Chapter 2
Chapter Two
“Good evening, Mrs. Holt! I am sorry for the short notice. I hope the preparations were not too great a trouble,” Miss Anne Barnet said with a sheepish smile as the housekeeper ushered them through the entrance hall.
“Not at all, miss. The rooms have been aired out, and there’s a good fire in the kitchen,” Mrs. Holt replied with a smile. She was a stout woman with a face like a potato, and she beamed at them with the warmth of someone who had always liked the Barnet sisters. “I hope you will be staying long?”
“Only the night, I’m afraid. We must continue our journey tomorrow.”
“To Scotland!” Young Celia supplied cheerfully.
Mrs. Holt’s eyebrows rose a fraction, but she was far too kind a woman to ask questions. “Of course, My Ladies. And welcome home for the time being. Shall I have dinner sent to your rooms, then?”
Our rooms…
Anne laughed to herself.
Not for a moment longer than is purely necessary.
Kirklow House was not, strictly speaking, home. It had never been home for Anne, who had grown up in a London townhouse filled with books, laughter, and the scent of her mother’s rose water. Nor was it home to her younger sister, Celia.
Sadly, she had known nothing other than these cold, formal walls her entire life. Neither sister felt she belonged to the house, and the house certainly did not belong to them. But it was a stopping place on the way to a brighter future, and tonight, that was enough.
“Actually,” Anne said, glancing out the window at the clear, deep blue sky, going gold at the edges with the last of the evening light, not a cloud in sight. “I wonder if we might dine outside tonight. The weather is so very fine.”
Celia, who had been standing with the suppressed energy of a child who had spent too long in a carriage, made a sound of profound approval as she clapped.
“Yes, the garden is quite lovely this time of year,” Mrs. Holt agreed. “I’ll have them set up the table near the apple trees.”
“Perfect. And…” Anne hesitated for a moment as she considered her words. “Would you mind asking the staff to give us a little privacy this evening? Just Miss Celia and me. They can leave the food and go.”
The fewer eyes, the better.
“Of course, miss.” Mrs. Holt nodded, understanding perfectly. “Whatever you wish.”
The apple trees were in blossom still, late-flowering and pale against the darkening horizon. Their smell was something Anne had not realized she missed until it was all around her. It was perhaps her favorite part of the country.
She and Celia sat across from each other at the small garden table, a spread of cold chicken, bread, cheese, and pickled things between them.
For a little while, Anne let herself simply be in it. She reveled in the warm evening breeze, the distant chirping of birds, the peculiar peacefulness of a moment between one disaster and the next.
“Will she be kind?” Celia asked as she helped herself to rather a lot of cheese.
“Will who be kind?”
“Aunt Helena! The one we’re going to,” Celia clarified as she picked up a piece of bread. “I know you’ve talked about her, but I do not… Well, I do not really have a picture of her in my head.”
Anne considered the question. She had not seen her mother’s sister in eight years, not since before her parents died, not since the world had been a different shape entirely.
Her memories of Aunt Helena were soft at the edges now. She was a woman who laughed easily and enjoyed a good drink. She smelled of fresh wool and lavender. Once, Aunt Helena had spent an entire afternoon teaching her how to make paper boats on the banks of a river somewhere outside Edinburgh.
“Kind,” Anne finally replied. “She was always kind. Very much like Mama in that way.” She paused at the thought of their mother.
“Aunt Helena lives simply, without fuss or excess. Her husband died some years ago, and she has a small house near the coast. I imagine it will be very different from London.”
“Good,” Celia said, with feeling. “I would like that very much.”
Anne smiled despite herself. “Are you done with London, then?”
“I’m done with Uncle Benjamin’s London.” Celia looked up, and her brown eyes were sharp in the way they always were when she was being perfectly honest. “And I’m done with Lord Lambridge entirely and forever!”
“That, at least, I cannot argue with.” Anne picked up a piece of crusty bread and dipped it in jam. “I could not have said it better myself.”
“He called me a child.”
“You are a child, Celia.”
“He called me a child in a way that means tiresome and ignorant, not in a way that means young.” Celia frowned. “There is a difference.”
There certainly is.
Anne said nothing; she had nothing to add. There was nothing useful to say about Lambridge that she had not already thought at length and found insufficient. She reached for her glass and took a sip.
“Will you write to Aunt Helena?” Celia asked. “Let her know we’re coming?”
