His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen #4)(21)

The boat arrived at Bronwyn’s side of the fountain. “Why did you choose a pink tulip?”

“They were my mama’s favorite.”

Making friends with somebody who was sad was hard, because if she was your friend, you felt sad too.

Bronwyn sent the boat back toward Daisy. “What is your favorite flower?”

“A daisy, of course. What’s yours?”

“I don’t know. I like delphiniums because Grandmama says they are the color of Grandpapa’s eyes. I like honeysuckle because it’s sweet.”

“I thought it only smelled good.”

The boat was sinking lower and lower. “We should make our next boat out of sticks. Paper boats don’t work very well. When the honeysuckle blooms, I’ll show you how to get the nectar from it. We can pretend we’re bees.”

The tulip now floated on the surface of the water without benefit of a boat. “By the time the honeysuckle blooms, I might be sent away.”

What was the point of making a new friend if she was just going to be sent away? “Have you been bad?”

“Yes, but the earl says I’m making progress.”

Bronwyn rose and dusted off her pinafore. “If you’re making progress, he shouldn’t send you away. That’s not fair.”

Daisy popped to her feet. “I’ll tell you what’s not fair, making us wear white pinafores then sending us outside to play. A brown pinafore would be better for the garden.”

“Or green. Have you climbed that tree yet?” A big maple grew next to the garden wall, and a bench sat beneath it. “We could climb from the bench to the wall to the tree.”

“Is it bad to climb on things like that?”

“Daisy, we’re supposed to be playing. Climbing a tree is playing, and then we can pretend the tree is our pirate ship, or our long boat, or our royal barge.”

“One of the nursery maids is named Sykes. She says if I’m bad, I’ll be sent away.”

“I didn’t have a nursery maid until Mama married Papa. Heavers is jolly and stout and loves me and my sister the best.”

Bronwyn climbed the bench and scrambled onto the wall and into the tree while Daisy stood below, casting glances at the house.

“Come on, Daisy. Unless you want to be in charge of the hold on the royal barge. Even a royal barge probably has rats in the hold. You could be the Royal Ratter and use a great stick to beat all the imaginary rats.”

Daisy stood on the bench. “I don’t understand something. If your papa wasn’t your papa from the day you were born, then how is he your papa?”

“Because he loves me and he loves my mama, and he’s the only papa I know.”

Daisy was an awkward climber, but she made it up onto the wall and sat, her feet kicking against the stones.

“So you can get another papa after your first one dies?”

At this rate, Daisy would never be fit for duty in the crow’s nest. Bronwyn plopped down beside her. “Yes, if he loves you and you love him. I expect you can get another mama too.”

“I don’t want another mama.”

“Neither do I. I don’t want you to be sent away either.”

They pondered that possibility in silence. Bronwyn suspected if they talked it over, Daisy might begin to cry. Daisy cried a lot, which made sense. If Bronwyn had lost both of her parents, she’d cry forever.

“Do you know how you are called Daisy, even though your name is Amy Marguerite?” Bronwyn asked, getting to her feet.

Daisy managed to get herself to a standing position on the wall. “Yes, and my other name is Samantha.”

“Well, my family calls me Winnie, from Bronwyn. You can call me Winnie too. I’ll be Captain Winnie, and you can be First Mate Daisy. Let’s go up to the poop deck and look for pirates.”

“I thought we were the pirates.”

“We’ll be in Lord Nelson’s fleet for now. They got to win all the battles.”

“Lord Nelson was killed in one of those battles.”

Bronwyn swung up into the maple, which was at the lovely, soft stage of growing new leaves. “Everybody dies, Daisy, and then we go to heaven. You can’t worry about that. Lord Nelson got to be a hero because he died fighting for King George. Are you coming?”

Daisy took a moment to choose her route into the tree—she had probably been cautious even before her parents had died—and then she followed Bronwyn into the hold of their seventy-four gunner.

Bronwyn grabbed a sturdy branch and began to climb. “Why do you suppose they called it the poop deck? Why not the pee deck, or the manure deck?”

Daisy started to giggle, and the branch she hung on to shook with her laughter, and that made Bronwyn laugh, and they decided they’d name their ship the HMS Poop Deck.

*



Uncle Walter sat at the end of the breakfast table, a cup of coffee in one hand, the financial pages in the other. He was a lean, white-haired gentleman with twinkling blue eyes and a black heart.

Lily stirred a lump of sugar into her tea and waited, for if she’d learned nothing else in the past ten years, she’d learned to deal with Uncle carefully.

He finished his coffee and set the cup on its saucer. “So what have you planned for this glorious spring day, dearest niece?”