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CHAPTER3
Pippa lifted her young niece into the back of the cart before climbing up and sitting beside her. She reached forward. “Hand me the baby, Mabel. It’s much easier to climb in with the use of both your arms.”
Mabel placed her sweet bundle in Pippa’s care before climbing into the back of the wagon and sitting beside her ten-year-old son, James. They kept a carriage that was typically used for such excursions, but with the weather so mild today and the sun so bright, an open-air cart ride to church had been equally appealing to the whole family.
Mabel’s eyebrows drew together. “Do you think one of us ought to remain home with Gram?”
“She wouldn’t like it,” Pippa argued. Their grandmother was too old and crotchety not to have everything exactly the way she liked it to be. She’d grown exceptionally feeble in the last few months and had now reached a point where she had great difficulty leaving her room, let alone traveling out of the house at all. She could not even attend Sunday services, though it clearly pained her to miss them. Though Pippa didn’t understand why—Gram could not hear them anyway. She had lost the majority of her hearing long ago and likely hadn’t truly heard a sermon in a decade, maybe longer.
Mac finished fiddling with his horse’s bridle and swung up into the driver’s seat. He leaned back to drop a kiss on Mabel’s temple, and she swatted him away.
“Get on with you.” Mabel’s cheeks pinked in pleasure, and she reached for her baby.
Pippa handed Liam across the way, and he snuggled into his mother’s side, remaining fast asleep. At five months old, he took up a large portion of her lap. He was named for his father, but he looked more Sheffield than MacKenzie with his thick, brown hair and small, sloped nose. His eyes were still the hazy blue common in newly born babes, but Mac believed they were beginning to take on the dark navy hue of the Sheffield women. Mabel still argued that they could be any color.
The cart heaved forward, and Mac directed the horse onto the road toward Collacott. The sun warmed Pippa’s skin, doing its best to ward off the slight chill in the air. The lane followed the coastline, weaving along the cliffside as the sea stretched out to one side, the rolling, green hills to the other. Pippa inhaled deeply but got a whiff of horse and leather instead of the fresh sea air she’d been hoping for, and she coughed.
“Are you unwell?” Mabel asked.
“No.”
“Tommy is unwell, and he couldn’t play all week,” James said, a small scowl marring his delicate brow. “He has a cold.”
“That poor boy. It seems as though he is ill more than he is healthy,” Mabel said. “Perhaps we ought to take the Burkes some soup after church. I know Alice set a pot of something to simmer before she left.”
Pippa looked up. “We have some bread we can part with as well.”
They reached the fork in the road that would take them to the hidden Ravenwood Cottage if they were to veer to the side, and Pippa searched the lane for any sign of William coming from the trees. She was disappointed when the lane remained empty aside from a wagon full of another churchgoing family she knew; there was no sign of William on his way to church.
Mac turned in his seat and pointed in the direction of the cottage as they passed the fork in the road, their cart continuing on toward Collacott. “We have some new neighbors.”
Pippa’s body stilled. Had Mac met William and the other men?
Liam’s tiny wail startled her, and Mabel lifted the babe against her shoulder, bouncing him. “I thought that cottage was uninhabitable.”
“I’m certain it needs a lot of work,” Mac said.
Mabel’s eyebrows knit, her planning expression falling over her face. She was likely already working through the details of cleaning the cottage for their new neighbors. “Should we invite the family to dine? To welcome them to the neighborhood?”
Mac twisted in his seat again, the reins slack in his hand as the horse continued to pull them along the familiar lane. “It is not a family, but one man and his son, who left the area some twenty years ago. From what I’ve heard, they have something of a reputation.”
“A reputation for what?” Mabel’s concerned tone deepened slightly, betraying her worry.
Mac glanced to his children, his gaze sliding past Pippa before he shifted forward again. “We best discuss it later.”
“I am not a child,” Pippa reminded him. If these men had a reputation, she ought to know about it. From her short conversation with William the day before, she hadn’t been able to take his measure, though there was something about the sparkle in his eye and his sly smile that had given her pause. She would certainly avoid the man if he was proven dangerous.
“You may not be a child,” Mabel said. She pointed to Elinor and James. “But they are.”
James pouted. “I’m a young man.” He puffed up his ten-year-old chest. “I should be warned of danger, too.”
“We do not know if they are dangerous,” Mac said, most likely regretting mentioning anything at all. “We know nothing but rumors of the past, and rumors are not reliable information.”
“We can be welcoming if we see them at church,” Mabel said. “I do not think we ought to approach anyone with preconceived opinions.”
Pippa’s gaze fell to the road behind them and the fork in the distance. She waited for a carriage or cart or even a lone rider to turn onto the road and follow them toward the church, but the lane remained sorrowfully empty.
“If they are as bad as you think, I suppose we shan’t be seeing them in church,” Pippa mused, disappointed.
