Chapter Three
“He has been bathed and dressed, miss. Jenny saw to it first thing.”
Mrs Potter stood at the nursery door with the air of a woman presenting a prize horse at auction—hopeful, anxious, and braced for disappointment.
Behind her, framed by the cheerful paper that only served to heighten the room’s unnatural stillness, Thomas Harding sat at a small table, his hands folded and his spine as rigid as a soldier’s.
He had been scrubbed to within an inch of his life.
His fair hair lay plastered neatly against his skull, still damp at the edges.
His clothes—a miniature suit of navy wool, perfectly pressed—fit him precisely and revealed nothing.
He looked, Lorraine thought with a pang, like a doll arranged for display.
Like something meant to be observed, rather than touched.
“Thank you, Mrs Potter.” Lorraine kept her tone light and unhurried. “That will be all for now. I shall ring if we require anything.”
The housekeeper hesitated. Her gaze moved from Lorraine to Thomas and back again, and in that glance, Lorraine read volumes: Four governesses. Five months. Please let this one succeed.
“Of course, miss.” Mrs Potter withdrew, closing the door softly behind her.
Lorraine did not immediately approach the table.
Instead, she took her time surveying the nursery—the shelves of untouched toys, the rocking horse gathering dust in the corner, the window seat overlooking grey skies and bare branches.
A beautiful room. A room designed for childhood—for play, for noise, for laughter.
It felt like a mausoleum.
Thomas watched her watching. His brown eyes followed her movements with the wariness of a creature accustomed to sudden change.
Lorraine recognised that look. She had worn it herself, in those bleak months after her father’s death, when every knock at the door might herald another creditor, another demand, another fragment of her former life stripped away.
You are waiting, she thought, for me to hurt you. Or leave you. You are not certain which will come first—only that one of them must.
She moved to the bookshelf and let her fingers trail along the spines.
Primers and moral tales, for the most part—the sort of improving volumes selected by adults and endured by children.
But there, half-hidden behind a particularly dreary treatise on deportment, she discovered something more promising: a slim book bound in green cloth, its pages softened with use.
Bewick’s A History of British Birds.
Lorraine drew it out and turned to face Thomas. He had not moved. Had not spoken. His hands remained folded, his posture perfect, his expression giving nothing away.
She did not go to him. Instead, she lowered herself to the carpet—just as she had done the previous evening—and arranged her skirts about her with the ease of long habit.
“I found this upon the shelf,” she said lightly, holding up the book. “It appears to have been much read. The pages are quite worn.”
Nothing. Not so much as a flicker.
“I confess I know very little of birds.” She opened the book at random—an engraving of a thrush, delicately rendered. “We had sparrows in London, of course. And pigeons. But I imagine the birds of Yorkshire must be rather different.” She glanced up at him. “I do not suppose you might enlighten me?”
For a long moment, she thought he would not answer. His jaw was set, his small hands clenched in his lap, every line of him resisting.
Do not, that small body seemed to say. Do not make me care. Do not make me trust you. You will only go, as the others did.
Then, so softly she almost missed it: “There are rooks.”
Lorraine’s heart tightened. She kept her expression unchanged—pleasant, attentive, wholly unsurprised, as though small boys spoke to strange governesses every day.
“Rooks,” she repeated. “I believe I heard them yesterday, as I walked up the drive. They made a dreadful noise.”
“They nest in the oaks.” His voice was rough, as though unused. “Beyond the garden. There is a whole—a whole colony.”
“A rookery?”
A faint nod. His gaze had shifted to the book in her hands, and there—only for an instant—she saw it: a spark of interest, quickly concealed. As though wanting anything had become dangerous, and he had learned to hide even that from himself.
Oh, my dear child, she thought. What has been done to you?
She turned the pages slowly, allowing him to see the illustrations. “I should very much like to see the rookery,” she said. “Perhaps, when the weather improves, you might show it to me? I should very likely lose my way on my own.”
Another pause. She could almost see the calculation—the weighing of risk against risk, of disappointment against the faint and frightening possibility of connection.
“Perhaps,” he said at last. “If it does not rain.”
It was not agreement. Not trust. But it was not refusal either. It was a door left slightly ajar, and Lorraine knew better than to force it open.
