Lady Griffith's Second Chance

Chapter Twenty

Regan ate in the nursery with the children.

The windows were open, and yet the stifling heat of the day did not abate. The meal was light, some cold chicken, a salad of cucumbers and grapes, and for dessert a few miniature lemon tarts served chilled.

The food was delicious, but Regan only picked at her plate. Her children ate with ravenous appetites, as only children could after a long day of playing in the sun and preparing to grow like weeds for the remainder of the summer. After dinner, they washed and dressed for bed, and she read to them until the sun dipped below the horizon and darkness spread like ink across the lawns.

Maria fell asleep in her lap, while Jack snored from his bed, the covers already kicked away and his toes twitching where they dangled over the edge of the mattress. Setting aside her book, Regan carried Maria to her own bed, tucked her in, and kissed her sweaty curls. She covered Jack with his discarded blanket, pulled the windows partially closed, and slipped out of the room on the balls of her feet.

Such mundane, everyday activities, but they were enough to keep her thoughts from spiralling beyond her control. Thomas was still here, somewhere in the house. She had told him to spend the night, and though she had feared he would rebel and leave as soon as he had a solid meal inside of him, he seemed amenable to remaining long enough to achieve at least one night of rest.

Miss Kennett and her son had kept to their room for most of the day, venturing out long enough to explore a small portion of the garden, where Peter showed a penchant for running faster than his small, chubby legs would have led anyone to believe. Regan had not considered for how long Miss Kennett would be staying. A few days? Several weeks? It was not the burden of having more people in the house that gave Regan pause, but rather the fact that her staying here - hiding here, to be more accurate - was not a permanent solution. Regan feared a reckoning of some sort, though she could not imagine how or when it would come about.

The house had grown relatively quiet with the onset of evening. The younger children were asleep. Katharine, she knew, was in the library poring over books and maps having to do with the Ottoman Empire. The servants would soon be turning in for the night, if indeed Mrs. Dale and her husband had not already. And Thomas...

Oh, of course her mind would save him for last.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs. She could return to the study, to the work of seating and the totting up of figures for her steward that still awaited her. Bed was out of the question. She wondered if there would even be any restful sleep for her tonight.

Her hands fluttered for a moment before she pressed them flat against her abdomen, willing herself to breathe more slowly. She would have to speak with Thomas about Miss Kennett. And what else would they discuss? Would she even mention the time they had spent together at Brandon Hall? Had she so quickly shuttered that part of their history away?

The night air called to her. Slipping into the study long enough to pick up her household keys and a shawl she remembered leaving in there that morning, she headed for the little-used terrace behind the house, the one that opened up from the ballroom.

It was not a part of the house she frequented. There had not been a ball held here since... Goodness, years before Edmund died. And so the daunting, gilded space remained closed up, dust cloths hanging over chandeliers, transforming them into ghosts inhabiting the periphery of her vision.

The room was stifling, so shut up it had been. She unlocked one of the tall doors, braced herself for the squeal of abandoned hinges, but there was little sound to mark her exit from the house. There was nothing out there at the back of the house, the barrenness matching the room she had just moved through. No furniture or lanterns or even potted trees or topiaries to soften the lines of stone that made up the walls and balustrade.