“Four years ago?” He said it like a question. As if he couldn’t remember for certain when he had gone, but I suspected he knew exactly when it was. “My circumstances had changed, and I found myself free to travel to London after all. While there, I thought I would find you on my own. It was only after the disappointment of that trip that I asked Mr. Preston about your family. He had no idea where you were either.”
“Why were you looking for me?”
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and sheepishly put a hand to his heart. “Not for another proposal, truly. I had grown up enough by then to know that was an impossibility. I suppose I just wanted to see you again. I don’t know if I would have even had the courage to speak with you.”
We reached the door to the cottage and both stopped. I didn’t know how to respond to the fact that he had tried to reach me in London a full four years after I had left here. I heaved a sigh. “I had better go in.”
“Yes.”
“Mama is waiting.” I didn’t want to return and listen to more crying. Especially when that crying was completely my fault.
“When will I see you again?” David asked. He tipped his head with a smirk. “I would rather not wait another eight and a half years.”
I returned his smirk with a smile. Spending time with David would be a pleasure. “The Prestons have invited us to dine with them in the main house several nights a week until they leave. We will bethere the day after next. If you are friends with their family, I suppose you could beg an invitation.”
“No sooner?”
I furrowed my eyebrows and chuckled. “Than the day after tomorrow?”
He shook his head, and his sudden laughter enveloped me with a rich sound that warmed me, despite the cold. “It is good to have you back, Miss Atwood.” He bowed. “I look forward to seeing you at the Prestons. I believe they will allow me a visit.”
W
Chapter 3
“Ever since she found me holding Charlotte, she keeps trying to make me talk to her. I finally did. But only because she showed me an interesting rock. Her name is Anna.”
—David Tate, 1841, Age 14
The morning of our dinner with the Prestons, Mama was out of her bed and dressed by the time I stopped by her room on my way down to breakfast. I hadn’t been able to convince Mama to ready herself in the morning since we’d arrived, and I took her recovery as a good omen. Perhaps our engagement with the Prestons was brightening her mood. My step was light as I bounded down the stairs. If Mama could start feeling better, then I was certain I was going to be able to find us another place to stay within the two weeks we had remaining. The Prestons were eager to help us and had been looking for new accommodations even in the midst of their preparations to leave the county.
Something elsewouldbecome available. It had to. I was tired of being poor and helpless. I was tired of feeling pity from others. I was tired of being tempted to marry someone twenty years my senior, if only to be able to help others like we used to.
Mama sliced a piece of bread off the loaf Mrs. Preston had sent to the cottage from the main house when we’d arrived. With no cook and the only help a maid Mrs. Preston sent each morning and sporadically during the day, dinner this evening was going to be a verywelcome change to the cold fare we’d eaten the last two days. No wonder Mama was feeling better.
I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, embracing her. “Good morning, Mama,” I said, a smile in my voice that hadn’t been there for days—perhaps years.
She jumped, put a hand over one of mine, and then turned around. I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Perhaps a warm greeting? A return embrace? A newfound understanding of why I’d made us leave Silverfork and Mr. Green’s grasp? But there was none of that. Her tears were gone, but the lines on her face exposed the exhaustion of the past seven years without Papa.
She wasn’t meant to live a life of poverty, and not for the first time, I cursed Uncle Atwood for bringing this upon her. Papa had placed too much trust in his younger brother. Trust that had been shattered within a year of Papa’s death, when he’d told us Atwood Manor was no longer our home and it was time to look to Mama’s family to care for us.
Mama gave me a nod, then sat at the table and numbly chewed her bread. I cut myself a slice and joined her.
“We should have a lovely dinner this evening with the Prestons,” I said.
Mama nodded again.
“I know coming here didn’t turn out the way we hoped, but at least we got away from Silverfork, and no one there knows about the summer we spent here. We’ll have a new start, at the very least, out of the grasp of those who would take advantage of us there.”
Mama rubbed a hand down her face. “I’m not sure what advantage could be taken of women in our position, Anna.”
I set down my bread. It was a few days old and starting to taste stale and dry. I’d be better off waiting to eat at the Prestons’. “Our position isn’t great now, but after my twenty-seventh birthday, it will be. Papa made certain of that.”
“And what will we do until then?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve survived seven years alone. We can figure something out.”
“By the end of the month?”
