As expected, his sister broke into a single laugh while their mother giggled. Kit took my teasing as intended, pulling a good-natured frown.
I knocked through Mrs. Earnshaw’s notions looking for something fine enough for sutures, finally happening upon a bit of silk thread and a needle. She brought over a lit candle, and I heated the needle over the flame for a moment.
“What did you do as a boy that required stitching?” I asked, trying to distract him, and myself, as I lined up the uneven bits of flesh between my fingers.
“There’s a creek near the house I grew up in. I’d try to catch frogs and put them in Katie’s bed. I slipped and fell on the creek bed. Ripped my breeches and my knee.”
I didn’t do him the disservice of warning that my efforts would hurt. Instead, I pressed with the needle—hard. Skin was more difficult than fabric, much more. And more disgusting, squishing together in a most disturbing way. Kit pressed his eyes and lips closed, hard, against the pain while I swallowed back my nausea. I understood his carriage sickness much better now. After the thread was through both sides, carefully, I knotted it off, trying to keep the tension even, and then cut the ends.
“I need to do a second one,” I said, trying to keep my rolling stomach from my voice. He nodded, finally opening deep brown eyes to meet mine. “Why didn’t Mrs. Earnshaw earn a frog?”
“Older sister,” she replied for him. “He knew I’d make him regret it.”
“I only have older brothers,” I said. The second stitch was every bit as vile as the first, and Kit hissed his way through it.
“You must have had your share of amphibians then,” Mrs. Earnshaw said.
“Not a one.” I tied off the second stitch. “Gabriel was much older, and of the two of us, I was far more likely to give Xander a slimy friend than the other way around.”
“You hid a frog in your brother’s bed?” The little girl asked.
“I, too, have difficulty believing that,” Kit added, lip tipped higher than I’d ever seen it. “Especially after the spider incident.”
“Oh, hush you. Frogs have a perfectly reasonable number of legs. And eyes. And absolutely no fangs to speak of.”
“Don’t like spiders?” Mrs. Earnshaw asked, a hint of derision in her tone.
“Not particularly,” I answered. There was a note of weariness, wondering if I was going to regret it.
“Why’d you put a frog in your brother’s bed?” the little girl asked.
“Oh, it was actually a newt in his wash basin.”
The children gasped in unison, staring at me wide-eyed. “What did he do back?” the girl questioned.
Xander had convinced Cook to switch salt for sugar in all of my desserts for a month. But I rather thought that answer wouldn’t endear me to this family. I suspected desserts were a luxury not to be tampered with. “Not a thing. I convinced him our eldest brother was the culprit. He’s furious to this day.”
The children giggled with delight, just as the eldest two returned with the water buckets and carried them upstairs at their mother’s direction.
“I can’t heat the water and cook supper,” Mrs. Earnshaw said. There was no apology in her tone, and I rather thought thiswas another test. “You’ll have to make do. I assume you’ll need to borrow some clothes as well?”
Kit nodded on our behalf, for which I was grateful. “I’ll make sure Davina has everything she needs,” he added as he stood. I followed him up the stairs, just as the two eldest raced down. “Oi!” he called after them.
At the landing, he guided me into what appeared to be the Earnshaw’s bedroom, where a tub waited behind a screen. It was half filled with tepid water.
“I’ll get you a cloth and find some soap,” he murmured. “Is it just the gown? Or do you need the underthings as well? Because I don’t expect much of anything that fits Lizzie or Mum will fit you.”
I’d had a similar thought and was grateful that my chemise and corset had survived the ordeal. The petticoat’s hem and the entirety of the dress were worse for the adventure. “I can do with only a dress, just until we can use the wagon to fetch our things. I expect I might scandalize everyone with my hemline though.”
“I doubt it very much.”
He searched a wardrobe, then settled a plain brown day dress on the bed. It was well worn and had been reworked more than once to accommodate changing fashions. “Is this one all right?”
“It’s perfect.”
I expected him to slip out the door, down the hall, and back downstairs. Instead he hovered, staring at the dried mud on his boots. His curls fell over his forehead in an endearingly boyish fashion that reminded me very much of the eldest boy downstairs.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked, confused by his lingering presence.
