage?” Winston shot back, shoving his chair to the rear so hard as he stood that it dug furrows into the grass, which would have the gardener tearing out his hair.
Adeline found herself standing too.
He will not tower over me!
“I do not pry. I ask because…”
“Because you wish to know about Sarah, but she is none of your business,” Winston told her.
“Louisa is my business and what preys on her mind, preys on mine. She dreams of Sarah. Dreams that she does something wrong by walking with her. Why is that?”
Winston opened his mouth to deliver what was no doubt intended to be a salvo of anger. But his teeth clicked with the ferocity with which he slammed his mouth shut. Adeline wondered if he had been about to say that it needn’t be her business if she was not Louisa’s governess.
Let him try it! He is the one who asked me to stay.
“Louisa never knew her mother and Sarah has not been spoken of in front of her. So, there is no reason for her to know that there was any…”
Winston stopped talking, realizing he had given away more than he wished. His face darkened.
“We will leave as soon as we are packed. See to your luggage and Louisa’s,” he said gruffly.
“We truly are going to London?” Adeline couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice.
