Drops of Gold (7 page)

“Surely you can have no objections to such a tale,” Miss Wood eventually said. “I can see nothing harmful in it.” But she looked quite thoroughly unhappy.

“Who told you the story?”

“My mother,” she answered quietly.

“You said you’d seen the tree?”

Miss Wood nodded, still looking out the window.

“Did your mother ever tell you what happened to the loving family? I imagine they lived happily ever after; that always seems to be the case in fairy tales.”

“As opposed to real life?” Miss Wood looked at him once more.

“Happy endings are not terribly realistic.”

“Is that what you wish me to teach Miss Caroline, sir?” Miss Wood asked. “You wish me to tell her not to expect joy in her life or happy endings. If you wish to ply your daughter with such potent poison, you will need to find another governess. I will not do it.”

Their eyes met. For a moment, he held her gaze, daring her to convince him life was all sunshine and flowers. But the fight in him died. He felt too weary to argue further. “I do not want her to be disappointed when life doesn’t turn out the way she expects it to.”

“If she is taught to expect only sadness and drudgery, she certainly will not be disappointed,” Miss Wood said. “Those who look for sadness inevitably find it.”

“Even those who expect happiness find the opposite, Miss Wood.” He certainly knew that.

“But they find happiness as well,” Miss Wood said. “Those moments of joy make the times of sadness and disappointment bearable.”

“I believe you are attempting to tell me I ought to encourage Caroline to embrace these honeyed stories you tell her.” Layton tried to sound like the puffed-up master of the manor but managed to sound only wistful.

“I am attempting to tell you that you ought to allow her some hope.”

“How many of these stories do you have, Miss Wood?”

“An endless supply.” A hint of a smile returned to her face, and Layton found himself smiling back. When was the last time a smile had come so easily to his face? Or anyone else’s in the house, for that matter?

Unaccountably, he relented. “Try to avoid any that involve the heroine leaping from trees or into rivers or anything of that sort.” Layton looked back at the fire to conceal the growing grin on his face. He had no idea why he was smiling and didn’t care to try to explain it. “She might be inclined to give such adventures a try.”

“Of course, sir.”

Layton heard the sound of her footsteps retreating to the door. Some inexplicable impulse led him to stop her. “Miss Wood?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You didn’t tell me what happened to the family? In the story?”

She sighed. “That, sir, is another tale entirely.”

Miss Wood turned and walked through the door. Layton watched her go, wondering about her story, about the family. It seemed more than a simple bedtime fairy tale. He wanted, almost
needed
, to know how it ended.

“Papa does not go to church, Mary,” Caroline had whispered as Marion tucked the carriage blanket around her swinging legs that morning.

“Ever?” Marion had asked, doing her best to mask her surprise. Mr. Throckmorten, the vicar, was not the sort to inspire heavenly devotion in his parishioners, being gratingly top-lofty and a great deal too severe in his sermons. Just that morning he’d called a list of individuals, by name, to detailed repentance. As near as Marion had been able to tell, the majority of those in the area attended services despite him. Or, perhaps they attended to appease the man and reduce their chances of having their misdeeds, small or great, delineated for their neighbors.

“He told Flip that God doesn’t like hypnowits.” She’d spoken with an extremely decisive nod of her head, a gesture she’d obviously copied from some unsuspecting adult. Marion had nearly laughed out loud.

“Who is Flip, Caroline?”

“One of Papa’s boys.”

“He has others, I believe you said. But what is their connection to him? Are they friends of his? Or neighbors?”

“They’re his brovers.”

Brothers! Marion chuckled to herself, remembering the conversation. She’d been trying to identify the boys Mr. Jonquil was supposed to have tucked away in such strange places: with the horses, the blue, the books, all over, and she was certain Caroline had said something about pain and beatings.

She had the morning off, it being Sunday. She sat on the riverbank, watching the water flow and looking for leaves. There wouldn’t be many leaves left on that magnificent oak so far upstream in Derbyshire. She wasn’t at all sure any of those leaves would reach this far downstream, but she always looked every time she was at the river’s edge.

