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Chuckling bitterly, he faced the road. “Isn’t it always?”
She grinned and appeared ready to speak again, but Philo beat her to it. “Your load makes me curious…I venture to guess you bring Leo Cooper a basket lunch and plan to sit on a blanket in the parlor as you might by the pond, if it were not covered with ice and snow.”
Her cheeks bloomed red like a summer rose, and she looked away. “Nay.”
A slight chuckle eased a bit of the chronic blistering in his middle. “He is courting you, is he not?”
Raising a single shoulder, Caroline shifted the basket and made clear she wished not to speak of what he’d mentioned, by changing the subject as they continued around Shawme Pond. “How is my cousin? I have not heard from her of late.”
He kept his eyes forward. Then she did not know? Did Helena and Jack? “You know she doesn’t write to me.”
“Have you written to her?”
The innocence of her question stung like a hand to his face. “My affairs are none of your concern, Caroline.”
His cutting response seemed only to fuel her need for discussion. She stopped and pulled him at the elbow, forcing him to halt his progress as well.
“I heard about Eaton Hill.”
So they did know.
He tried to pull back, but she’d snared him with the youthful wisdom in her eyes. “We know you are saddened. But ’twould seem for the best.”
A bitter laugh popped out. “The best? My brother wishes to cut me off from everything that should be mine. Even my own child.”
She dropped her hand back to the basket. “’Tis a two-way road, Uncle. You cannot expect something when you give nothing in return.”
Blast. He should not have opened his mouth. She only spewed her mother’s own words at him.
The tension between them nipped at his heels, and he widened his stance. He would not be cornered by his sister’s child, especially when she only invited him to dinner in order to tell him what was done was “for the best” and “everything will be fine in the end.”
“The truth is…” Caroline glanced at some faraway spot on the horizon, her expression solemn but accepting. “Leo is not courting me. Not any longer.” She flung him a fleeting look before darting her eyes away. “He wished my affection but wasn’t willing to offer any of his own in return.”
He stopped, a frown pulling hard on his brow. Poor child. She would think herself an old maid. “Well, the man is a fool, and your future is better without him.”
“You are kind to me, Uncle.” A slanted half smile pushed up one cheek. “I see now we were not a good match. And he has so many constraints on his time…”
“Constraints?”
She jostled the basket again, and he reached for it, taking it from her arms. Shocked at the heavy weight, he balked with a surprised look, and she laughed, answering his previous question as they continued on. “Leo said he has too much to think about. Now that Joseph Wythe has given him his shop, he must focus on his work.”
Philo put his hands in his pockets, his mind leaning back to a word she’d spoken. “Given? Did you say Joseph Wythe gave his shop to Leo?”
Caroline bobbed a shoulder but offered nothing more.
He bit the inside of his cheek, gnawing away his rising irritations. Was she too so blinded by the man’s pretended goodness? “Joseph simply walked away, hmm? What a generous man he is.”
&
nbsp; “Indeed.” She smiled. “But ’twas no secret he planned to leave for the army.”
That had been rumored about. “What of Jacob?”
The travails of years past were known to most everyone in Sandwich. Cyprian Wythe had been a friend to few, and his death—as well as the death of his wife—had left their son an orphan, whom Joseph had taken in.
But the benevolence did naught to soften the man’s image in Philo’s mind. Still wanton, still selfish and sinful, Joseph Wythe was nothing more than the mud on his shoes.
Caroline’s response to his previous question tugged him back to the moment. “Jacob is with Kitty Smith and will stay there until Joseph returns to fetch him.”
