Harriet poked her with a gentle elbow. “Our bird, is it now?”
Lydia toed the dust, watching Walter bustle about and make happy sounds to his hens. “Don’t tell me you’ve kept track of which three are yours, and which mine?”
“I’m sure I don’t care. I don’t even care about winning the prize, to be perfectly frank.”
Lydia scowled. “Well, I do!”
“Then it’s a good thing your Walter is so beautiful, isn’t it?”
Lydia scowled harder. He wasn’t entirely her Walter anymore, either. He had settled in here at Thornycroft with the Grey hens as if he owned the manor outright. Mrs. Crangle snuck him tidbits and called him delicious—which had slightly alarmed Lydia, until she learned it was simply Mrs. Crangle’s highest form of praise—and he occasionally fluttered up to the bench and into Harriet’s lap while she read. It was only Lydia who had to make the long, lonely walk back down through the hills at the end of every day.
She was starting to have to make excuses to visit.
Harriet and Mrs. Crangle and the staff had the birds’ everyday care well in hand by now, so Lydia had had suggested bathing the chickens—so it wouldn’t come as a shock to the hens when they were washed and fluffed for show the week before Christmas. But this wasn’t something they could do every day—even if Lydia had wanted to, which quite frankly she didn’t—and soon she feared she would have to stretch her imagination for more and more outlandish pretexts.
The coop would be better with a second story.
We should train the chickens to sing.
Any day I don’t see you is a day wasted.
Ridiculous, this yearning.
The hens had dried and were back to their usual explorations, so Harriet and Lydia returned to the kitchen, where Mrs. Crangle was just pulling a glossy, glowing pigeon pie from the oven. Harriet claimed it, procured a pot of tea, and lured Lydia to the parlor.
Lydia was three forkfuls deep when a new face appeared in the doorway.
She was a small woman with soft brown hair, creamy skin, and the saddest eyes Lydia had ever seen. “Harriet, did Mary ask you—oh,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
Lydia swallowed her pie and smiled apologetically.
The woman’s eyes went even wider, and her face went marble-white.
Harriet was up at once, putting a hand under the woman’s elbow. “Ellie, this is Miss Lydia Wraxhall,” she said.
Her voice was gentler and more careful than Lydia had ever heard it. The quiet pond of Lydia’s jealousy gave a ripple, as if a stone had been tossed into it, and not a small one.
“Lydia,” Harriet said, and there was a worry and a warning in her eyes, “this is Eleanor Marwood.”
Oh. Oh. Over a year since Lydia had read that name, in the last letter her brother had written home. My great good friend Marwood is gone, he’d said. It was one of their old code phrases they’d used growing up, so they could talk safely about things their parents did not want to understand. Great good friend meant the man I love. The ink on the line had been lightly smeared, as if Peter had hurriedly wiped away a tear before it could blot the page further.
And the line that followed: His widow is expecting.
Eleanor Marwood had been in camp, with the army. Had she known? Peter had been careful, but he was so transparent where he loved. How could anyone not have known?
And now the small woman looked stricken, shocked to the bone. Harriet guided her to the chair and hovered beside her. “You look so much like him,” Mrs. Marwood said faintly.
“I will take that as a compliment,” Lydia replied.
Mrs. Marwood nodded. “You should,” she said, her voice firming. A light had come into her eyes. “Your brother saved my life. And he was gone before I could thank him for it. I owe your family a great debt, Miss Wraxhall.”
Lydia flushed. “I’m sure Peter would not want you to feel you owe us anything, Mrs. Marwood.”
The widow chewed her lip. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think—does it pain you to talk of him?”
“No. Well, yes—but I’d still like to do it. Will you…” Lydia swallowed. “Will you tell me about him? He’d been away for so many years, you see—we had his letters, plenty of them, but he was never any good at seeing himself as he truly was.”
Mrs. Marwood nodded at that. “He was very hard on himself. Needlessly hard. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone else who worked so hard at being good. Your parents must have been very proud.”
