“You’re as good as Nanny,” the countess said. “Better maybe.”
Li-Na smiled. “It’s easy to be patient with a child for an afternoon.”
“No, it’s not,” Daniel said, his voice quiet. “You’ve got a way with him.”
What she had was the quiet of this place slipping inside her heart in a way London never could. It allowed her to be still with the boy which kept him calm. She realized now that she would miss Cornwall when she returned to the Lyon’s Den. There, nothing was ever still but here, a woman could manage her own thoughts and grow.
How startling that Bessie had been right. She needed this time away from London to realize that she could have something different in Cornwall. Or perhaps that she couldbesomeone different here. Someone who painted unusual birds. Someone who experienced a quickening while outside. Someone who thought a great deal about what else she might experience with Lord Daniel in Cornwall.
She didn’t speak those words. She held them close in her heart and let them settle into her mind and body. This way, the next time Lord Daniel offered her a new experience, she would enthusiastically agree.
She didn’t get her chance that night. Lord Daniel drove his family back to the inn while Li-Na stared alone at the darkening sky. It was late when she collapsed into her own bed. She didn’t hear him when he returned, and in the morning, she found a note on top of her work that said he’d gone to London for a few days.
I hope to be back very soon. Please do whatever your heart desires while I am gone.
D
What her heart desired was him or at least a further exploration of what they’d done. But failing that, she had her work and her paints. After a twitchy couple hours with her abacus, she abandoned it in favor of her paints. But when she went to grab her easel, she chose something else entirely.
Instead of propping the paper upright, she lay it flat upon the great table in the gloomy hall. Daniel had told her that years ago many people had gathered here to eat every night, but decades had passed since anyone had lived here, and so all was in disarray. It was only after a bitter argument with his father when he was a teenager that he had started to come here to escape from his family. In time, he had reclaimed the best rooms for his own use. And then, when Peder and Nessie had been growing their family, he had settled here to escape the chaos at the manor.
He liked the quiet, as did she now.
So she rolled out the paper on the table to stroke ink characters onto it in the traditional way. But this time, she didn’t want to brush feelings onto the page. She was feeling too much in too chaotic a swirl. But she could write words, every thought drawn into a Chinese character that meant something. Or might reveal something. Or would simply settle her thoughts into order.
The first character she wrote wasanger. She dashed it onto the page like she was whipping it. The characters forfury, hatred,andbullylanded there, too. And then she felt bad for the last word. Lord Daniel was the opposite of a bully. In her life, she’d been beaten, shackled, and worse. All Lord Daniel had done was tempt her with art supplies and his naked body in the sunlight.
He was no bully and she was ashamed enough of the thought that she tore up the page and lay out a fresh one.
The next word she wrote wasalone. That was the crux of it, she thought. It had nothing to do with the way he’d made her feel, but the fact that she was alone in this great, silent castle next to the ocean. What was she supposed to do with herself now that she was so upset that even the clack of the abacus irritated her? How could she long for Mrs. Hocking’s sour expression? She, who had always been so self-contained, now ached for…
She stopped her thoughts, stopped her brush where she was busy painting the seventeenth Alone character. She would not say she ached to be with Lord Daniel. She would not admit that she was partial to his chatter or couldn’t forget the feel of his calloused hand sliding between her thighs. Her longing for him was because he was her only companion in this dilapidated castle.
Which meant the remedy was to go out and meet new people. After all, she needed to get some information from the villagers. She had to find out the prices of goods in Cornwall and compare them to what the steward had recorded in the ledger. If she spoke to other people, then she would no longer think so constantly of Lord Daniel.
With that plan in place, she put away her brush and paints, she burned the words she had written, and then headed to the village along the path his lordship had shown her. And in this way, she would return to her quiet mind.
The first person she met along the path was Mrs. Hocking. The lady was early for her work at the castle and in a few moments, Li-Na figured out why. The woman had four children in tow and they were headed to Widow Greeves’ farm to replace the pigpen and its fencing.
“Damned pigs been running wild through my garden. I told her to fix those monsters inside their wallow, but she can’t do it what with her back pains and because she’s an old bitch. She was mean when she was a girl and spit in my tea, mean when she married and pecked her man to death, and mean now, blaming my boys for her pigpen being as flimsy as an old twig.”
“So you’re going now to fix the wallow?”
“We’re going there to see that no one accuses my boys of not doing their part for that old bitch. Everyone pitches in for something like that. And I’m going to stand there and see that my boys do right. Everybody making a day of it when it won’t take more than a few hours. But my boys will help or I’ll whip them senseless.”
The boys were all young. No more than ten, and they each carried an armful of sticks. The youngest had two fistfuls and a small trail of broken pieces behind him.
“I’ve never been to such a thing. May I come too?”
The woman screwed up her face up as she appeared to think about it. Then she tapped her eldest on the shoulder. “Go on now. I’ll meet you there. And mind that Alan stays with you.” She looked at Li-Na. “That boy is always looking at the sky. Can’t say what it is up there he likes. It’s just the sky, day in and day out, but he stares at it.”
Li-Na looked at the puffs of white and gray. She could spend many years painting “just the sky.” Instead, she smiled. “Children have their own fun. I’ve never been able to figure it out.”
Mrs. Hocking nodded, then pursed her lips and spit. She waited to say anything until the boys were far enough ahead that they couldn’t hear. Then she turned to Li-Na. “Anybody can watch the pigpen fixing, but there’s been lots of talk about you, not all of it good. We’re used to Lord Daniel’s strange ways, but he never brought one like you here before.”
Li-Na winced. This was why she hid herself away in London, why she always wore a veil in the Lyon’s Den. It made it so much easier to interact when they weren’t looking at her strange face or straight black hair.
“I’m not that different,” she began, but Mrs. Hocking shook her head.