“Now, Mandy,” Mrs. Garvis said, coming up behind her daughter. “Greet them properly. Mr. Scarper is always a gentleman with you. The least you could do is act like a lady when he comes.”
Mandy gave each of them a short little curtsy that barely managed to dampen her energy. Matthew laughed. How could one child be so delightful? Probably lots of children were, but growing up without brothers or sisters had made Matthew uneasy around them for most of his life. Mandy had somehow managed to break through that trepidation.
Mandy turned to Mrs. Garvis after her impatient genuflection. “Now can I ask him?”
Mrs. Garvis gave him an apologetic grin. “Let them get down from the cart, and then, yes, you can ask him.”
Matthew hopped down from the cart and came to the other side to help Miss Shroud down, but she had already managed on her own.
“Did you find brown?” Mandy asked.
Matthew held up the small package, no larger than his palm. “I did.”
Mandy’s feet danced. “I knew you would.”
He handed her the package and she beamed up at him.
“Do you have time for some tea?” asked Mrs. Garvis. “Mandy and I are finishing up and I could use some refreshment.”
Miss Shroud glanced at him, eyes hopeful. She’d spent over two weeks living this life—working out in the sun every day with only him for company. She hadn’t talked much about her life before coming here, but she must have had more social interactions at home. How could he deny her this bit of comfort? “We could stay for a short while,” he said to Mrs. Garvis, “but then I’ll need to get Miss Shroud home before it is too late.”
Mandy squealed her excitement and ran into the house. Mrs. Garvis smiled at her daughter's enthusiasm. “We will be very quick,” she said, and ushered them into the house. Once inside, she nodded toward the sitting room. “I’ll just put the kettle on to boil while Mandy shows you what she’s been working on.”
Matthew followed Miss Shroud into the sitting room, but Mandy had not yet arrived. The Garvis sitting room had only one small window, and it was facing the wrong direction for the late afternoon sun. There were several lamps on tables, but since they were the first to arrive, they hadn’t been lit. The room was dim and quiet, and he was alone with Miss Shroud. The thought put his senses on high alert. Why? He was alone with Miss Shroud nearly every day. Something about having the roof above them and walls surrounding them made the room feel intimate. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Would you like to sit where you sat last time?” The two chairs still rested near the fireplace.
“If Mandy will be showing ye her creation, I would like to sit near the two of ye.” She strode to the settee and sat delicately on one side.
The chairs by the fireplace were made of warm leather, situated a proper distance from the settee. But Mandy would surely like to show both of them what she had made, and she wouldn’t be able to do that if he was across the room. He meandered toward Miss Shroud, stopping at the side table next to the settee to examine a book placed there. As the mantle clock ticked away the seconds, he picked up the book and thumbed through the pages without really seeing the words.
Mandy burst into the room, saving him from having to sit next to Miss Shroud. Her hair was wild, and she hadn’t cleaned off the dirt from her gardening adventures. In her hand she held a sheet of paper, thick with yarn and ribbons pasted to it.
Her fingers were patchy and white from the paste she’d just used. She ran to him, grabbed his hand with one sticky finger, and pulled him to the settee. Mandy plopped down next to Miss Shroud, not even noticing that she sat partly on her guest’s skirts, then pulled him down to sit on her other side.
Miss Shroud leaned forward, holding out a hand to see what Mandy had brought them. She hadn’t removed her bonnet, and so he could only see the wide curve of her full lips as she grinned at what Mandy showed her. The corner of Matthew’s mouth rose at the sight of these two females. So different, yet both of them had managed to break through the walls he’d painstakingly erected around himself. Miss Shroud’s dress was impeccable and, if he had to guess, quite expensive. His mother would have shrunk away from the paragon of unscrubbed wildness sitting beside her, but Miss Shroud came closer, asking questions instead of distancing herself. “Is that me?”
Matthew pulled his gaze off of Miss Shroud. What, exactly, had Mandy made this time? The pictures were usually a bit of a jumble to understand, but this one wasn’t difficult to interpret. It was his cart. She had used thin yellow string, pasted in clumps, to make the cart, and sitting atop it was a man in a hat with blueribbon eyes that took up most of his face. Next to him sat a lady in a rose-colored dress with brown ribbon eyes.
It was, unmistakably, the two of them.
“Yes, it’s you and Mr. Scarper and Marge.” Mandy turned to him. “Look how happy you are.”
Matthew grinned. His face was almost completely made up of the two squares of ribbon meant to be his eyes. Miss Shroud’s face suffered from a similar fate. It should have been impossible to notice any sort of expression on them, and yet, somehow he could. It was a joyful picture, and just like Mandy had opened his heart to children, this creation of hers somehow opened something else within him. In the past three years, he’d isolated himself every chance he could get, but in the last two weeks Miss Shroud had managed to infiltrate his daily solitude. His odd little miniature looked happy, because he had been happy. Having someone to share his days with had reminded him of what it was like to have someone aware of him every single day. He hadn’t even realized he’d missed that kind of closeness.
Hopefully, Mandy would let him keep it, so that after Miss Shroud left, he could have this memory of her. The two of them, content and grinning, riding in his cart.
Mandy tugged on his sleeve and he tore his gaze away from her paper. “I want to ride on your cart, Mr. Scarper. Can I? I want to be as happy as Miss Shroud is when she is next to you.”
He kept his eyes locked on Mandy’s, becoming very aware of the way his body reacted to that statement. He monitored his breathing, keeping the rhythm of air flowing in and out steadily. Why should one little statement from Mandy change a life-giving habit into something that needed planning and effort to remain normal? It was one thing for him to enjoy having another human being sneak her way into his life, but to hear Mandy say being with him had made Miss Shroud happy?
It was a line of thinking he couldn’t allow. He unlocked his jaw to say something, but found himself at a loss for words.
Miss Shroud reached for one of Mandy’s paste-covered hands. And Matthew surrendered to the luxury of watching the two of them. Mandy shined with pride in her creation, and Miss Shroud beamed effervescently back at her. His gaze went from her delicate hands, up her arms, then to her face. She must not have felt the strange sensations he did, for there was no blush to her cheek, no shyness about being told she was happy when she was with him.
Miss Shroud squeezed Mandy’s hand. “I do love ridin’ with Mr. Scarper. And ye are right, it makes me very happy. Happier than I’ve been in years.” She turned to Matthew, her eyes the exact color of the ribbon he had picked out, shining up at him like he was special to her. As if he mattered. “We should take her on a ride, even if only for a moment.”
Matthew tried to smile. He really did. But this room, with its cheery fireplace and small dirty hands next to feminine caring ones was too much for him. The room and its occupants shouldn’t make him not want to take Mandy on a ride in his cart. Of course he should want to let her ride with them. It would be more appropriate to have Mandy with them on the cart than for the two of them to be alone.
But this moment, the three of them together on a quiet evening in a cozy sitting room leaning over Mandy’s handiwork…
