Chapter Four
Luncheon was, to put it mildly, an awkward affair.
The children were halfway through their soup when Lord Greystone appeared in the doorway of the small dining room, and the effect of his arrival was immediate and unmistakable.
Ella froze with her spoon suspended halfway to her mouth.
Samuel shrank back in his chair, his gaze dropping to his lap.
And Rosie, small and fragile, made a sound that was almost a whimper and pressed herself hard against the back of her seat.
Lord Greystone paused in the doorway, taking in the scene he had created. His jaw tightened slightly, and Serena glimpsed something that might have been pain cross his features.
“Good afternoon,” he said, his voice carefully measured. “I thought I might join you for the meal.”
No one replied.
Serena, who was seated at the end of the table nearest the door, rose at once. “How very pleasant, my lord. Please do sit down. There is ample soup, and Cook has baked fresh bread this morning.”
She kept her tone light and conversational, as though the master of the house joining a children’s luncheon were the most natural occurrence imaginable, as though three small bodies had not gone rigid the instant he appeared.
Lord Greystone crossed to the chair at the head of the table, the one that had almost certainly belonged to his brother, Serena realised with a pang, and seated himself with the cautious deliberation of a man approaching a skittish horse.
“The soup smells excellent,” he offered, and the remark was so painfully earnest, so clearly an attempt at normality, that Serena felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for him.
“It is chicken and leek,” she replied. “One of Cook’s specialities, I am told.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. Cook has been with the family for a very long time.”
Silence followed. Ella remained motionless. Samuel kept his eyes fixed on his lap. Rosie clutched her napkin with white knuckled fingers; her gaze locked on her uncle with an expression of frightened uncertainty.
Serena caught Lord Greystone’s eye and inclined her head slightly towards Rosie. Look at her, she silently urged. She needs reassurance.
He frowned faintly, not quite understanding.
Serena tried again, this time with a gentler expression and a small glance towards the youngest child.
Something seemed to register. Lord Greystone turned his attention to Rosie, and his features softened in a way Serena suspected he did not even perceive.
“Rosie,” he said, and his voice was quieter now, less formal. “I see you have Marianne with you. Is she enjoying her soup?”
Rosie blinked up at him, startled by the question. For a moment, she appeared uncertain how to answer.
“Marianne does not eat soup,” she said at last, her voice scarcely above a whisper. “She is a doll.”
“Ah.” He nodded gravely. “My mistake. I sometimes forget that dolls have very different requirements from people.”
There was another pause. Then, so softly Serena almost missed it, Rosie said, “She likes biscuits. Pretend biscuits.”
“Does she? That seems entirely sensible. Pretend biscuits are far less troublesome than real ones.”
And just like that, some of the tension in Rosie’s small body eased. She did not smile—she was not ready for that—but she stopped clutching her napkin quite so tightly, and her shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch from where they had been pressed up around her ears.
Serena exhaled slowly, some of her own tension releasing with the breath.
“Samuel,” Lord Greystone said, turning to his nephew. “How were your lessons this morning?”
Samuel did not look up. His fingers tightened against the edge of the table, and for a long moment Serena thought he would not answer.
Then, in a voice scarcely louder than Rosie’s, he said, “Fine.”
“Good. That is good.” Lord Greystone glanced briefly at Serena, plainly unsure how to continue.
She gave him a barely perceptible nod of encouragement.
“Miss Collard tells me you completed your arithmetic without errors,” he went on. “That is impressive. I was never very accomplished at arithmetic myself.”
Samuel’s head lifted a fraction, not enough to meet his uncle’s gaze, but enough to show that he was listening.
“Really?” The word was hesitant, doubtful.
“Really. I used to hide my exercises under my bed so my tutor could not find them. Edward, your father, had to help me finish them once the tutor had gone.”
There it was—that name, Edward, spoken with a complicated mixture of love and grief. Serena watched Samuel’s face carefully, saw the way the mention of his father made something shift in the boy’s expression.
“Papa was good at arithmetic,” Samuel said quietly. “We used to practice at night, before bed.”
“I know. He told me about it in one of his letters.” Lord Greystone’s voice had roughened. “He said you were quick as anything. That you’d be running the estate accounts by the time you were twelve.”
Samuel’s lower lip trembled, just slightly. “He said that?”
“He did. He was very proud of you, Samuel. Of all of you.”
The silence that followed was unlike the strained pauses before. It was full, heavy with memory and loss, with the presence of someone who was no longer there.
Ella set down her spoon.
“I thought you did not wish us to speak of them, Uncle,” she said, her voice carefully controlled.
Lord Greystone flinched as though he had been struck. “That is not—I never said—”
“You did not have to.” Ella lifted her chin. “You never mention them. You never speak of them. You moved all their things from the main house, and you took down the large portrait in the drawing room, and you…” Her voice broke. “It is as though you want us to forget they ever existed.”
“Ella,” Serena said quietly. “That is enough.”
“No, it is not.” Ella’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “We are not meant to cry where he can see us, and we are not meant to speak of Mama and Papa, and we are not meant to need anything from him because he is always busy with his papers and the estate and his…”
“Ella.”
