“What sort of views?”
“I could tell you, but that would defeat the purpose. True learning requires discovery. One must wrestle with ideas, test them, examine them from every side. I can guide you through that process, but I cannot do it for you.” Serena settled back in her chair. “The question is whether you are willing to be guided. Whether you can set aside the belief that you already know everything, and allow yourself to learn something new.”
Ella was silent for a long moment, her brow drawn tight in thought.
“And what of Samuel and Rosie?” she asked at last. “If you are teaching me about philosophical women and challenging ideas, who will ensure that they do their lessons properly?”
“I shall.”
“But you can’t teach all three of us at once. Not properly.”
Serena smiled. It was, she conceded, a fair observation. “You are correct. I cannot give each of you my full attention simultaneously. Which is why I have a proposal to make.”
Ella’s eyes narrowed at once. “What sort of proposal?”
“You have been acting as a second mother to your siblings, Miss Ella. I have seen it in the way you watch over them, anticipate their needs, and place yourself between them and anything that might cause them harm.” Serena lifted a hand as Ella opened her mouth to protest. “I do not reproach you for it. It is admirable, in its way. You have assumed a role no child should be required to fill, and you have done so with remarkable competence.”
Ella’s guarded expression wavered, uncertainty seeping through.
“But,” Serena continued, “it is not your role. You are not their mother. You are their sister. And sisters are permitted to be children themselves, at least some of the time.”
“I’m not—” Ella stopped, swallowed, then tried again. “I’m not trying to be their mother. I’m just... someone has to take care of them. Someone has to ensure they’re all right.”
“Yes. And that person is me.” Serena’s voice was gentle, but resolute. “That is why I am here, Miss Ella. To care for them, and for you. To see that you are all learning what you ought, and growing into the people you are meant to become. Your task is not to be the adult of this household. Your task is to be eleven years old.”
“Eleven and three-quarters,” Ella said automatically, though the sharpness had left her voice.
“Eleven and three-quarters,” Serena agreed. “Which means you are entitled to lessons that challenge you, to interests wholly unconnected to managing a household, and even to moments of doing nothing useful at all. It means you may laugh, and be foolish, and make mistakes without fearing that the world will collapse as a result.”
Ella stared at her, and for a brief instant Serena glimpsed the child beneath the armour: frightened, weary, and profoundly lonely.
“What if I have forgotten how?” Ella whispered. “What if I do not remember how to be… just a child?”
Serena reached across the table and laid her hand over Ella’s. “Then we shall discover it together. One day at a time. That is my proposal, Miss Ella. That you permit me to do my work, so that you may cease doing it in my stead. Can you agree to that?”
Ella’s lower lip trembled, only slightly. She drew a breath, squared her shoulders, and nodded.
“I can try,” she said.
It was, Serena thought, the most honest thing Ella had said since they met.
***
The morning lessons proceeded more smoothly than Serena had dared to hope. Ella, buoyed by the promise of more advanced material, engaged with the standard curriculumwithout her usual objections. Samuel remained silent, but completed his work with quiet competence, his handwriting neat and his arithmetic precise. And Rosie, still too young for formal lessons, seemed content to sit at the table beside them, drawing pictures with coloured chalk and occasionally holding up her efforts for approval.
“That is a very fine horse,” Serena said, examining Rosie’s latest masterpiece, a cheerful arrangement of lines and loops that might, with sufficient imagination, be taken for an equine form.
“It is not a horse,” Rosie said, frowning at the paper. “It is Marianne.”
Serena looked again. “Ah, of course. I see it now. The yellow hair is particularly accurate.”
Rosie beamed, mollified, and returned to her artistic endeavours.
By noon, Serena found herself cautiously optimistic. The children were not, as she had been warned, impossible. They were simply complicated, wounded, and in need of patience and consistency rather than strict discipline or endless rules.
She dismissed them for luncheon with instructions to wash their hands and meet her in the small dining room, then gathered her materials and returned them neatly to the cabinet in the schoolroom. She was just closing the door when she heard footsteps in the corridor, too heavy to belong to a child, too measured to be a servant going about daily duties.
Lord Greystone appeared in the doorway.
