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“What are we doing?” Simon asked. Oh, how he wished for home.

“We’re almost there.” Archie nudged his horse into a canter.

“Almost where?” Simon called after him even as he and Effie moved to follow.

They found Archie around another bend in the river, dismounting in front of a cottage. He gazed at it, which caused Simon to follow suit. The small house was a bit shabby, its thatched roof in particular having seen better days, and the willows that flanked the garden were overgrown. It was nevertheless quite charming, its stone exterior covered with climbing vines and its window boxes filled with lavender.

It had a great deal of potential.

“This must be Miss Brown’s cottage,” Archie said.

Simon was almost startled off his mount.

“What do you mean?” Effie, actually getting off his, asked.

Simon collected himself and dismounted as if he were a regular sort of person, not the sort of person who had nearly fallen from his horse due to startlement.

“Miss Brown went on holiday two summers ago,” Archie said. “She told me recently that she came here.”

Oh. This was the “other town” Diantha had visited after Barbury. Simon looked around with renewed interest.

“Apparently her mother had a friend who lived in Greychurch and used to sing its praises,” Archie said. “Miss Brown wondered if this was a place she could see herself retiring. She told me about a cottage that struck her fancy. This must be it. She described its location as being on a brook a mile south of town and mentioned majestic willows standing in juxtaposition to a small, cozy cottage. She must not have known the brook was in fact a river.”

“I can see where she erred there,” Effie said. “It is rather unimpressive as rivers go. If I had to name this cottage, it certainly wouldn’t be River’s Embrace.”

Simon examined the cottage with more care. There was a quality of quiet elegance about it. It was indeed small and cozy, but at the same time, it wasn’t cute or coy.

“Miss Brown grew up in Barbury, which isn’t far.” Archie went on. “So it is not surprising that Greychurch, the hometown of a friend of her mother’s, should be nearby. I hadn’t given it any thought, but when we passed the sign, I felt compelled to investigate.”

“I can see Miss Brown here,” Effie said.

“Can’t you, though?” Archie said, and Simon was unaccountably affronted. Not that he disagreed with them. He could easily—alarmingly easily—see Diantha here. She would read by the river. She would tend to the lavender. There was space for her vegetable patch. Someone had already hung bird feeders.

Was this her plan? Her means of escape from Mr. Hill’s treachery?

It couldn’t be. She had described to him her ideal retirement. She hadn’t done so in terms as specific as Archie had apparently pulled from her, but this place certainly matched the daydream she had sketched of a small cottage with room for a vegetable garden, walkable to a village. But she had quite clearly told him that future was going to take her years of saving to attain.

“Oh.” Effie pointed as a hen strolled toward them. “Does Miss Brown have an interest in animal husbandry?”

Simon didn’t know her to be inclined toward animals, but Diantha took care of that which was in her charge.

“Not that I know of,” Archie said, “but can’t you picture her collecting eggs in the morning for her breakfast?”

“Indeed, I can,” Effie said.

Simon was … put out. The sense of affront from earlier had grown. It wasn’t that he couldn’t imagine Diantha collecting eggs for her breakfast here; he certainly could. He just would have thought this insight would be rarer. That he knew her more intimately than the boys did, and that therefore this vision—this ability to picture her here contentedly living out her days—would be uniquely his.

“Simon, are you quite all right?”

The question had come from Effie, who was suddenly at Simon’s side.

“Yes,” he said, because he was. He was getting carried away. The boys had just spent a sennight with Diantha. Archie lived in the same house with her. Of course they knew her.

But they didn’t know everything.

“Would you mind terribly if we turned back to the village?” he asked. “I saw a shop there I’d like to visit.”

If the boys thought the request odd, they said nothing, and soon Simon was pushing open the door to Miss Dewey’s Dresses, the boys on his heels. He had tried to persuade them to wait outside, but they weren’t having it.