Another flicker of those dark eyes. A tiny nod.
“It terrified me,” Serena confessed. “I had nightmares for a week about being alone on an island and discovering that I was not, in fact, alone. My father had to hide the book until I recovered.”
Something shifted in Samuel’s expression—not a smile, nothing so dramatic, but a slight loosening about the eyes. As though he had expected condescension and received something else instead.
Serena turned then to Rosie, who had not moved from her corner of the window seat. The little girl watched her with the wide-eyed wariness of a rabbit that has sighted a fox, but is not yet certain whether it should flee.
“And you must be Miss Rosie,” Serena said, keeping her voice gentle. “What a lovely doll you have. Does she have a name?”
Rosie’s arms tightened about the battered doll, drawing it closer to her chest. For a moment, Serena thought she would not answer at all.
Then, in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper, “Marianne.”
“Marianne,” Serena repeated. “What a beautiful name. Is she a good companion?”
A nod—small, but certain.
“I am glad. Everyone needs a good companion.” Serena made no attempt to move nearer or to touch the doll; she had learned that, with children like Rosie, patience was farmore valuable than enthusiasm. “I hope that perhaps we might become companions too, in time. There is no hurry. We have a great deal of time to become acquainted.”
Rosie did not speak, but she did not turn away either. Serena counted it as a second small victory.
Mrs McConnor, who had been observing the exchange from the doorway, cleared her throat. “I will leave you to settle in, Miss Collard. Your room is through there—” she gestured to a door at the far side of the sitting room “—and dinner will be brought up at six. If you require anything, ring the bell and someone will come.”
“Thank you, Mrs McConnor. You have been most helpful.”
The housekeeper inclined her head, her expression still reserved, but perhaps a shade less forbidding than before. “Welcome to Greystone Hall, Miss Collard. I hope you will be… comfortable here.”
It was not, Serena noted, quite the same as hoping she would stay. But it was something.
***
The afternoon passed in a curious state of suspended animation. Serena unpacked her belongings in her new room—which was, as promised, comfortable and well-appointed, if somewhat impersonal—and attempted to begin establishing a rapport with her new charges.
Ella, predictably, proved the most challenging. She returned to the nursery shortly after Serena’s arrival and spent the ensuing hours observing her every movement with the sharp-eyed attention of a barrister examining a witness. Everything Serena said was met with polite scepticism; every gesture of warmth received with careful neutrality.
“You needn’t pretend to be interested in our well-being,” Ella informed her during a brief discussion of the next day’s lessons. “We know you are being paid to be here. It is not as though you have chosen us.”
Serena considered several possible replies, ranging from the diplomatic to the devastatingly honest, and settled upon something in between.
“You are quite right,” she said. “I am being paid to be here. That is how employment works, Miss Ella. But I would point out that I chose this position from among several available to me. I might have accepted a post in London, with a family possessing twice as many servants and three times as much consequence. Instead, I am here—in Derbyshire, in a house said to be impossible to manage, with children described as difficult beyond all reason.” She paused, allowing a faint smile to curve her lips. “Either I am extraordinarily foolish, or I have my reasons for being here. You may decide for yourself which seems the more likely.”
Ella’s brow furrowed, as though she were attempting to solve a particularly complex mathematical problem. “What reasons?”
“That, Miss Ella, is a conversation for another day. For now, I believe it is nearly time for dinner, and I should very much like to wash my face before the meal arrives. Travel leaves one feeling distinctly grimy.”
She withdrew to her room before Ella could press the point further, though she suspected the girl would return to the subject at the earliest opportunity. Ella was not the type to allow a mystery to remain unsolved.
Dinner, when it arrived, was simple but well prepared—roast chicken, vegetables from the estate’s kitchen garden, fresh bread still warm from the oven. Serena ate in the sitting room with the children, a choice that seemed to surprise them; apparently, previous governesses had preferred the solitude of their own rooms.
Samuel ate in silence; his gaze fixed upon his plate. Rosie picked at her food without enthusiasm, occasionally tearing off small pieces of bread and feeding them to Marianne when she thought herself unobserved. Only Ella ate with any real appetite, though she maintained her watchful silence throughout the meal.
It was not, Serena reflected, the most comfortable dinner she had ever experienced. But it was not the worst either, and for a first day, that would have to suffice.
Afterwards, she supervised the children’s preparations for bed—helping Rosie into her nightgown when the little girl’s fingers proved unequal to the buttons, ensuring that Samuel had washed behind his ears, which he had not, and reminding Ellathat reading by candlelight would ruin her eyesight—a warning which was met with the scepticism it likely deserved.
By the time all three were settled in their beds, Serena was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical exertion. It was the particular weariness born of maintaining careful control over every word, every expression, every gesture—the fatigue of being perpetually on display.
She returned to her own room and sat heavily upon the edge of the bed, allowing herself, for just a moment, to let the mask slip.