“I sent a letter from the last posting house. She should have it before we arrive.” Anne glanced at her sister, dark hair escaping from her braid, the smudge of something on her chin that she had apparently been carrying since the afternoon without anyone mentioning it. “Are you frightened?”
“A little,” Celia replied thoughtfully. “But I’m more frightened of staying.”
Anne felt the familiar tightening in her chest that she had learned to breathe through over the years. There was no other way.
She set her glass down, reached across the table, and covered Celia’s hand with her own. She gave three tight squeezes.
I. Love. You.
“I know,” she said. “But we’re going. Together. And we won’t look back.”
Celia turned her hand over and squeezed back three times. Then she brightened with the resilience only children have, one Anne had always admired and tried to emulate.
“Will Scotland have castles?”
“Oh, surely. Some, at least.”
“And warriors? Lord Huntleigh once told me that Scotland has warriors in tartans who fight with enormous swords. I think he was making it up, but I want it to be true.”
“Lord Huntleigh was almost certainly exaggerating. Yet, there is some truth there, I bet. We will have to see for ourselves.”
“He said they’d wear my hair as a trophy if I came near them.
” Celia seemed to find this prospect more exciting than alarming.
“I told him my hair wasn’t worth fighting over because it’s brown and not very interesting, and he said that was an insult to my hair and I should be ashamed of myself. ” She paused. “I like Lord Buntleigh.”
“Old Lord Huntleigh is a bad influence.”
“Lord Huntleigh,” Celia said, with calm authority, “is the only person in Uncle Benjamin’s circle who talks to me like a person.”
Anne opened her mouth. Closed it. She could not, in good conscience, argue.
“Celia,” she insisted, “you are not going to become a Viking. You are going to arrive in Scotland as a composed young gentlewoman and make an excellent impression on Aunt Helena.”
“Can I not be both?”
“Oh, you…” Anne sighed, and Celia’s face split into a grin. “Perhaps you can.”
In that moment, Anne felt a wave of love wash over her. She laughed despite herself. She would do anything for her sister. In fact, she had done everything for her. And she would do more.
The rustling, when it came, was very quiet at first. Anne did not notice it immediately. It was barely more than the wind in the boxwood hedge. When she did notice, she set down her fork with the alertness of someone who had learned to be watchful. Then, the rustling became louder.
She was on her feet before she had fully decided to stand.
She slowly stepped in front of Celia. She did not want to frighten her unnecessarily. She raised an eyebrow at her sister. Celia went still. The hedge at the edge of the garden shook, and Anne prayed it wasn’t a wild animal. Then a small figure stumbled out of it.
Anne blinked.
The girl was ten, perhaps eleven, with rich dark ringlets falling loose from what had once been an elaborate arrangement of braids and pale pink ribbons.
Her dress was unmistakably expensive, a sleek pink frock that was out of place in a hedge.
It had grass stains on the skirt and a small tear on the shoulder.
She stood at the edge of the lamplight, blinking. She had clearly been walking for some time and had not expected to end up here. She looked at Anne, then looked at Celia, then looked at the food.
“I beg your pardon, My Ladies,” she said with impeccable elocution, dropping into a curtsy. “I did not mean to startle you.”
Anne’s heartbeat slowed. She stepped to the side, out of her protective stance in front of Celia, and smiled.
“You didn’t startle us at all,” she assured, which was not entirely true. “Are you all right? You look as though you’ve been walking for some time, dear.”
The girl’s stomach made a sound that answered the question before she could. Her face went as pink as her frock, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
“Oh, heavens,” Anne said warmly. “Come and sit down. Are you hungry?”
The girl’s gaze went to the table. She looked at the bread, the cheese, and the cold chicken, then nodded once.
“Then come here.” Anne gestured to the empty chair beside Celia, who had been watching all of this with wide, interested eyes and had, commendably, not said anything at all.
The girl approached and sat. Anne began to fill a plate with all of the fixings.
Celia studied the newcomer with the unselfconscious attention of a small person who had not yet learned to pretend she wasn’t looking. The girl studied her back with equal directness.
There was something special in their mutual assessment, this weighing, this measuring.
This is the beginning of something, but what, I do not know…
Anne looked at them.
“I’m Celia,” Celia said.
“Felicity,” the girl replied. “Is that your sister?”
“Yes, her name is Anne.”
“Hello, Miss Barnet.”
“Hello,” Anne returned with a smile.