She sighed. “Oh, Mama.” Marion missed her mother even more than usual. Mama would have known what to do for Caroline. The poor girl was far too pensive for her four years and, bless her little heart, seemed to expect abandonment at any moment.

Marion closed her eyes and clasped her hands on her lap. She sent a plea heavenward for strength and wisdom beyond what she knew she possessed. She’d seldom felt the absence of her mother more acutely than she had in the short time she’d been at Farland Meadows.

“Was there not sufficient time for prayer at church this morning?”

She knew that deep, rumbling voice in an instant: Mr. Jonquil.

Marion looked up at him and smiled. “It has been my experience that there is seldom enough time for all the petty concerns with which I am constantly bombarding heaven.”

Mr. Jonquil looked away from her, out over the river. “What petty concerns have brought you to your knees recently, Miss Wood?”

“Only the other day I prayed rather fervently for a miraculous change in hair color.”

That brought Mr. Jonquil’s gaze back to her, and he seemed surprised and almost amused. “Hair color?”

“I was told in not so many words that I would do better with a headful of something more subdued,” Marion said through her grin. “But, obviously, the Almighty disagreed.”

“He didn’t grant your petition, then?”

“Hardly.” Marion tugged at a loose lock of hair near her right temple. “Still as bright and obnoxious as ever.”

“No. It’s handsome. The color suits you.” Mr. Jonquil turned back toward the river. It was an offhand comment, but Marion felt certain he’d meant it, and she felt herself blush. Thank heaven he wasn’t looking at her.

“What have
you
petitioned the heavens for lately, sir?” Marion asked in an attempt to turn the subject away from herself.

Mr. Jonquil picked a stray branch off the ground. “I choose not to waste the Almighty’s time, Miss Wood.”

“No prayer is ever wasted, sir.”

“Give me one reason why God would want to hear from me.” A world of bitterness, pain, and disillusionment filled those few words.

Marion realized with shock that he meant it. Mr. Jonquil was convinced his prayers would not only be unheard but also resented.

He told Flip that God doesn’t like hypnowits.
Marion thought over Caroline’s revelation.

“Forgive me,” Mr. Jonquil said after a moment of silence between them, though he didn’t sound very repentant. He swung the branch in his hand at the trunk of a nearby tree. “That was very un-Anglican of me.”

“It was, however, extremely
human
of you, Mr. Jonquil. In my experience, being human is a very good thing.”

“Except it can be deucedly unpleasant at times.” The twig broke against the tree trunk. “And now I need to apologize again.” Mr. Jonquil shrugged. “I really ought to watch my language.”

“That is precisely why I use words like
double dungers
. It can mean whatever I wish, and there is no need for apologies.”

She thought she heard a quiet chuckle and smiled at the sound. There was something so oppressively unhappy about Mr. Jonquil, an aura of tension that, at times, made him seem ready to explode. It didn’t fit him, like he wasn’t meant to be burdened so heavily.

“Do you truly believe God does not want to hear from you, sir?” she asked cautiously.

“Tell me this, Miss Wood.” Mr. Jonquil turned back toward her, a look of patient indulgence on his face as though he were explaining something quite simple to someone even simpler. “Think of the person who has done you the greatest disservice in your life—lied to you or cheated you out of something that was rightfully yours or something of that nature. How eager are you, Miss Wood, to hear from that person? I daresay you would rather resent the clod’s presumption.”

Hypnowit.
“Hypocrite,” Marion whispered, suddenly understanding what Caroline had been trying to say.

“Precisely.” Mr. Jonquil turned back to the river, thwacking the branch in his hand repeatedly against the top of his boot. “No one likes a hypocrite.”

That, then, was the reason Mr. Jonquil never attended church and chose not to pray. It wasn’t a matter of not believing or being unreligious; for if that had been the case, he wouldn’t be so obviously bothered by his estrangement from the Almighty, and it did seem to bother him quite a bit. Mr. Jonquil believed in God and prayer but felt he’d disqualified himself from any association with the heavens.

Intellectually, Marion understood, but she’d been taught a very different view of her Maker.

“I told you a few days ago that I have an endless supply of stories,” Marion said cautiously.

Mr. Jonquil turned toward her, wariness written all over his face. “Why do I get the feeling you are about to regale me with one?”

