“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Papa.”
“Tamsyn, I am not a fool. I saw how you two were together.” He gazed fondly then frowned. “I didn’t interfere because I felt you were both old enough to realise your own feelings. But Winterbourne left with a face like a wet Friday and you are now fiercely scowling at paintings.”
She sat on the edge of his desk and snaffled a chunk of hevva cake. “Oh, Papa, you and Mother had so much in common but Jack and I–”
Booming laughter interrupted the practised monologue that she’d repeated to herself every hour since the storm.
“Oh, Tam, you were so young.” He wiped his eyes. “Do you remember what your mother most enjoyed doing?”
She thought back. Mama had lived life with such enthusiasm, and she’d always…
“Dancing, I remember she’d dance through the hall, lifting me up and spinning me around.”
“And how is my dancing?”
Her lips twitched. “You dance like a bear with two left feet…and a limp.”
“Harsh, daughter of mine, but fair.” A tender smile curved his lips. “Your mother loved people and chatter, life and laughter, yet I am an unsophisticated chap who relishes nights in by the fire and cannot dance for a fig.” He gazed into the distance. “But I so adored the smile on her face as she twirled herself dizzy that I would have danced all night with her, anywhere she wished.”
“I remember you reading together in the library. Snug and content.”
He grabbed her hand, plaited their fingers, and brown eyes met hers.
“And so we did, because she gladly partook of my pleasures as well. At the end of each day, we were together and that was all that mattered.”
“I…” She scrutinised Persephone again, saw the adoration, despite their differences.
“I thought you understood that painting, Tam. You used to stare at it often enough. Your mother and I used to laugh that it was us. Two sides, two opposites and yet we fitted. We fitted so very perfectly.”
His voice broke and she fell into his lap, hugged him close. “Oh, Papa.”
“I’ll be with her again some day, but I have to ensure our children are contented first. So, I repeat my question, Daughter, why did you let him go?”
Yes, why?
Because she’d not wished to appear needy? Because her pride would’ve been hurt if she’d revealed the truth of her love and he’d still left?
She faffed with her father’s appallingly loose neckcloth.
How weak to not divulge one’s feelings. It wasn’t needy to let a man know he was loved. Indeed, it seemed weaker to hide that love, to not fight for it, to fear the rejection.
She glanced at the painting, recalled Jack sitting peacefully as she’d nattered on about moths, remembered her gladness as she’d watched him delight and charm people with his banter.
Father looked sly. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
The house felt so quiet as Tamsyn ambled through the hall and fiddled with another porcelain ballerina that had somehow twirled to the side table. She’d always enjoyed the tranquillity of Penrose Manor but she missed Jack’s teasing tones and jovial laughter, Ben’s ragging and Mr Miggens’s lurking.
She noticed the professor sitting in the library, quietly reading, whilst Mr Sewell, or rather Mr Mason, scribbled away at his side, lips a little less sullen. He’d been packed and about to leave this morning, apologised for the deception, when Father had asked if he was happy here. Mr Mason had admitted to feeling a sense of peace since coming to Cornwall, and said he’d quite like to stay in the area.
The professor had patted his back, said he’d never had such a good assistant. And so that was that.
“Tamsyn Penrose!” The ballerina almost pirouetted from her hands, never to dance again.
“Aunt Sarah?”
“Don’t Aunt Sarah me. Come into the drawing room and pour two sherries.”
Not even the Prince Regent could disobey such a tone and so she obliged, Great-Aunt Sarah settling herself on Father’s treasured giltwood chaise with leonine feet.
