Mr. Langford obliged. He removed his coat and boots, rolled up his trousers, and waded into the shallows with Thistle shrieking with anticipation on his shoulders. Mel watched from her position on the rocks above the tideline as he swung his youngest daughter into the air and released her into an incoming wave, catching her before she could be pulled under and lifting her, spluttering and laughing, back to safety.
“Again!” Thistle demanded.
“Again, again, again!”
They did it again. And again. And again, until Mr. Langford was as soaked as his daughter and both of them were laughing with the particular abandon that came from having surrendered entirely to the moment.
Anna, meanwhile, had identified a promising location for sandcastle construction and had drafted her father as manuallabor the moment he emerged from the waves. He was put to work digging a moat while she supervised, critiquing his technique and offering detailed instructions on optimal trench depth.
Viola had wandered down the beach, alone, searching for treasures among the stones and shells that the tide had deposited. Mel watched her from a distance, noting the careful way she examined each potential specimen, the consideration she gave before accepting or rejecting.
After perhaps twenty minutes, Viola returned. She was carrying something in her cupped hands, protecting it from the wind and her own excitement.
“Miss Grace.” Her voice was soft, as it always was, but there was warmth beneath the whisper.
“I found something.”
Mel bent down to see what Viola had brought. In her palms lay a shell, perfect and whole, spiraling inward in the particular configuration that marked it as something rare.
The surface possessed a fine pearly luster, capturing the waning afternoon rays and casting forth the faintest prismatic hues.
“It’s positively beautiful,” Mel said.
“It’s for you.”
The words were simple, offered without ceremony, but they carried weight that Mel felt in her chest. Viola was giving her a treasure. Not her father, who had come early and stayed long and was currently covered in sand and seawater. Her. The governess who had been there every day, who had read stories and taught lessons and arranged curtains in exactly the right way.
“Thank you, Viola.” Mel took the shell carefully, cradling it as though it were something precious. Which it was. “I’ll keep it always.”
Viola smiled broadly, and it was not the tentative almost-smiles she usually offered. Then she turned and walked back down the beach to continue her treasure hunt.
Mel stood with the shell in her hands and felt something shift inside her. Something that had been carefully walled off, protected against exactly this kind of breach.
When she looked up, Mr. Langford was watching her. He stood knee-deep in the moat he had been digging, Anna’s instructions apparently forgotten and his expression complex and unreadable.
He had seen Viola bring the shell and give it to the governess instead of the father.
And he had understood what it meant.
The evening conversation began as the others had, in the study after the children were asleep. But the quality of it wasdifferent. There was tension beneath the surface, something unspoken that coloured every exchange.
“Viola gave you the shell.”
Mr. Langford’s voice was carefully neutral, but Mel could hear the edge beneath it. The longing. The jealousy he was trying very hard not to feel.
“She did.”
“She gives you everything.” He was looking at the fire rather than at her, his profile sharp in the flickering light. “The drawings. The whispered secrets. The shell. All of it goes to you.”
“She gives me what she can.” Mel kept her own voice steady, matching his neutrality. “You’ve been here a week. I’ve been here three months. Trust takes time, Mr. Langford.”
“Three months.” He turned to face her, and something in his expression had shifted. “You’ve been here three months, and you know my children better than I do. You know what they eat and when they sleep and how to arrange the curtains so Viola feels safe. You know that Thistle can’t settle without Brutus and that Anna needs to feel in control of something, anything, to be happy.”
“I know these things because I pay attention. Because I am here, every day, learning them.”
“And I am not here.” The words came out rough, stripped of the charm he usually employed.
“That’s what you’re saying. I am not here, and so my daughter gives her treasures to someone else.”