Marion smiled as guiltily as she could, hoping the light tone would put him more at ease.

“Do you plan to preach to me, Miss Wood?”

“No preaching, sir.”

“Very well.” He sighed. “Get it over with.”

“It is a good story, sir!” Marion protested with a laugh.

Mr. Jonquil tossed the broken end of his twig aside and dropped onto the blanket across from her. Somehow, he still looked dignified sitting on the ground. Marion was certain she looked as ramshackle as ever. He nodded to her as if giving her permission to begin.

“Once upon a time,” she said as though he were a toddler in the nursery. She smiled and lifted her eyebrow.

Then he laughed, spontaneous and genuine. “I suppose I deserved that.”

Marion grinned back. “Once upon a time there was a handsome young man and a kindhearted young woman—”

“Same two as before?”

Marion nodded. “—who fell in love and married and in time were blessed with a strapping son and a loving daughter.”

“Ah, yes. I remember the strapping, loving children.”

“I will never finish if you keep interrupting.”

“It is one of my faults, you know, Miss Wood.” The corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Flip was forever berating me for interrupting Nurse’s fairy tales. ‘Layton, you’re ruining the story.’ Some habits are difficult to break, apparently.”

“Apparently.”

“So the stalwart children,” Mr. Jonquil hinted.

Oh, how she liked this side of her employer so much more than his grumpy side. Or his high-in-the-instep side. Or his glaring, silent side. Heavens, the man had a lot of sides!

“Yes, the children.” Marion forced her thoughts back to the task at hand, though she wasn’t entirely sure what had inspired her sudden fit of storytelling. “When the strapping son was still quite young, he learned, with the aid of a young boy in the neighborhood, the art of the slingshot. For weeks, no outbuildings or fences were safe against the demonstration of his newfound skills.”

Mr. Jonquil smiled as if remembering a few childhood escapades of his own.

“His father—”

“The handsome young man?”

Marion gave him her best governess face and used her most governess-like voice. “Layton, you’re ruining the story.”

He chuckled. She loved the sound. He ought to laugh more often.

“His father sat him down one day to explain the responsibilities tied to his new-found skills. The father insisted that shooting rocks at fences and ancient barns was one thing, but shooting those same rocks at people or animals or buildings of significance, such as their home or the vicarage, was another matter entirely. Were he to hear of his son using such things for target practice, he would be sorely displeased. The son—”

“The
strapping
son.” Mr. Jonquil looked instantly repentant. “Sorry. Please continue.”

“The strapping son faithfully obeyed his father’s edict and limited himself to targets specifically approved by his sire. But one day, while wielding his faithful slingshot in hopes of knocking a block of wood off the top of a stone wall, the son misfired. His aim failed, and the rock soared far from where he’d intended it to fly.

“It happened that whenever the boy went on romps around his home, he was followed by a spaniel puppy he’d named Tag Along. While he often pretended to find the dog’s presence a nuisance, he was, in fact, quite fond of it. Tag Along was, of course, with the son at the time his shot went wide of its target, although the puppy was not precisely at the boy’s side. He was sitting along the wall, watching the boy in canine adoration.”

“Miss Wood,” Mr. Jonquil protested, “I don’t like where this story is going.”

But she didn’t stop. “The shot, as I am sure you have concluded, struck the dog between the eyes. The son ran to his companion, who had grown unaccountably still of a sudden. He attempted to rouse the animal, but it didn’t respond to any of the boy’s pleas. The dog was—”

“Dead,” Mr. Jonquil mumbled. “Miss Wood, I do not want you telling this story to Caroline.”

“I am not telling it to Miss Caroline, sir. I am telling it to
you
.”

“
I
don’t particularly want to hear it either.”

“Please let me finish.”

He nodded his consent but turned his eyes away.

“At about the time the young son realized his beloved pet would not awaken, he heard his father’s voice calling to him. For a moment, he froze, uncertain of what he ought to do. You see, he was terribly overset at the events that had transpired, grieved at the loss of his pet, overwrought with feelings of guilt and confusion. But he was also afraid. His father had told him not to shoot his rocks at animals. He had made his disapproval of such actions quite plain.