“No one will notice, or care—if you don’t,” he said softly, encompassing her hand completely and squeezing her fingers gently. Warmed to her forehead by her blushes, she nodded, and they walked on.
She put their newfound silence down to their mutual sorrow when they left the monkey house, saddened by the stench as well as the desperate boredom they saw on the all-too-human-looking little wizened faces that peered out at them from behind the iron bars. Even the brightly colored birds in the birdhouse failed to raise their spirits, because to be indoors, however much warmer it was, seemed to be a cruel fate for both animals and humans this day.
But the open air didn’t immediately pick up their spirits either. Gray grew grave as he stared at the great shaggy buffalo in their enclosure.
“Time was, and that was before my time,” he said quietly, “they owned the West. They covered it like prairie grass, m’ brother said. The older hands remember even more of them. Now, I don’t guess you’ll see any more of them at home than you do right here in New York City. It may be that they’ll be altogether gone soon. I don’t know if that’s progress. Yet, who knows what covered over all this ground before concrete did?” he asked, expecting and receiving no answer but a sigh.
The bear pit cheered him somewhat, at least enough to make him scoff at it, although it made Hannah draw back a pace.
“Now, it’s hardly worth putting these poor little critters behind bars,” he said, looking down at a pacing black bear the exact size of several of Hannah’s more creative nightmares. “No more than cubs compared to what you can find behind any tree back home.”
“Bragging again, little brother? Why, you’d be halfway up one of them trees if you saw one of these facing you back home. Pay him no mind, ma’am,” an amused voice said from behind them. “He talks real big when he’s got bars between him and b’ars.”
“No, that ain’t so!” a child’s voice cried.
“?‘Course it ain’t,” Gray said in his thickest drawl, turning, smiling, holding out one hand to the gentleman he greeted, while still not relinquishing Hannah’s, hidden snug in his pocket.
The man he spoke to must be his brother, Hannah thought, it could be no other. They were of a height, where Gray was flaxen, this man was gold, Gray’s eyes were blue and this man’s gray, but the same smile played about the same well-cut mouths, and there was that in their every motion that told the tale as well as their fine-boned faces did. The red and gold-haired lady with Gray’s brother was exquisitely lovely, Hannah thought with a pang, as beautiful as any woman she’d ever seen onstage, though her cheeks were wind, not paint-blushed, and her lovely mouth was innocent of everything but laughter. An assortment of children— four—Hannah counted, gazed up at their uncle as though they expected him to rise and hover in the air before them. A pink-cheeked nursery maid completed their party.
“Hannah,” Gray said merrily, “this terrible liar is m’ brother Josh, the beautiful lady he don’t deserve is his wife, Lucy; the clever, handsome children are, in size places: Delia, Jarrell, Emma, and Luke Dylan. I’d like you all to meet Miz Hannah Roberts,” he said, tightening his grip on her unseen hand as she tried to extricate it from his, so that she had to bow to them all, instead.
“Well met!” Josh Dylan said heartily. “This pack of demons wanted to ride the carousel, then see the animals, then they argued over which ones to see, then they all got hungry, and we were just on our way to get some hot chocolate into them before I dropped them all into the seal pool. Care to come with us?”
“To the seal pool?” Gray asked, gazing down to where his eldest niece was watching him, looking from him to Hannah worriedly. “Wonderful. Let’s dunk this one first,” he said eagerly, finally letting go of Hannah’s hand so that he could use both hands to lift a delighted, squirming Delia Dylan up into the air as his other niece and nephews clamored for similar manhandling. Then, with them all tucked under his arms, or slung over his shoulder, he marched off in the direction of the seals as the children screeched with pleasure.
“Please don’t think they’re always such savages,” Lucy Dylan said to Hannah, as they watched the children squealing as Gray pretended to try to throw them to the seals.
“But she knows Gray always is,” Josh Dylan put in with a laugh.
Before she could think of how to answer, Hannah saw Gray finally divest himself of all the children before he quieted them by holding up one hand. “Joke’sover. But if you don’t cool off,” he said, “I’m just going to up and leave. Now come along and show Miz Roberts how polite you can be when I’m not stirring you up.”
They trotted behind him in a row, like ducklings, as he returned to Hannah’s side. This time he took her hand in full view of everyone, and holding it hard, said, “Now, let’s get us some hot chocolate before Miz Roberts gets pneumonia. She’s not a rough critter like the rest of us.”
Hardly knowing whether to be flattered or insulted, Hannah said nothing. But since he’d her hand again, she merely went along with him, as did the others. As she did, she wondered what she’d say to the elegant couple when they sat down to refreshments, and her teeth worried at her lower lip as she did. Gray had said that his brother had married an actress, but then. Gray told many amusing tall tales. Certainly this natural, unaffected lady could never have been one. Hannah fretted, thinking about Gray’s brother and sister- in-law’s reaction not only when they heard her occupation, but that she had one at all.
She knew very well that most well-bred people wouldn’t expect a woman her age, especially one Gray had invited out for the day and then introduced to them and their children, to have an occupation at all. So she was vastly relieved when she discovered that Sunday in the park was a day for the Dylan children, since the adults gave all their attention over to them—before she began to wonder if that was only so today because they didn’t want to speak with her, and had discovered a polite way to avoid doing so.
They sipped their hot beverages as the children talked about their day and their latest accomplishments.
“They’re showing off,” Gray ducked his head to say when Delia and Jarrell got into an argument over who’d gotten more brass rings on the carousel, “I’ve never brought them a lady to impress before.”
Before she could answer that, Jarrell won the dispute by virtue of getting his little brother to swear to his claim. Delia instantly clouting him for it ended the entire interlude.
“Home,” Josh Dylan said quietly, rising from his chair.
There wasn’t a sound of protest as the children arose.
“He’s a hanging judge, but an honest one, and they know it,” Gray explained, his eyes twinkling.
“As you will be one day, scout,” Josh Dylan said over his shoulder as he hoisted a weary toddler up to rest there, “then I’ll take my pleasure stirring your children up so you can have a chance to be as popular as the plague when you try to restore order.”
“We live just outside the Engineer’s gate,” Lucy Dylan told Hannah as they strolled out into an early winter’s twilight. “Won’t you come in to visit with us for a while? The children will be being bathed and getting ready for their dinner, and we can have a lovely chat.”
“No, Lucy,” Josh said decisively, as Hannah was about to demur, and though she had no intention of imposing, her heart sank at the finality in his voice.
“Gray’d find a way to stir up their baths, if I know him,” Josh said with a wry smile. “As long as he’s in the house, there’ll be chaos. If you want to talk, let’s all go to dinner, instead.”
“I couldn’t, I can’t…” Hannah began to stammer.
