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Mr. Pershing had never been one to exaggerate, and Emmie smiled as she took his outstretched hand and descended to the small front yard of the Dawkins cottage. A rooster herded a dozen or so chickens away from the coach and toward their coop, while a trio of geese hissed at the pair of blacks harnessed to its front. As a lone pig trotted past them, she had the oddest feeling that they’d landed in the middle of some artist’s pastoral painting of simple life in the country.
She started when the cottage door flew open. “Oh, oh!” Mrs. Dawkins, her blond hair in a haphazard bun and an infant on her hip, ran outside to greet them. “Mrs. Pershing! Mr. Pershing! Good morning to you!”
“Good morning, Jenny,” Emmeline said, mentally squaring her shoulders as she put on her best smile and reached out to brush the baby’s grubby cheek with one finger. This would be a performance, just like every occasion she’d ever hosted. “Who is this little one?” She held out her hands.
With a brief, quizzical look, more than likely prompted by the fact that Winnover Hall’s mistress had never asked to hold one of the Dawkins children before, Jenny Dawkins handed the baby into Emmie’s arms. “This is Joe. My youngest.”
Then, children began appearing. Some came from the barn, others from the house, and still more from the direction of the field where Harry Dawkins’s head popped up above a flowing crop of wheat. Good heavens, they were everywhere.
While she bounced the baby on her hip and cooed at it, Mr. Pershing waved at Dawkins, motioning him to join them. She doubted the farmer needed the encouragement, though; while her husband visited their tenants on a regular basis, and she attended church social gatherings and village charity functions, the two of them there together—and in the middle of the week—would make for something unusual.
“Aren’t you a dear, Joe?” she murmured, and the infant gave her a damp smile. Well, this wasn’t so difficult. And the imaginary Malcolm and Flora weren’t infants, relying on her to feed and bathe and dress them. “Are all of these yours?” she went on, turning to Jenny Dawkins again.
Two of the younger girls had attached themselves to the woman’s skirts, while one of the boys dragged the pig about the yard by its back feet. As the pig didn’t protest, Emmie assumed this to be a regular occurrence.
“Yes. All of ’em. Oh, wait. Sally and Walter, there, belong to the Youngs. The rest, though, is all mine and Harry’s. All fourteen of ’em.”
“Fourteen?” Emmeline repeated, disregarding the unexpected jealousy that tightened her chest. Being fertile certainly wasn’t Jenny’s fault. Aside from that, for all her pretty blond hair and slender figure, Jenny Dawkins looked… tired. Old, despite her being only one-and-thirty. Good heavens, the woman had given birth once a year since her seventeenth birthday.
“Good morning, Mr. Pershing!” Harry Dawkins boomed, emerging from the field and sticking out his big hand. “And you, as well, ma’am. What brings you here?”
Mr. Pershing shook the farmer’s hand. “We—Mrs. Pershing and I—have a proposal for you.”
“You’ve been a good landlord. I’m more than happy to listen.”
While she made an effective hostess, Mr. Pershing had become at least as gifted a negotiator. Content to leave this bit to him, Emmie looked around again. The Dawkins brood were all similar-looking, with ears that stuck out from their heads, a pronounced widow’s peak, and a larger front left front tooth that pushed the right one crooked.
In the little ones it was darling, though not so much so for the older ones. None of them looked anything like her or Mr. Pershing, or anyone in their families, but at least the hair was a brownish blond, and the eyes somewhere in the spectrum she’d written to her family about in her letters.
“Say that again?” Dawkins frowned, his hands on his hips.
“It’s quite simple, really,” Mr. Pershing said, donning his best smile. “Mrs. Pershing and I are beginning a new project. We would like to take two of your children for a month or so, teach them some skills such as dancing and conversation and comportment. Our hope is that this will lead them to have greater employment possibilities when they come of age.”
“You want two of my little ones.”
“For a month, yes. If our mission is successful, we will of course look to do it again, with additional children.”
“Harry, what do you think?” Jenny Dawkins asked, her eyes widening. “Two of our babes learning to be fancy? They could grow up to be ladies’ maids or footmen. Or even a butler like that grand Mr. Powell up at the manor house!”
Young Joe began sneezing goop from his nose, and keeping her smile firmly on her face despite the abrupt urge to vomit, Emmie handed the baby back to his mother. Good heavens, the quantity of mucus really was astonishing. Jenny seemed to think it was normal as she absently wiped her son’s nose with her apron, all of her attention still on the conversation between the two men.
“What we’ll have, then,” the farmer was saying, “are two young ones too high up for us, and all their brothers and sisters jealous. There will be no peace in the house if you make two of the children fancy.”
“It’s not making them fancy,” Emmie countered. “It’s only teaching them a few skills. And bringing them with us on our holiday to Cumberland.”
“Oh, so now they’ll be high-and-mighty about traveling to faraway lands, too.” Mr. Dawkins scowled. “I’ll not have my own children thinking they’re better than me.”
“That’s not it at all, Dawkins,” Mr. Pershing said. “It’s only an opportunity for—”
“Harry, it’ll be two less mouths to feed,” his wife pointed out helpfully.
The children began a game of tag around them, churning up the yard and frightening the chickens all over again. The volume of screeching and yelling and laughing was incredible. True, Emmie had been an only child, as had Mr. Pershing, but this seemed far beyond anything she and her nonexistent siblings would have dared in the presence of their parents or guests.
The farmer blew out his breath, lowering his hands from his hips. “Well, if they’ll be back in time for harvest, I reckon I can let you have Kitty and Daisy. Kitty! Daisy! Stop chasing the chickens and get over here to meet your betters.”
Two girls, one perhaps thirteen and the other eleven, broke off from the game and ran up to join them. Oh dear. They would never do. Emmie sent Mr. Pershing a glance, to find him looking about the yard, his attention going from one child to the next. No doubt he was attempting to figure out which boy looked like he could pass for a seven-year-old, and which girl could be five.
“We had in mind a boy and a girl,” he said aloud, and pointed at the young man going after the pig again. “That one, perhaps? And the girl with the brown chicken.”