Lady Griffith's Second Chance

Chapter Nineteen

"I am in need of sanctuary."

Regan thought of something to say in reply to that, but immediately discarded it. "I beg your pardon?" she said instead, and hoped the greatest measure of her shock did not register on her face.

"Well, not for me, but..." Thomas licked his lips. His cheeks were flushed, his skin carrying a sheen of perspiration. He gestured towards the door behind him, still open, and the carriage that stood at the edge of her line of sight.

She followed him. Out the door, down the steps, into the blazing sunlight of mid-afternoon. "We are sorry to intrude on you like this. Miss Kennett insisted we find someone else to turn to for help, but unfortunately we found ourselves without a great deal of time with which to better survey our options."

Miss Kennett...

Regan walked up to the open door of the carriage and peered inside. It was a bonnet she saw at first, plain and straw but pleated with soft yellow fabric on the inside so that it resembled a shell. Brown hair framed an oval face, wide brown eyes fixed on the small child sleeping half in her arms, half on the seat beside her.

"Miss Kennett?"

The girl startled and looked up. The boy did not stir in her grasp, only his lips pursing as a fresh thread of drool glinted from the corner of his mouth. "Are you... Lady-Lady Griffith?"

Regan nodded and held out her arms. Miss Kennett shifted forward and passed her child - all blond curls and soft sounds, the boy could not have been more than three years old - into Regan's embrace, then took Thomas's hand as he reached around to offer it.

"I am sure you are tired after your journey," Regan said, holding the child close to her as they ascended the steps into the house. She seemed to be moving through all the proper stations of greeting company, her voice high and light, as if it did not belong to her but to someone else, someone wholly unaffected by the appearance of her lover and a young woman with an illegitimate child on her doorstep. "Mrs. Dale?" she called out when that woman appeared again in the foyer, wiping her hands on her apron. "Take Miss Kennett upstairs and see to it that she's settled in the... um..." Her brain had stopped. She could not think of rooms or the fact that this was her house or anything beyond the warm, slumbering child in her arms.

"The green room," Mrs. Dale provided helpfully. "The one beside Miss Katharine's should do."

"Very good." Regan gave the boy back to Miss Kennett, who hoisted him up with practiced ease and laid his still slumbering head against her shoulder. "Mrs. Dale will lead you upstairs and bring you something to eat. Um, and... luggage?" She glanced towards Thomas, who nodded once. "Yes, we'll see to that for you as well. Now, go and rest for a bit and we'll do a better job of introducing ourselves later, hmm?"

She watched Miss Kennett go up the stairs until the young woman rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. And then she turned. There stood Thomas, all disheveled again, and she wondered how many miles of road he had traveled during the last fortnight.

"I am sorry," he said, but she waved him quiet. Too many servants about, and though she trusted her staff, she did not believe anything they had to talk about was fit for any ears but their own.

"In here." She led him back towards the study, where her desk still bore the work she had abandoned only minutes before. He went inside first and she closed the door behind them, her forehead touching the painted wood as she sought to gather up her thoughts.

And oh, how many thoughts there were.

"I would tell you to begin at the beginning," Regan said without turning around. Her breath struck the wood and blasted back into her face. "But I fear we would be here half the night until the entire story was told."