“That sounds quite perfect.” She closed the book and set it gently upon the carpet between them. “Now—there is to be schooling, I believe. Reading and writing and arithmetic, and all the rest. But I think that today we might simply… become acquainted. Would that suit you?”
Thomas looked at the book. Then at her. Then at the book again.
“The other governesses made me do sums,” he said. “On the first day.”
“Did they indeed?”
“And recite verses. And practise my penmanship.”
“How very diligent of them.” Lorraine tilted her head. “And did you like it?”
The question seemed to puzzle him. His brow drew together slightly—a faint crease that made him, for a fleeting instant, look like any other child confronted with an unfamiliar idea.
“Like it?” he repeated.
“Yes. Did it please you? Did it make you happy?”
The crease deepened. “I do not… I do not think governesses are meant to make you happy.”
The words struck her like stones. She thought of the Whitmore girls, who had wept when she left, who had pressed flowers into her hands and begged her to stay. She thought of her own childhood—of laughter, of warmth, of the quiet certainty of being loved.
Thomas had none of that. Thomas had strangers with slates and copybooks, and a guardian who could not bear to look at him, and a house filled with silence.
“Well,” she said, steadying her voice by force alone, “I am not like other governesses. I have a number of very peculiar ideas about education. For instance—” She leaned forward slightly.
“I believe that children learn best when they are interested. And I believe that before we may learn together, we must first know one another. So today, instead of sums, I thought we might simply talk. You may tell me about the birds. And I shall tell you about… London, perhaps. Have you ever been?”
Thomas shook his head.
“It is very loud,” Lorraine said. “And very crowded. And it smells rather dreadful, if I am honest. But there is a park—Hyde Park—where one may see deer. Real deer, wandering about as though they own the place.”
“Deer?” A flicker of interest, swiftly masked. “In a city?”
“Indeed. The King keeps them, I believe. They are quite tame. Children feed them apples.”
Thomas was silent for a moment. Then, very softly: “I have never seen a deer.”
“Well,” she said gently, “perhaps one day you shall.”
She did not promise. She did not offer what she might not be able to give. But she saw something shift—a slight easing, the smallest loosening of those too-rigid shoulders.
It was a beginning.
***
They spent the morning together, not quite talking and not quite silent.
Lorraine read aloud from the bird book, pausing now and then to allow Thomas to supply the details she pretended not to know.
He told her about rooks—intelligent, sociable creatures, loyal to their colonies—and magpies, clever thieves with a fondness for anything that shone, and the kestrel he had once seen hovering above the moor.
“It stayed so still,” he said softly. “As though it were frozen in the sky.”
She asked questions. She listened. She did not press.
By the time Jenny arrived with the luncheon tray, Thomas had abandoned his chair for the carpet, sitting cross-legged opposite Lorraine with the book spread open between them.
His hair had dried into something nearer its natural state—soft, slightly unruly, a far cry from the rigid neatness of the morning.
He looked, Lorraine thought, almost like a real child.
“Well now,” Jenny said, her eyes widening at the sight. “Isn’t this cosy?”
Thomas stiffened at once, withdrawing into himself like a creature retreating to its shell. The light that had begun to kindle in his eyes flickered and dimmed.
Lorraine rose smoothly, brushing her skirts free of lint. “Thank you, Jenny. You may set the tray upon the table.”
Jenny complied, casting curious glances between them. She was young—nineteen, perhaps—with a round face and an eager air that suggested she found the household’s small dramas endlessly absorbing.
“Mrs Potter says to tell you luncheon is also laid in the small dining room, miss, if you would prefer—”
“I shall take my meals here, with Master Thomas.” Lorraine’s tone remained pleasant, but firm. “We are becoming acquainted.”
“Yes, miss.” Jenny bobbed a curtsy and withdrew, plainly bursting with news to carry belowstairs.
When she was gone, Lorraine turned back to Thomas. He had not left the carpet, but his shoulders had crept once more toward his ears, his hands returning to that unnatural stillness.
“Thomas,” she said gently, “would you care to take luncheon with me?”
He looked up at her. In his eyes she saw the same calculation—the wariness, the fear, the faint and stubborn hope he seemed determined to suppress.
“The other governesses ate in their rooms,” he said. “Or downstairs.”
“As I told you, I am not like other governesses.” She held out her hand. “Come. We shall eat together, and you may tell me more about the kestrel.”
A pause. A breath.