She wasn’t sure how long the three of them stood there in a circle with their arms around one another. She kept pulling one closer, then the other, then the other again. She was so relieved she’d returned to the same loving relationship she’d had with her sisters when she’d left. Despite Emily’s and Layla’s sharing a special bond because they were twins, they’d never, ever excluded her. She was their big sister, well, only by a year, but they’d still deferred to her because of it. Would they still?
She finally stood back to really look at them and noted with surprise and the complaint, “How did you grow taller than me when I’m the oldest?”
“Not by much!” Layla exclaimed, then gasped, “Nessa, where’s your hair?!”
Vanessa cautioned, “Shhh, we can’t be discovered, well, I can’t be discovered, not yet.” But then she grinned and flicked a lock of hair on her shoulder. “It’s still long enough to coif or tie back.”
“Barely,” Emily said with slight disapproval, but went on to ask, “Is Father with you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s still too much work for him to do.”
But Layla asked, “What did you mean, you can’t be discovered yet? We’ve been expecting you ever since your trunks were delivered earlier in the week, but did you actually arrive in the middle of the night?”
“No one does that,” Emily remarked in a scolding tone.
“And neither did I,” Vanessa said. “I’ve been here a couple of days, I’ve just been hiding.”
“Why?” they both asked in unison.
Vanessa was beginning to realize that Kathleen hadn’t told them the truth, of course not the whole sordid truth, but not even that she had snuck away with their father without telling Kathleen. She could tell them that, but not much else without revealing where William was and why. Maybe they ought to know that, too. If it was to be a family secret, the whole family should know it. And it was time Kathleen paid the price for her transgressions, even if it was just scorn from her daughters. But for tonight, she would continue with the lies no matter how distasteful she found it—at least until she spoke with her mother.
But in answering her sisters, she told a little of the truth. “Mother is going to be very displeased with me. I wasn’t supposed to go with Father. I snuck onto the roof of his coach without his knowing.”
Layla gasped. “What an adventure! Mother didn’t tell us that. Did she know? She said Father chose you, the eldest, to accompany him.”
“No, it was all my doing. That’s why I didn’t say goodbye to you. Father tried to send me back when he found out I was on the coach, but I refused to leave him all alone. Before we left England he wrote to Mother, informing her that I was with him. I’ll let Mother know I’m here tomorrow and face her wrath then. Don’t tell her first.”
“It’s not fair you got to go and we didn’t,” Emily complained.
“She didn’t get to go,” Layla reminded her. “She snuck off.”
“We could have snuck off, too! We should have all gone with him.”
“I agree that would have been exciting,” Layla said. “But from his letters, it didn’t sound like he was having any enjoyment of the place.”
“No, it was all work,” Vanessa said, expanding the lie. “One disaster after another.”
“We could have helped,” Emily pointed out.
“Then we wouldn’t have been separated,” Layla said.
“Even if it meant working in the fields,” Emily added.
Layla grimaced. “I wouldn’t gothatfar.”
Vanessa smiled, almost laughing. The twins still finished each other’s thoughts. Though it used to exasperate her, it was yet another thing she’d missed about them.
“And you never wrote, not once!”
That loud complaint was from Emily, who had always been the more determined twin, occasionally reminding Vanessa of herself. While Layla was the soother, quick to try to calm tempers or end an argument by distracting the opponents with a bit of news or a humorous comment. Vanessa used to try to emulate her but never quite managed it because she was even more determined than Emily.
But from what she’d overheard last night, she’d been expecting Emily’s question. “Every time I started a letter, I ended up crying instead of writing it.” That much was true, but then she lied, “I didn’t want you to know how miserable I was over there. You would have felt bad about my situation, and my letters would have been filled with nothing but complaints.”
“Then it’s not a nice place?” Layla asked with a frown.
