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“Mama…”
“She needs someone,” I told him in a harsh whisper.
I paused, wondering, maybe even hoping that Xavier might get up instead.Hush, babe,he’d say.You’ve been doing this for four years. Let me have a go.
But he just turned over onto his side and continued sleeping, blissfully unaware of the choices that needed to be made. The child who needed to be comforted.
I crept into her room to find Sofia awake and drying her teary eyes on her covers. She looked impossibly small on one of the twin beds set up for the children of the past, blinking blearily into the night in her new surroundings.
“Hush, baby,” I told her, and I crawled into the bed and pulled her into my arms. “Mama’s here. You’re safe.”
She whimpered unintelligibly but nuzzled into my chest, allowing me to bury my nose in her hair and inhale that soft scent she’d carried since she was born. Something deep within me relaxed. No matter my insecurities about this place and Xavier’s life, this was a place I would always belong. This was a place I knew, holding my daughter, comforting her in the night.
I fell asleep in the bed next to hers that had been put in for countless nannies, maybe even governesses over the years who had to spend nights with little ones just like this.
When I awoke just after sunrise, Sofia was still snoozing behind the four-poster curtains. I returned to my room, careful to close the door behind me as quietly as I could to not wake the slumbering giant waiting for me.
I needn’t have done so.
The bed was empty. It took a long time, but eventually, I fell back asleep alone.
FIFTEEN
Sofia got up sometime past six and scampered off to find Xavier, but I found it hard to sleep in on my own, despite knowing I could. Sometime over the past month, I’d gotten used to the big, warm body lying next to me, so when he wasn’t there to snuggle into as the rays peeked through the curtains, something felt off.
Eventually, I did get up to find the view of the countryside glowing out the window as the new sun danced off the lake below the manor and off the tops of hills rising in the distance. Corbray Hall might have been stuffy, but Cumbria really was magic.
I found something to wear and ventured downstairs in search of sustenance and my family, only to find Sofia and Elsie, but not Xavier, sitting in the dining room at a table dressed with just about every breakfast food I could want.
Sofia looked up at the end, where she had discarded a plate still half full of pancakes and strawberries in favor of watching Elsie draw something on a napkin.
“This is England,” Elsie said as she moved the pencil. “That’s where London is. That’s where we are. And all the way across the big blue ocean, love, that’s New York.”
“Where I’m from,” Sofia added. She grinned at me. “Hi, Mama. You better have some breakfast. It’s important for your muscles. Elsie says.”
I smiled as I poured myself a cup of tea, then took a seat next to her. “She’s right about that. I don’t know about all this, though.”
“May I assist, miss?” I looked up to where Gibson had brought a plate for me.
“I got it,” I told him. “Thanks.” He sniffed and walked back to the other side of the room, where he was busy doing…something. Watching us? It was kind of weird.
“Where’s Xavi?” I asked Elsie as I spooned some fruit and a flaky croissant onto my plate. “It’s only eight. Is he already in his office?”
“Oh, the boy had to tour the alfalfa farms south of town,” Elsie told me. “Up at the crack of dawn, poor child. But he said he’ll be back at lunch and left this for you.”
She passed me a note from Xavier and went back to drawing something else for Sofia.
Ces—
I meant what I said last night. It’s up to you to decide what you want to do. But since I can’t give you the British library, maybe ours will help. I’m told it’s got a few treasures.
First floor, through the second drawing room. Don’t lose the key.
Xavi
I picked up the key, which, rusted and nearly as big as my palm, looked about as ancient as Britain itself. That man. Just like the beast, he’d gone and given me a library. Again. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to see it.
“Elsie,” I said. “Er, would you mind—”
