Ianthe jumped off the bed. “I cannot come home for three or four years?”
His mother chuckled. “You can visit, but there is much for you to learn, and it cannot be done here.”
Hollybrook Park,Bocka Morrow, Cornwall, England ~ Summer, 1813
Miss Cordelia Vailsettled onto the bench beneath the weeping willow and lifted a favorite book, though she had no real intention of reading it a third time. A breeze wafted in from the sea and swept the long limbs of the willow tree across the ground as the flowers within the garden came alive, bending and straightening as more buds unfurled, revealing their brilliant colors of red, yellow, pink, white, orange, and purple. The swaying flowers had nothing to do with the breeze, but rather the pixies. Cordelia had intentionally dropped a few small ribbons along the path as a lure. She knew that eventually one of the pixies wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to snap it up and Cordelia was willing to bide her time, pretending to read while she waited for one of them to show themselves.
The gardens and grounds were supposedly filled with pixies but not once had Cordelia ever seen one.
“Still hoping to catch a pixie?”
Cordelia glanced up to find her brother, Edward, walking toward her.
“It is unfair that I have yet to encounter one, and I blame you because of all your rock throwing last summer. It was quite unkind of you.”
“I apologized, cleaned and played my flute for an entire fortnight,” he complained. “They just do not wantyouto see them.”
“You are a horrid brother.” Cordelia set her book aside before she behaved irrationally and threw it at him. “How did you enjoy this term at Eton?” Edward would be home for only three weeks before he’d need to return so she should be more pleasant, and she did want to know about his schooling.
“It is no fun and I do not like living in my Dame’s House,” he grumbled. “She is mean and makes us stay in our rooms and be quiet when not in school.”
“I am certain that it is not so dreadful,” Cordelia insisted. What she wouldn’t give to have been able to attend Eton or any educational institution. It simply wasn’t fair that such an advantage was wasted on her thirteen-year-old brother.
“You would like it. All we do is read or listen to lectures.” He pointed to her book. “Once I am done, I am never reading a book again.”
“You wish to be ignorant then?” Cordelia asked.
“I wish to learn the world, not words written on a page.” He kicked a stone down the path.
Then Edward would truly remain ignorant as he grew older because the accomplishments and discoveries in the world were constantly changing.
“Adam should have let me go off to the navy. They take boys younger than me who earn rank as they learn skills and grow older. By the time I am a man, I could captain my own ship and see the world.”
“In time, Edward. Once you are fully grown, you can book passage to anywhere you wish.”
“That is years away,” he complained. “I want adventure now.”
“You can have just as many adventures within the pages of a book if the novel is well written.”
He rolled his eyes. “You know what you should do?”
Cordelia sighed. “No, Edward, what?”
“Become a governess. You think everybody should read all the time and learn things, and you always want to dole out discipline when you think I have misbehaved.”
It was true that sometimes Cordelia did believe their older brother, Adam, was too easy on Edward. Just last year he’d been throwing rocks at pixies and injured two adults in the process. So, she’d taken it upon herself to see that Edward was punished. Frankly, Cordelia believed that Adam didn’t want to deal with their wayward younger brother and was happy to pass the task off to her.
“Just do not go throwing rocks where you should not. Then there will be no need for punishment,” she chastised.
As she settled back and reached for her book, the earlier, pleasant breeze stilled completely. She glanced about. This was certainly an oddity given they lived along the coast and there was always some form of wind. The birds went silent and not even the lightest petal moved within the gardens. All was still and quiet. Slowly she stood. Even the air had changed, as if charged with the energy that can often be felt with the coming of a storm, but the sky was clear and blue, and no clouds lingered over the sea.
“Come on,” Edward cried, tearing off across the fields.
“Where are you going?”
“Hurry, or we will miss it.”
“Miss what?” Cordelia called as she followed her brother down an overgrown path. She hadn’t gone this way since she was a child, but there certainly wasn’t anything to see between here and where it ended other than trees, grass, and wildflowers.
