barely read, she must print her letters, she trusts everyone who smiles at her, she wants me to read fairy tales to her when I visit, and she will be playing with dolls until I’m an old man. Bad enough my children will be taunted for their height and size. Bad enough they’ll be assumed to be stupid oafs good only for hitching to the plow, bad enough they’ll never feel they fit in…”
He spun on his heel and went to the window, shoulders heaving with emotion before gathering his composure and continuing more softly.
“I cannot consign Leah to mothering a brood of oversized idiots,” Nick informed them. “Worse by far, I
He regarded two old women who’d loved him since he’d first drawn breath, both looking at him with such… such
“I’m going to explain to Leah what we’d risk were we to have children, and if she leaves me once and for all, I will accept her decision.”
Silence. Dumbstruck, dismayed silence, and Nick realized he’d shouted at his grandmother and his old nurse.
“My apologies, ladies.” He bowed at the waist. “You can appreciate my concern.”
Magda’s lips were pursed in thought, but Della rose and pushed Nick back toward the table.
“Sit, you,” she said, her tone commanding. “You are under a misapprehension I would relieve you of. Magda?”
Magda nodded and slid down beside Della.
“You believe Leonie’s limitations are a function of her parentage,” Della began briskly. “They are not.”
“But Papa had a brother…”
“Who fell from his damned horse as a lad,” Della interrupted. “There are many traits that run in the Haddonfield and Harper lines, Nick, but madness and mental impairment are not among them.”
“But then, how did Leonie come to be as she is?” Nick asked, a world of miserable bewilderment in his voice. “She has been like she is since I’ve known her.”
“Fevers,” Magda supplied. “You didn’t meet the girl until she was well past two years of age, and until that winter, she’d been just another darling, happy child. She walked by one year, began speaking about the same time, and put her sentences together the same as any other child.”
“So what happened?”
“Leonie fell ill with the same influenza that took her mother,” Della said. “But Leonie eventually recovered. Magda first noticed the child wasn’t coming along as she had before, though physically, Leonie has always been vigorous enough.”
His mind could not absorb all that Della said, but he could comprehend that last. “She’s been healthy as a horse, except for that flu.”
“I thought we were going to lose her,” Magda said. “She shook with the fevers and shook with them, night after night, and grew so tiny it’s a wonder she lived.”
Another silence fell, as Nick began to consider the information the old women had just imparted. He ran his finger around the rim of his teacup. “You are saying Leonie was not born simple.”
“No more than any other child,” Della said. “No more than you were, Nicholas.”
“So I’ve put aside my wife for nothing?” Nick asked the room in general.
“You put her aside to try to protect her,” Della said, “and to protect your unborn children from what you thought would be a life of ridicule and judgment.”
“God help me. Ladies, you will excuse me. I have another call to make.”
Nick stumbled out of the kitchen, not even hearing what they might have said to him in parting.
Nick hadn’t lied; he did have another appointment. But it wasn’t for another hour, and he needed that hour to put his world back on its axis. He found himself in the park by the duck pond, his little scrappy friend nowhere to be seen.
The day was pleasant, the breeze soft, the sunshine warm on Nick’s face. Just another pretty afternoon in the park, though Nick felt as if his whole life was shifting.
He’d been so wrong for so long, and so sure of himself in his wrongheadedness. He didn’t know whether to cry with relief or cry with sorrow for the damage his misjudgments were still causing even as he sat in the afternoon breeze and listened to the laughter of children.
Normal children, like little John. Children who could learn cursive writing and Latin, do sums and see malice and contempt when it came at them.
A loud quacking disturbed his musings, and Nick looked up to see an indignant young drake flapping and hissing at him. His friend, well on the way to growing up, though a yellowish cast to his plumage betrayed his identity. Nick fished a tea biscuit left over from breakfast out of his pocket and tossed it at the young duck. The tea biscuit disappeared, and the duck waddled down to the water and paddled off to join his fellows.
And then, when she’d recovered from that blow, or maybe before she sustained it, Nick was going to have to tell her about Leonie.
Leah had never had such a social week. Ethan and Beck came on Thursday. On Friday, David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, appeared and took her to visit with his wife and children. On Saturday, more of Nicholas’s friends, Lord and Lady Greymoor, showed up, with his lordship ponying a pretty mare behind his great black gelding, a wedding present to Leah. They stayed for luncheon before removing to Fairly’s, and while Lady Greymoor admired Leah’s gardens, she also admonished her hostess to bring that lackwitted Nicholas to heel.
Sunday saw a lull in the traffic, with Darius offering to escort Leah to services at the local church. It was a pretty day, and an innocuous way to meet her neighbors, so she went.
“I’m off to Town tomorrow,” Darius said as he handed Leah down from his coach when he saw her home. “I should be back by nightfall.”
“You’ll give my regards to Trent and the children?” Leah asked, searching her brother’s face.
“Of course, if I have time to stop by. I’ve a few appointments to see to first, and I thought checking in on Emily might be the higher priority.”
Leah regarded him sternly. “You are not to make her into your next damsel in distress. Wilton dotes on her, and her letters suggest she is enjoying the patronage of Lady Della. She’ll be all right, as I am all right.”
“Give Nick some time,” Darius said. “I like him, and I’m not easily impressed. What seems so insurmountable one day can often be managed the next.”
Leah glanced at him, wondering where such an encouraging sentiment came from, particularly as she needed to hear it—badly.
“Travel safely.” She kissed his cheek again, touched and a little surprised when he hugged her tightly, kissed her back, and then hugged her again before hopping up onto the box with his coachman.
“I’ll see you later in the week, Leah,” he called down. “Save some time for me.”
“Of course.” She waved him on his way, wondering what that was all about. She’d no sooner given the order for tea to be served in the garden when she saw the now-familiar groom trotting up the drive. Leah waved him over so they might dispense with formalities, and took the letter directly from his hand.
As she caught a whiff of Nick’s scent on the envelope, she felt a pang of longing for her husband—for his smile, his embrace, the sound of his voice, the feel of him shifting the mattress beside her at night.
She cut those thoughts off ruthlessly and made her way to the back gardens, Nick’s latest letter in hand.
