Drops of Gold (16 page)

Even Mr. Throckmorten, during his obligatory visit to Farland Meadows after Bridget’s death, had wondered aloud at the oddity of one so young passing so suddenly. Layton had already endured months of pointed scoldings over Bridget’s absence at church. If he were a capable husband and a decent Christian, the vicar had told Layton, his wife would have been present at services. Further, he would not have come to church himself looking burdened and depressed if he didn’t have reason to feel guilty. If Bridget did not wish to go about with her family or have visitors in her home, she clearly was unhappy in her marriage. Layton had endured lecture upon lecture from the vicar but had mostly dismissed the criticism.

Until Bridget had died. Until he had lied about it. Until he had sold his soul for the sake of his dead wife and the child he would have to raise without her.

A misalliance, no matter how deeply he cared for Marion, would be fodder for those who chose to wonder about Bridget’s passing and his own descent into near hermit-hood afterward. The harshest of gossips would cut Marion and likely him as well. Caroline’s future would be jeopardized despite her being the heir to the title Layton would inherit when Mater passed from this life.

No. He couldn’t do that to Caroline. She’d already been robbed of a loving mother, something for which Layton couldn’t hold himself entirely blameless. Certainly he could have done more to help his wife, latched onto some indication of the direness of Bridget’s situation that he ought to have seen.

And it wasn’t only Caroline he worried for. Marion would hardly escape unscathed. There were names society associated with governesses who married above their stations: adventuress, jade, no-better-than-she-should-be. She would be made to endure cuts, disapproving glances, general unkindness. He could not put her through that, could not be the reason she would face such things.

She would simply have to be Miss Wood again. He would be the stiff, apathetic employer once more and put a careful distance between them.

Perhaps he ought to think about looking elsewhere for a wife. The very thought made him groan and no doubt deepened his scowl.

“Good morning.” He knew that cheerful voice, but hearing it did little to lift his spirits.

“I thought you’d be at church this morning.” Layton looked out over the river rather than at her.

“I returned nearly an hour ago,” Marion said. “I have the remainder of the morning to myself so I came here.”

“As always.” Layton nodded. He knew she sat by the river every Sunday morning, no matter the weather. Though he would have denied it if asked, it was part of the reason he’d walked in circles around that part of the bank instead of his usual route toward Lampton Park. He wanted to see her again. To torture himself, he admitted inwardly.

Layton turned toward her, slowly, apprehensively. She wasn’t sitting on the ground on a blanket, probably due to the fresh dusting of snow they’d received overnight. Instead, Marion stood near a tree, blanket wrapped around her shoulders, the wind blowing her amazingly red hair in all directions. And she smiled just as she always did, perhaps a little more brightly than usual—something he wouldn’t have thought possible. She looked so obviously happy. He liked that about her—even in moments of sadness, an underlying joy followed her.

“Caroline enjoyed sitting with your family at church today.” Marion’s eyes twinkled happily as she spoke. “Lord Lampton escorted her from the family pew with all the deference he would show a duchess. It was all she could do not to giggle out loud, though I am certain Mr. Throckmorten would have disapproved quite vocally.”

The vicar disapproved of most everyone and everything. Haughty superiority and blanket judgments were the man’s specialty. Layton pushed his opinion of the vicar to the back of his mind.

“Flip always could pull a smile from her,” he said. “The rest of us were happy if we managed to get her to speak.”

“You have made her giggle more times than I can recall of late.” Marion seemed almost to scold him for forgetting. “Hearing her speak of her ‘silly’ father, one would think you were a traveling performer.”

Layton nearly smiled. Caroline
had
laughed several times and smiled at him whenever they were together. Here were more of Marion’s miracles.

“You seem troubled.” Marion stepped away from the clump of trees she’d been standing among and moved toward him.

The crisp, cold air suddenly smelled of cinnamon. Layton turned his eyes back to the river, barely holding back a tense, frustrated groan. Coming where she was, stopping to talk, hadn’t been a good idea.

“I suppose I am a little tired,” Layton answered stiffly.

“Or cold, more likely.”

