The Endless Forest
Page 25

When she finally managed to get out of bed, Lily found that Mrs. Thicke had put out a full breakfast, from fresh biscuits to shirred eggs and bacon.
Simon grinned at the housekeeper from over his teacup. He had washed and shaved and found clean clothes in the confusion of their trunks, which meant he had risen long before. Simon was abominably cheery in the early morning, a habit Lily had not been able to break him of, nor could she bring herself to approve it.
She said, “What’s happened to Daniel?”
Mrs. Thicke’s eyelids fluttered. “He was leaving as I came in, just after sunrise. Wouldn’t stop for coffee nor tea nor anything else, either. Now they say you and he are twins, is that right?”
“We are twins,” Lily said. “But I’m the elder, by a good half hour.”
Simon leaned across the table to kiss her when Mrs. Thicke’s back was turned. “I’m off to see if I can be some help in the village, hen.”
“Well, of course you can be a help,” Lily said, a little grumpily. “You’ll have a dozen people asking you to build for them before the day is out.”
“And do ye object to the idea?”
Simon was looking at her with a patient expression that she disliked intensely. It meant that he was prepared to wait out her bad mood and could not be goaded into arguing.
Lily drew in a deep breath and concentrated. Did she wish to start out this new chapter of her life like a fishwife?
“Of course not.” She gentled her tone. “I’ll come down in a bit and see what I can do. Right now I’ve got trunks to sort through.”
There was a knock at the front door.
“And company to visit with, forbye.” Simon got up before Mrs. Thicke could even turn toward the door.
“Please permit me.”
The housekeeper giggled like a schoolgirl, something that often happened with women when Simon flashed his dimples at them. A long time ago he had promised Lily never to let his beard grow again, but lately she’d begun to reconsider. As satisfying as it was to know that other women found her husband handsome, it could be tiresome.
“Now that’s a fine man you’ve got there, Mrs. Ballentyne,” Mrs. Thicke said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Good-tempered, sweet, but a man all the same.” She sighed her way through a memory. “My first husband was a Frenchman, you know. Jock come over here from Paris, France—as a young man. For to make his fortune. And a sweet talker, oh my, with that accent. Like a dove cooing. I do like a man with a foreign accent so long as he’s got a good deep voice, like your—”
She broke off because Curiosity stood at the door.
Lily jumped up from the table, her surprise and pleasure banishing the last of her mood. “You are out very early.”
“Child, half the morning is gone,” she said. “Couldn’t wait no longer to see your sweet face again. With all the trouble yesterday I hardly got a chance to look at you.”
“Is Ma coming too?”
“She be by soon enough,” Curiosity said. “Went down to the village with your daddy, see what help they could be. Let me set, my joints aching this morning something fierce. Here now, that will be Hannah and Birdie at the door.”
Lily went to let her sisters in, and was enveloped immediately in Birdie’s strong hug. It seemed as though the youngest of them would take after Da in terms of her height, because she was almost as tall as Lily at just ten years old.
Hannah had her Simon tied to her chest in a large square of linen folded into a sling. The baby peeked out like a very comfortable and satisfied owl as Hannah leaned forward to kiss Lily on the cheek.
Birdie was breathless with excitement. “I wanted to come an hour ago but Hannah said to wait, you needed to catch up on your sleep. The nieces and nephews wanted to come too, but they can’t, not yet.” Said with considerable satisfaction.
Birdie continued, “The boys had a plan to sneak out of the house to go down to the village, but Ben saw right through that, and he took them all off with him to check his lines. If he’s got any left.”
Hannah didn’t reply to this, which was sound practice; it seemed to Lily that her little sister was looking for something to worry about.
“Will you take your nephew?” Hannah asked, and then passed him over to Lily without waiting for an answer. The large, warm, squiggling lump of boy regarded her for a long moment and then broke into a very wide smile.
“He’s got a tooth.” Lily leaned forward to examine the crest of white peaking out of the gum line.
“Believe me, I’m aware of that.” Hannah made a face at her son and he burbled back at her.
Curiosity said, “You won’t break the child, Lily. He so fat that if you did drop him he’d bounce.”
And so they sat together as if it were the most normal thing, as if they did this every morning and always would. The baby played with Lily’s buttons and Birdie called out commentary from one room and then another. Curiosity picked up a sketchbook and began to look through it while Mrs. Thicke went about her business, contributing now and then to a conversation which ranged from the treacherous weather and flood damage to the quality of the most recent batch of flour from the mill, to Friend Lincoln Matthews’s propensity for doing arithmetic in his head, and had they heard about young Billy Crispin, carrying a goat almost as big as himself away from the flood?
Finally Curiosity stood up. “Mrs. Thicke, I am going to ask Lily to show Hannah and me around this pretty little house.”