He smiled and took it to pin at the neck of her gown.
“This is from my very favorite of my father’s books,” she explained to the children. “Wynnflaed’s Knight. Her lover gives her a brooch very much like this, though that brooch was used as a cloak pin and fastened at the shoulder. Thank you,” she told Kendrick, and kissed him on the cheek. “My gift to you is twofold. Fletcher, will you hand me the last package?”
Fletcher handed over the squarish package to Kendrick.
“This is the first part,” she said, feeling unaccountably nervous as he unwrapped the gift.
“Phantastesby George MacDonald,” he read, his eyes sparking at the title.
“I remember it being enjoyable—a bit likeThe Faerie Queene, a bit like… well, nothing I can think of.” She laughed. “I did not see it in our library.”
“No, I have not read it. Thank you,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “I did not think there was much myth-making in this era.”
She cleared her throat. “The second part isn’t something I could wrap, but… you did say I could pick the name. Our name,” she said as his gaze sharpened. “To usher in a new era for all of us.”
“What did you pick?”
“Well… what would you think of Stewart? To emblematize what we want to accomplish for the Ossuary as a whole.”
He smiled. “House Guardian. I think that will do very well, Mrs. Stewart.”
ChapterThirty-Seven
“Did you have a good Christmas?” Genevieve asked hesitantly as they sat in front of the fire, watching the embers burn low. Dawn was not far away.
“I did. My first true Christmas in this era was very memorable.”
Genevieve sat up, arrested. “Your first—! You should have said something! We would have—” She broke off. He hadn’t said anything because of her.
“I remember Christmas,” he told her. “But I have not celebrated it the way we do now—certainly not with trees and kissing boughs.”
“But you enjoyed it?”
“I did.” He kissed her hand. “I have something else for you—though that isn’t precisely true. It is a gift, but not mine. I hoped it would make you happy, but I don’t know.”
“More? My goodness, what is it?” Genevieve asked, mystified.
“It’s upstairs. Come and see.”
He led her to their rooms and said, “Wait a moment,” before disappearing. Genevieve reached for the buttons on her shoes and had nearly all of them undone by the time Kendrick returned with a large trunk on his shoulder. He softly closed the door and set it on the floor.
She straightened in confusion. “You got me an old trunk?”
Kendrick pressed a small, brass key into her hand. “Your friend Hetty kept it for you.”
She looked at the key in her hand. She seemed to hear the words from far away. “Hetty?” she whispered. “You—You went to Oxford?”
“Yes. When I told you I was delivering the invitations, I was—but I took a little detour. Your friend Hetty kept house for your father until he died, and she and her husband inherited the house. They have several children, two named Ezra and Jenny.”
Her knees went out from under her, but she barely noticed Kendrick scooping her up and placing her on the bed. “Hetty?” she said again, helplessly.
Her husband put an arm around her. “Yes. She has never forgotten what you did for her. I went to see if I could find anything of your father’s that you might have as a keepsake because you had said you felt so unsettled in that part of your life. But I got luckier than I expected.”
“These are…mythings?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t open the trunk. But it is everything your father kept for you and wanted you to have. They told me so.”
Genevieve closed her hand around the key, feeling the metal cut into her hand. She couldn’t speak for a long time. The burn of tears stung her eyes and throat, but none fell.