He felt those eyes on him, searching, studying. “Unless you are sporting a heavy coat beneath that blanket, you are probably colder than I am.” Layton stepped a little closer to the riverbank and a little farther away from her. Distance was key.

“I am a little chilled,” she admitted with a hint of a laugh. “I knew my excursion would be short today, but I had to come.”

“Why is that, Marion?” Her Christian name slipped out before he had time to check it.

“Tradition, I suppose.” Her offhand tone held a wistfulness that piqued Layton’s curiosity.

“Another story?” he pressed.

“Of course.”

“Well, then, I am eager to hear it.” Layton turned back toward her and smiled, a mistake he recognized in an instant. She returned his smile, and it was all he could do not to kiss her again. Instead, he walked a little past her and leaned against a tree, hoping he looked suitably casual and unaffected.

“Once upon a time.” She smiled a touch saucily, and Layton looked away as subtly as he could manage. “A handsome young man and a kindhearted young lady met and fell in love. They were married and soon had two children, a strapping son and a loving daughter.”

Layton smiled in spite of himself at the familiar opening. He hadn’t been expecting one of her storybook stories. Something in her tone when she’d told him her trips were tradition had led him to think this story would be a chapter from her own history.

“The kindhearted young lady was a very attentive mother and a lover of nature. Every Sunday, after church, she walked with her daughter along the banks of a mighty river, watching the birds in the sky, admiring the flowers during the spring, noting the changing leaves in autumn, searching for Drops of Gold in the winter when they stopped to sit beneath their amazing tree.

“Every week, they walked along the river, stopping in the same spot to watch and admire and share their thoughts and dreams. When the daughter was but a babe, her mother wrapped her in a blanket to keep her warm. As the daughter grew, she continued to wrap a blanket around her shoulders during their walks. Her father often joked that there was no need for clocks on Sundays with his two ladies keeping so rigorously to their schedule.

“They walked every Sunday without fail. Until one day when the young girl was all of ten. Sunday came and went without a single person walking that particular stretch of bank or sitting beneath the magnificent tree.” Marion’s expression grew strangely distant. Her tone lost most of its cheer. “The girl’s mother was ill. Very, very ill. She told her daughter she wished they could walk again one more time. But by the next Sunday, she was dead.

“Her daughter never missed another Sunday walk nor the chance to sit along the river and watch. It was a balm for her grief and a tonic for the loneliness that would come afterward.”

The story ended there, abrupt and unresolved. And Layton knew, suddenly understood, the truth about all of the stories: the handsome young man, the kindhearted young lady, their strapping son, and their loving daughter. This was Marion’s family, her memories, her history. The Drops of Gold he’d so inconsiderately dismissed the first time she’d shared the idea with him were her connections to her past, to a much-mourned mother. The boy who’d accidentally shot his dog was her brother, the same brother who’d caused such ruckus at the dinner table. The father who’d laughed along, who’d searched out his son in the tragedy, was her father. The mother, who was so obviously the sunshine of the tiny family, was Marion’s mother, the mother she still seemed to mourn heavily and for whose death she carried in her heart a feeling of responsibility.

“Oh, Marion,” he whispered. How had this woman managed to brighten his life, his and Caroline’s, so much when her own was so rife with tragedy?

She turned her face up to him. The shimmer of an unshed tear stood in stark contrast to the smile she offered. “I love to sit here—or stand, as it were—and think of her, to remember all of the things we spoke of. I have fished out more Drops of Gold in my twenty years than is probably advisable. I’m bound to expect something spectacular out of life after collecting so many harbingers of good fortune.”

“Then the stories are true.” He hadn’t meant to sound so disbelieving, but the realization came as something of a shock.

“I always said they were.” A chuckle softened the scold.

“Does Caroline realize you are telling her of yourself, of your family?”

“No.” Marion shook her head. “There is a certain degree of anonymity to telling these things the way I have. I can warn Caroline against a few of my own childhood entanglements without being required to admit my folly.” She laughed lightly, but a serious look crossed her face. She moved absently toward him. Layton welcomed the nearness, wishing pointlessly that she could always be at his side. “Eventually she will want to know how the story ends, what becomes of the family she now knows nearly as well as I do.”

