“Thank you for the report. That is exactly the sort of information a governess needs.”
Anna beamed and made a note in her register.
Viola began leaving drawings on Mel’s desk. They appeared without explanation, small pieces of paper weighted with whatever object was nearest, bearing meticulous pencil sketches of flowers and toads and, on one occasion, a remarkably accurate portrait of Mr. Whiskers glaring from beneath the stove. Mel collected them without comment, but she arranged them in a small stack on her windowsill where the morning light could illuminate them, and she noticed that Viola noticed, and that the drawings continued.
Thistle presented her with a beetle.
It was a large beetle, iridescent and green, with impressive mandibles and an air of profound dignity despite its currentcircumstances, which involved being cradled in the palm of a five-year-old’s grubby hand.
“It’s the best one I’ve ever found,” Thistle said solemnly.
“You can keep it.”
Mel regarded the beetle with appropriate seriousness. It regarded her back with the impassive patience of an insect that had seen many things and been impressed by none of them.
“I’m honoured.”
“His name is Wellington. Because he’s a general.”
“An excellent name.” Mel considered the beetle’s options. A life in a governess’s pocket seemed unlikely to suit a creature of such obvious ambition.
“Perhaps he would be happier in the garden? Generals prefer to command their own territory.”
Thistle’s face flickered with something that might have been disappointment, or might have been the beginning of a negotiation. “He would be happier with you.”
“I think,” Mel said carefully, “that he would be happier knowing we set him free to pursue his campaigns. But we could release him together. In the rose bushes. That seems a fitting territory for a general.”
Thistle considered this in silence. Then she nodded, once, with the gravity of someone making a significant concession.
They walked to the garden together, through the kitchen door and past the cook’s suspicious gaze, along the gravel path to where the rose bushes stood in their late-summer fullness. The blooms were just beginning to fade, their petals loosening and falling in the afternoon breeze, but the leaves were still thick and green and promised excellent cover for a beetle with military ambitions.
Thistle knelt by the largest bush and opened her hand. Wellington, showing no particular urgency, ambled from her palm onto a branch and disappeared into the shadows of the leaves.
“Goodbye, Wellington,” Thistle said. “Command wisely.”
“A noble farewell,” Mel said.
Thistle stood and, without any apparent premeditation, reached up and took Mel’s hand.
Her fingers were small and still slightly grubby despite the morning’s washing, and they curled around Mel’s with the unconscious trust of a child who had decided, without deliberation or hesitation, that this adult was safe.
They walked back to the house hand in hand, neither speaking, and Mel thought:this is dangerous. This is exactly the sort of attachment I cannot afford to make.
But she did not let go.
In the kitchen, Mrs. Kemp watched them pass through the door and into the corridor beyond. When they were gone, sheturned to the cook, who was kneading bread with the rhythmic violence of a woman who had strong opinions about children and their toads.
“She’s not like the others,” Mrs. Kemp said. “She actually likes them.”
“Mad, then,” Cook said, without looking up from her dough.
“Perhaps.” Mrs. Kemp wiped her hands on her apron and thought of the drawings on the windowsill, the attendance register filled with careful notes, the beetle released into the roses with ceremonial gravity. “But the good kind of mad.”
That evening, after the children had been read to and sung to and, in Thistle’s case, firmly prevented from smuggling Brutus under her pillow, Mel sat at her desk and composed her first formal report for the mysterious benefactor.
She thought of Viola’s drawings appearing silently on her desk. Of Anna’s fierce dedication to the attendance register. Of Thistle’s small hand reaching up to take hers, offering trust like a gift she did not know how to refuse.
They require someone who will stay.
