Page 31

Nanny, white-haired and stooped, greeted them at her gate and accepted the basket from Miranda. A green-and-blue-plaid shawl covered her shoulders and crossed over her chest, held in place by a small gold pin.

“She’s like the grandmother in the fairy tale,” Miranda whispered to him as they followed Nanny into the dark interior of the cottage. A fire burned in the hearth and kept the chill off inside where the sun didn’t reach. Nanny set the basket on the table and paused, leaning on her hands, to catch her breath. She waved Nate to a stool by the fire, and Miranda to an old armchair, but Miranda jumped up. “Let me help you, ma’am. I always do, did, for my...grandfather.” She cast Nate a speaking glance. He rose and took the old woman’s arm to help her to a rustic rush-bottom chair, while Miranda unpacked the basket’s contents, a jar of dark preserves, a cheese, and a cloth-wrapped bundle of biscuits.

For a few minutes Miranda moved about the cottage putting the kettle on and setting out three chipped cups under Nanny’s direction, remarking how neat and orderly the cottage was.

“Now then, children, you’ve come to tell me a story, I hear,” Nanny said.

Miranda laughed. Nate had never seen her look prettier. He had been right to bring her with him.

“We have,” she said and began.

He let her talk, and the tale of their cruel uncle Bernard and missing cousin Adam tumbled out just as they’d invented it. Nate remembered all the times he’d heard Miranda tell gentlemen in the shop her own story of her mother’s escape from the drownings in France in spite of the silver buckles on her shoes.

Nanny sipped her tea and ate the smallest bits of biscuit, no more than would keep a mouse alive, as Miranda talked.

“So Adam is your cousin, you say?” Nanny asked.

“Our grandfather’s cousin,” Miranda corrected. “Did you know him in your time at Hartwood?”

Nanny looked at Nate. “And your grandfather made Adam one of your guardians, you say?”

Nate nodded and set his teacup on the hearth. He recognized skepticism when he heard it.

“I did know him. He was a handsome man with thick dark hair even at his age, and he must have been the oldest man serving at Hartwood. They never raised him higher than footman.” Her eyes had the distant look of a person seeing other times and places. “He could put a shine on anything—silver, boots, mirrors.”

Nate watched the old woman, waiting for her gaze to return to the present. “Do you know why he left Hartwood, ma’am?”

Nanny nodded and blinked her eyes hard. “I do. He was devoted to Lady Penelope, the old lord’s daughter. People said he was her dog. He followed her about and fetched and carried for her. He knew her bell from all the bells in that house.”

Nanny shook her head. “The trouble started when she married that Frenchman who disappeared.”

Miranda gasped. “A Frenchman!”

“No word of him for months. The old lord wanted Lady Penelope to stay at home until the family could discover what had become of him, but she was mad to go to London herself to find the truth. She thought the government knew.” Nanny paused to sip her tea.

Miranda leaned forward in her chair, and Nate gave the old woman credit for being a good storyteller herself.

“She left in the night with Adam and another footman, a cheeky young man. I don’t remember his name. She never came back, nor did any of ’em. Never heard a word, never found her, nor the child neither.”

“A child?” Miranda’s voice squeaked.

“A sweet, sweet girl, all golden curls, still in leading strings. That’s when the sorrow fell on Hartwood.”

“A child,” Miranda repeated. She looked startled by the detail.

“Was that in ’06, ma’am?” Nate asked.

Nanny nodded.

“And no one ever found the coach or the coachman?”

“Strange, isn’t it. You can imagine what wild thoughts people had. Some suspected Adam was to blame, but the old lord wouldn’t hear a word of that. Said Adam was simple, not violent. He’d known Adam as a boy.” Nanny shook her head.

Nate braced himself. In telling the story, Nanny Ragley had uncovered all the details that made Nate and Miranda’s guardian story less believable. The less he said now the better.

“Odd to name so old a man to be a guardian, ain’t it? You don’t know where he is, you say?”

Miranda prudently studied her shoes.