“And the story doesn’t end well.” Layton finished the thought for her. He barely resisted the urge to reach out and touch her hair as a breeze fluttered through it.

He heard her sigh before she said, “I think Caroline has endured quite enough tragic endings.” Their eyes met, and Marion smiled a little tremulous smile. Layton’s heart flipped in his chest. “I think we all have,” she added.

“And yet you smile.” Layton shook his head in amazement.

“Life has a way of repaying the prices it exacts along the way, making up for our losses. Knowing that, I have reason to hope, to believe things will get better.”

“Optimism.” Layton smiled. “You
have
been collecting those Drops of Gold.” When had he taken hold of her hand? He didn’t let go, just wondered how it had come to be there.

“Have I made you a believer, then?” She looked up at him with twinkling brown eyes and a playful smile on her lips. “You were rather unconvinced when I told you the story the first time. I wondered if you even believed there was such a thing as hope.”

“Perhaps I just needed a few Drops of my own,” he said, squeezing her fingers.

She didn’t reply but continued to watch him, her eyes and smile soft and tender.

No, he didn’t need a Drop of Gold. He needed Marion. How was he ever going to get on without her?

“Something
is
bothering you.”

Gads, did he just whimper? He must have done something, made some kind of sound. Marion slipped her hand from his. He wanted to object, to plead with her to stay, if only for a moment, knowing in the end he’d lose her. He couldn’t bear the thought and closed his eyes as if to shut out the world around him, the world that would keep them at a distance.

“Marion.”

“I haven’t left you, Layton.”

He felt her hand press softly to his cheek. Layton pulled back, hating that he had to. He turned away, toward the river. Why did God hate him so much? To let him find Marion only after he could no longer have her, when his own past prevented any future between them? It was cruel, the kind of thing a vengeful Deity saw fit to inflict on an undutiful subject. Fitting.

“Layton?” The uncertainty in Marion’s voice cut him to the quick.

“Your free time is probably nearly at an end.” He kept his eyes firmly fixed on the Trent.

“I have nearly an hour remaining.” A question hovered in her tone.

Stiff, apathetic employer
, Layton reminded himself. Setting his features, he turned back. Marion watched him, a smile still on her lips. He knew his facade slipped a little. “It is growing increasingly chilly, Miss Wood.”

She stared a little harder at his return to formality, brows drawing together in confusion, her smile slipping almost imperceptibly.

He pushed on. “You should probably return to the house before you catch cold.”

“I am quite warm, I assure you.”

“Miss Wood,” he said in his most autocratic voice, “you can hardly perform your duties as Caroline’s governess if you contract an inflammation of the lungs. I am asking you as your employer to return to the house.”

“As my
employer
?” she asked, forehead wrinkling further.

He kept himself aloof, needing her to go, to give him room and time to adjust to the situation, to ready himself to see her every day and yet keep a proper distance, to reconcile himself to the fact that she was beyond his reach.

“But you said when it was just the two of us—”

“I should never have asked to be permitted such familiarity, nor should I have allowed it.” His jaw tensed almost painfully. With a supreme effort, he kept his fists unclenched.

“Familiarity?”

“An overly friendly—”

“I know what it means, Lay—sir.” She spoke over him, though she didn’t speak loudly. Her smile had entirely disappeared, and her brow was drawn in consternation. “You said last night, you wanted to be . . . my friend.”

“I do not believe that is a good idea.” He reminded himself to remain firm. He needed distance.

Her somewhat blank expression dimmed visibly, a slight frown marring her usually cheerful face. Marion’s fingers floated to her lips as if she were unaware she’d even made the gesture. “But I thought . . .” She little more than whispered. “You . . .” Her brow creased further. “We . . .” Her fingers remained pressed to her lips.

That kiss. He knew that was what she was thinking of. How could he apologize or say he regretted it? On some level, he did. But on every other level, he didn’t regret it in the least. His only regret was that he could never do it again.