Lily nodded once, as though that settled it. For her, perhaps it did. Anne leaned back slightly, groaning in a joking manner.
"Then I suppose we shall have to visit you often."
"Yes," Lily said at once.
Beatrice smiled faintly.
"I believe we have been instructed."
Eleanor let out a quiet breath. The moment held, quieter than before, and for the first time, the house behind them did not feel like something Eleanor had entered.
It felt, if only briefly, like somewhere she belonged.
The quiet moment passed as quickly as it had come, the little girl’s attention shifting again as something else caught it, and within minutes she was on her feet, already halfway across the lawn with a new idea that required immediate pursuit. A maid followed at a distance, and soon Lily disappeared from sight altogether.
Her absence was felt, and it was undeniable. Anne was the first to speak.
"She meant that," she said.
Eleanor did not pretend otherwise.
Beatrice leaned back slightly, her gaze still fixed in the direction Lily had gone.
"That is a very lonely thing for a child to say."
Eleanor’s fingers brushed absently over the grass beside her.
"It did not sound as though she thought it unusual, did it?"
"No," Anne agreed. "Which makes it worse."
A brief silence followed. Eleanor’s thoughts had already shifted, though she did not speak them immediately. She was not thinking of Lily alone, but of what Julian had said before; of consistency, control, of what had been necessary for him.
"She is careful," Eleanor said after a moment. "Perhaps not when she allows herself to be a child, but that is seemingly rather rare."
"She learned how to be an adult," Anne said.
"Yes."
"And then unlearned it," Beatrice added.
"The moment that she believed that she was allowed to," Eleanor said quietly.
That sat with them for a moment. Anne drew in a small breath. Beatrice turned toward her more fully.
"You are thinking about him, are you not?"
Eleanor met her gaze.
"Of course I am."
"Will you ask him about all of this?"
Eleanor hesitated, though not out of uncertainty.
"I think I must," she said. "I do not wish to pry, not when I have only just arrived, but there has to be something more to all of this, something that we are missing. Girls her age are never like this."
Eleanor glanced down briefly, then back up again.