Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
Kendra
“The skates are working brilliantly Uncle Ford!” Kendra’s eldest, Elspeth, called while gracefully gliding on one foot with her other leg raised in the air.
Laughter rang out over the icy pond. The younger girls were competing to see which of them could twirl the longest, judged by Jewel, who had joined their skating party a little late. Most of the boys were skating races.
When Chases were involved, it seemed everything was a contest, but Kendra wouldn’t want it any other way. It was nice to see her children enjoying themselves in the midst of her personal frustrations.
But, oh, were those personal frustrations frustrating.
She could scarcely believe she and Trick still hadn’t managed to get together. She felt like powder keg about to explode, her skin tight and hot, her stomach constantly tied in knots. While all around her, everyone else was blithely enjoying the holiday.
Well, maybe not everyone…
She skated over to Amy, matching strokes to glide side-by-side. “I know why you’re unhappy, but why is Jewel in the doldrums? She’s usually so spirited.”
“I wish I knew,” Amy said with a sigh. “Colin thinks it’s because she lost her maid, but I fear it’s something more. Something she’s not sharing.”
“Perhaps she’s worried about the invasion.”
“Perhaps.” Amy shook her head, looking troubled. “Aren’t we all?”
Kendra could only nod her agreement.
England’s last civil war had taken so much from her: her parents, her home, her childhood. She couldn’t bear to think of it all happening again. More families torn apart, more bloodshed and destruction…
It was a welcome distraction when Ford whooshed past them, skating backward as he called out, “Watch this!” While everyone turned to look, he lifted his heels and came to a gentle halt, making a scraping noise in the process.
Kendra gasped. “How’d you do that?”
He laughed and skated closer, tracing circles around her. “While you were wrapping your gifts, I was carving jagged teeth into the front of my blades.” He sounded very pleased with himself. “I thought they would make a good stopping mechanism. Do you want to see it again?”
Kendra nodded eagerly.
While she watched, he turned to skate backward in a big circle, doing the crossover strokes that she and her siblings had learned long ago in the Netherlands during the Commonwealth years.
Which she didn’t find particularly impressive, given that she was a competent skater herself.
But then he seemed to reach a slippery patch of ice and lose his balance, his arms windmilling to keep him upright.
Kendra laughed as he hurtled past her. “Very impressive!” she teased.
He gave her a sour look, which became a look of shock as he hit an uneven patch.
Some instinct made him swiftly turn forward and jam the front of one skate into the ice, evidently trying to stop, but instead it had the curious effect of launching him into the air.
As the entire family watched in amazement, Ford spun halfway round in the air and landed on the opposite leg, skating backward again.
“Uncle Ford!” Adam cried. “How did you do that?”
“I want teeth on the front of my blades!” young Rebecca called out.
When Ford came to a stop, half the children converged on him, demanding that he teach them.
“What the devil was that?” Jason wondered.
“I don’t know,” Ford said in a daze, oblivious to the children hanging all over him. “But I bet I can work out how to do it again…”
He began muttering under his breath, his gaze trained on the ice.
Kendra rolled her eyes, knowing her twin would now stay up half the night employing complicated physics equations to learn how to skate-jump on purpose.
Not that she wasn’t as thrilled as the rest of her family.
In fact, of all the remarkable things Ford had invented, these ingenious new skate blades might be her favorite.
Jason skated up to her. “It’s nice to see you smiling. Happy, Kendra?”
“About some things,” she said ruefully.
“About most things, I’m hoping.” He grabbed her to skate arm-in-arm, as he had when she was a child and had needed him to hold her up.
“Careful, now,” he said as he had way back then, mentally sending her back to a frozen canal in Holland, where they had been exiled along with King Charles. “Remember to push out to the side.”
She laughed. “I remember. How about you?”
“How about what?”
“Are you happy, too? How do you feel about the babe?”
“The babe?”
“The…” Her feet stopped pushing sideways—stopped moving at all. At the edge of the ice, far from the rest of the family, she skidded to a stop. “The baby. Cait told you, surely? She promised she would.”
His hands on her shoulders, he turned her to face him. “The baby?”
“She didn’t? Oh, my God, I’m—”
“I’m feeling stupid,” he interrupted. “What baby, Kendra? What on earth are you talking about?”
“Cait’s. And yours, of course. She’s…” She searched his eyes, seeing only confusion. “Cait’s with child,” she finished as gently as she could. “I thought she’d told you.”
“She told you before me?” He’d gone white, the freckles he’d inherited from their mother suddenly visible on his pale face. “Who else knows?”
“Only Amy and Violet. Cait was afraid to tell you, afraid to ruin your happiness. But she promised us she would. Oh, Jason, I’m so sorry. I—”
He wasn’t listening. While she was rattling on, he was tramping through the snow toward a stand of trees, his skates still attached to his boots.
She looked around, but no one else had noticed.
Ford and Violet were skating together, lost in conversation, and the youngsters had gone back to what they were doing before his demonstration.
Cait and Amy were now judging the girls’ twirling competition, since Jewel and Elspeth had decided to join in, and Trick and Colin were timing the boys with one of Ford’s newfangled watches.
All the cousins were having the time of their lives.
In the meantime, Jason had disappeared from view, gone who knows where.
What had she done?
“Jase?” she heard Cait call. “Jason?” She was looking all around. “Where’s Jason?”
Kendra skated over to her. “He left.”
“He left? Where did he go?”
“Back to the house, I’m thinking.” Kendra pulled her farther away from the others. “Cait…I asked him how he felt about the baby.”
Cait went even whiter than Jason had. “What?”
“I thought you’d told him about it, and—”
“Three men can keep a secret if twa are deed,” Cait interrupted.
It was Kendra’s turn to say “What?”
“One of Mam’s old sayings. There is no such thing as a secret. Crivvens.” She drew a deep breath and blew it out, a visible puff in the cold air. “I don’t blame you—this is my fault. Was he angry?”
“I don’t know. He just…walked off. On his skates.”
“Well, then, he cannot have got far.” Pulling a key from her pocket, Cait sat right there on the ice to unlatch her own skates. “I’ll just go after him.”