Madeline

Chapter 20

In a very short time, the cottage felt like my home and Anne felt like my mother. Or maybe like my grandmother, since she was quite a bit older than I was. Either way, I loved every minute I was able to stay with her.

Considering that the closest thing to a mother I'd ever known had been Sadie, my imaginings of what a mother might be like had been pretty limited. Mostly I'd pictured someone who was like Sadie but maybe a little kinder. Anne wasn't anything like my cold and uncompassionate nanny. She enjoyed doing things for me just because she could. She enjoyed sitting and talking with me and hearing what I thought. And it wasn't difficult to tell that she honestly cared about me.

I might have thought she was just being extraordinarily nice, but she even began scolding me the way she scolded Keira and the children. I never doubted that her reason for doing so was concern and she was never unkind when she did, so I welcomed that too. But her scolding was what told me that she looked at me as something of a daughter. It could have been completely unintentional since I learned that Keira had a sister and several brothers, not to mention all of their children. Treating everyone as her child or grandchild might just be second nature by now. Whatever her motivation and whatever role she thought of me fitting into, her acceptance and care warmed my heart. If things didn't work out with Mr. Mitchell at all, I'd be perfectly content staying with her forever. Not that I'd dream of imposing on her like that of course.

Keira had been right to say that the children would keep me occupied. As soon as I entered the house, they seemed to forget any shyness. Daphne and Will mostly wanted to play, but like Keira predicted, Waverly wanted to know all about what it had been like to live in the castle with servants and lots of pretty things. She thought it was simply marvelous that I could have dresses made any time I liked. I hadn't actually taken advantage of that since I'd had so many lovely things already, but it was fun to watch her big brown eyes light up at the thought.

But the children weren't around most of the time. Keira and William lived up the road a ways, and they'd all gone home that evening. They only visited once in the following week, so most of the time, the house was pretty quiet. It was never lonely though. Not with Anne. The quiet was more a comforting peacefulness than the forced isolation I'd experienced with my father.

But at night, the quiet made it difficult to sleep. My rooms in the castle had been pretty quiet too, but if I listened hard enough, I could always hear noises in the halls or from outside, and I'd gotten used to it. There was nothing like that here. In the summer it might be different, but without either Anne or myself moving about the house, it was dead quiet. Usually the silence kept me awake for a few hours after I got into bed, and it made any odd noise sound like a blast. I'd never been a very sound sleeper, but now every tiny thing seemed to wake me. And at the moment, the noises I was hearing were not tiny things.

At first, I hadn't been sure that I'd heard anything at all. I'd been so groggy and only half awake, but a few moments later, I heard what could only be the front door closing. The house wasn't very large, so the room I was currently in was near the front door.

It was terrifying to think of who might be barging into the house in the middle of the night. We were only two women. Anne was probably nearing sixty and I wasn't very big or very intimidating.

Afraid and unsure of what to do, I clutched the covers to my chin and held very still, listening hard. There were more noises that I couldn't place, but they were definitely made by a person inside the house.

Would whoever it was come in here? Maybe they'd be satisfied searching the rest of the house. After all, people didn't usually keep their valuables in bedrooms, did they?

To my great horror, after a moment the doorknob to my bedroom turned and the door opened. I watched, wide-eyed and frozen as a man came into the room and shut the door softly behind him. He dropped a bag to the floor, kicked off his shoes, and began unbuttoning his shirt.