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“It is not,” he said firmly.
The pressure eased in her chest. “So I’m—” Heavens, how to ask without offending him? “—free to go?”
He nudged open the door of her room and held it for her. “Where would you be going?”
Not home. She frowned. She had no life, no work, no family to return to.
“Canada,” she said. “I signed a contract. I owe the shipping line twelve months’ domestic service in return for my passage to Halifax.”
Griff shrugged and followed her into the room. “Then you owe no one anything. You did not reach Halifax.”
“No, I—” She faced him, hands on her hips. The room seemed much smaller with him in it. “You didn’t answer my question. Where am I?”
“North and west, beyond the Hebrides. Conn ap Llyr is lord here. This is his house. His holding. I am the castle…overseer.”
His blunt explanation did not satisfy her. But it mollified her a little.
“What about the children?” she asked.
She had been shocked to find them in the hall, eight or twelve of them altogether, thin and sleeping in rags. She was sadly familiar with the sight of beggar children on the streets of Liverpool. But beneath their rags and dirt, these children were obviously healthy. Beautiful, even. Their eyes shone. Their skin was without blemish. Their teeth were sharp and white as cats’. Emma did not know what to make of them.
“They live here,” Griff answered.
“All of them? With their parents?”
“Their parents are…gone.”
Again, that odd pause. Not like a lie. More as if he had to search his
vocabulary for the appropriate word. And yet he spoke excellent English.
“Conn takes them in until they can fend for themselves,” he explained.
So they were orphans. Emma’s heart contracted in quick sympathy.
“That’s very good of him,” she said. “But children need more than a place to stay. They need structure. Discipline.”
And care and kindness, she thought. But it was not her place to say so. At least Conn provided a roof over their heads. At least these children were not laboring in factories or underground in the mines.
“They should be in school,” she said.
Griff gave her a dark, unreadable look. “Aye. If we had a teacher.”
Emma blinked. “Surely if you advertised—”
“We are isolated here. Not many would give up life on the mainland to work on an island without doctor or priest. We have not…attracted the right person for the post yet.”
A lump rose in Emma’s throat. Of course she wouldn’t want to—She could never—
Even the most casual employer in the most remote corner of the world was bound to require references.
And she had none.
Griff waited, hoping she might take his bait.
Her pretty lips parted, as if she would speak, and then she pressed them together.
She was too canny for him. Or maybe, he thought with regret, too fearful.