Lord Greystone’s voice cut through the room, and she fell silent at once. There was no anger in his tone. But something far worse—something broken.
“You are right,” he said.
Ella stared at him, her chest heaving with suppressed emotion. “What?”
“You are right. I have been… avoiding it. I have been hiding from your grief because I do not know how to face it, because to face it would mean facing my own.” His jaw worked. “I have failed you. All three of you. And I am sorry.”
The room was utterly still. Even Rosie had ceased fidgeting, her wide eyes fixed upon her uncle.
Serena watched Lord Greystone struggle for composure, watched emotion threaten to undo him. His eyes grew bright, his breath unsteady.
Then Ella did something extraordinary.
She rose from her chair, crossed to him, and placed her hand, tentatively, upon his shoulder.
“Uncle Nate,” she said softly. “I am sorry. I should not have…I didn’t mean to—”
“No.” He covered her hand with his own. “No, Ella. You should have said it. Someone ought to have done so long ago.” He drew a careful breath. “I have been so afraid of making matters worse that I have made them worse by doing nothing at all. That ends today. I promise you, it ends today.”
Serena turned her gaze away, feeling as though she were intruding upon something deeply private. Yet she could not prevent the swell of emotion in her chest, the mingling of sorrow, relief, and something warmer that she did not wish to examine too closely.
When she looked back, Rosie had slipped from her chair and crossed the room. She tugged at her uncle’s coat with one small hand, her expression solemn.
“Uncle Nate?”
He looked down at her, his eyes still bright with unshed tears. “Yes, Rosie?”
“May Marianne have a pretend biscuit now? She has been very patient.”
The laugh that escaped him was unsteady, but genuine. “Yes, my dear. Marianne may have as many pretend biscuits as she wishes.”
Rosie nodded gravely, as though this settled a matter of great importance. Then, without hesitation, she climbed into her uncle’s lap and settled there as though it were the most natural place in the world.
Lord Greystone’s arms closed around her instinctively. Over the child’s head, his gaze met Serena’s, and she saw in his eyes something that made her breath catch.
Gratitude. And something more. Something that looked very much like hope.
***
The afternoon passed in a blur of activity.
Lord Greystone, having declared his intention to be more present in the children’s lives, proved as good as his word.
He joined them in the garden for their after-luncheon walk, asking questions about the flowers and trees and listening with apparent interest as Rosie explained, at considerable length, the proper method of feeding pretend biscuits to rag dolls.
He examined Samuel’s latest drawing and pronounced it excellent, and though the boy did not smile, neither did he retreat. He stood beside his uncle and pointed out the details of his work with quiet pride.
He even managed a civil conversation with Ella about one of her more challenging authors, though Serena suspected his acquaintance with the views in question was limited at best. It did not seem to matter.
What mattered was that he was trying. He was present, attentive, and making an effort where there had once been only absence.
By evening, Serena was weary in a way that owed nothing to physical exertion.
She had spent the day navigating a landscape of complicated feelings, mediating between a man uncertain how to reconnect with his family and three children who had forgotten how to trust. Yet beneath the fatigue lay something else, something that felt perilously close to satisfaction.
She was tucking Rosie into bed when the little girl reached up and caught her hand.
“Miss Collard?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Uncle Nate came to luncheon today.”
“He did.”
“He never comes to luncheon.” Rosie’s big eyes were solemn, searching. “Why did he come today?”
Serena considered her reply with care. “I think,” she said slowly, “that he missed you. And that he realised the only way to stop missing you was to be with you more often.”
Rosie pondered this. “So if I miss Mama, I should be with her more often?”
Serena’s heart tightened painfully.
“My dear,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and keeping hold of Rosie’s small hand, “being with your mama is not something you can do in the usual way anymore. But you can remember her. You can think of the times you shared, the things she taught you, and the way she made you feel loved. When you do that, a part of her remains with you still.”
“Like in my heart?”
“Yes. Precisely so.”
Rosie was quiet for a moment, considering. “Marianne is in my heart too. Even when she is in my room and I am in the garden.”
Serena smiled, blinking against the sting of tears. “Yes. That is a very good way of understanding it.”
“Miss Collard?”
“Yes?”
“Are you in my heart too?”
The question hit Serena like a physical blow. She had not been prepared for it, nor for how much it would mean coming from this small, wounded child who had learned too soon that love might vanish without warning.
She ought to have answered carefully. She ought to have preserved the professional distance that had protected her through four years of temporary positions and inevitable partings. She ought to have remembered her rule.
Instead, she heard herself say, “I should like to be. If you will allow me.”
Rosie smiled, a real smile, the first Serena had seen from her. “I will,” she said. And then, because she was five and the world was still mercifully simple, “Good night, Miss Collard.”
“Good night, Rosie.”
Serena rose, smoothed the blankets, and went to the door. She paused there, looking back at the small figure in the bed, at Marianne tucked beneath one arm, at the fair hair spread across the pillow, at the peaceful expression on a face that had known too much sorrow.
Her rule, her sensible and carefully maintained rule about not becoming attached—she was already breaking it.
And the most unsettling part was that she could not summon the will to regret it.