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“Why should I?”
“He’s not gentry.”
John said this as if it was a phrase he’d often heard. Thinking of his father, a stiff prickly man, Fenella understood. Fleetingly, she wondered if she had an obligation to consider Mr. Symmes’ prejudices. But Greta had sent her son north. She’d have to accept Fenella’s choices. “If Lord Macklin has befriended him, he must have a good character. And I’m sure you enjoy some company younger than me and your grandfather.” John had not taken to her father so far. The boy seemed afraid of him.
John looked surprised, but he said nothing. They rode on. Fenella’s thoughts drifted back to her conversation with Roger. He’d looked sincere when he said he was sorry. She’d felt some honest contrition. It was the first real connection she’d had with him in…well, years. She tried to recall another such moment.
“You’ve been kind to me,” blurted her nephew.
She hadn’t meant to ignore the boy. “As I should be. I am your aunt.” He looked as if he might cry, which would be humiliating at his age. “Is something wrong, John?”
“You don’t know why I’m here.” He bit his lower lip to stop it trembling. “I thought Mama would have told you what I’ve done.”
What in the world? Fenella remembered how childish transgressions could be magnified in one’s mind. Or, in her case, blown all out of proportion by her father’s attitude. He’d spent so much time shouting at her. She would never behave like that!
“If you did know, you wouldn’t want to be kind,” John added.
“I will always want to be kind,” Fenella declared. “And you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” It came out rather forcefully.
John blinked, a bit startled, but then he shook his head. “If you found out why I was sent.”
“For a visit with your family. That’s all I need to know.”
This assurance seemed to make him more unhappy rather than less so. “So it’s all fake,” he added, as if to himself. He swallowed.
She knew that expression, Fenella thought. Here was a child bracing for a thundering scold. How to assure him that she would not deliver such a thing?
“I bought a boa constrictor,” John blurted out. “That’s a kind of large snake. And it ate Sally’s kitten.”
Fenella took a moment to absorb this startling information. Sally was her youngest niece, just three years old. Unbidden, a scene rose in her mind—scales, fangs, baby cat. She hid a shudder, partly at the fate of the kitten and partly at the shrieking chaos that must have ensued. Justified, really, she thought.
“It was anaccident,” John continued, his face a picture of anguish. “The boa was meant to stay in its cage. I brought it mice. It shouldn’t have been at all hungry. I don’t know how it got out.”
Would she, and John’s mother, have been more sympathetic if they’d had brothers, Fenella wondered. She remembered the mud-slathered boys of her childhood. Roger and his friends had seemed to delight in noise and dirt. Not snakes, though, as far as she knew. “You didn’t mean it,” she managed.
“Ofcoursenot. Ilikekittens!”
He spoke as if he’d been accused of the opposite. Fenella recalled her father’s many unfair indictments. “Well, it sounds like an unfortunate accident. I can tell you’re sorry it happened.”
John nodded. Tears had run down his cheeks. He sniffed.
“So let us say no more about it.”
“Really?” The boy blinked rapidly. He sniffed again. “You aren’t revolted?”
Again, it sounded as if he’d heard that word before. Repeatedly. “Not at all,” Fenella lied. Then, worried she’d been too cavalier, she added, “Although, I would rather you didn’t bring snakes into the house.”
“I wouldn’t! Never again!” John gazed at the ground, shrugged, and sighed. “There’s no good ones up here anyway,” he said, somewhat diluting his fervent promise.
“Ah.” Fenella grappled with the idea of a good snake. What exactly constituted its goodness? She suspected this lay in qualities other than beneficence. And then she was struck by an idea. “There’s a place you could use, if you’d like to, ah, collect specimens.”
John raised his head to stare at her.
“Your mother and your Aunt Nora had a playhouse in our apple orchard.” Her two sisters, years older than Fenella, hadn’t allowed her inside their sanctum. In fact, they’d made a great point of excluding her from their games. Their father’s disappointment in his third child had spilled over onto his other offspring. Fleetingly, Fenella remembered the day she’d read a story about fairy changelings. She’d decided at once that she must be such a magical substitution, so alien did she feel within her family. Now, she rather enjoyed the idea of Greta’s son filling her old playhouse with snakes. “I’ll show you when we get back.”
“You will?”
“Yes.”
