A Week to Be Wicked (Spindle Cove #2)(35)

“Oh. I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance,” Minerva said, with genuine feeling.

With a hand placed to the small of her back, Colin swiveled her to face the other side of the breakfast table. “And here are their children. Mr. Gilbert Fontley and Miss Leticia.”

“How do you do?” Gilbert, a young man just on the cusp of adulthood, rose from his seat and made a gallant bow.

“Please call me Lettie,” the bright-eyed girl said, offering Minerva her hand. “Everyone does.”

Lettie possessed the same sandy hair and flushed complexion as the rest of her family. She looked just a few years younger than Charlotte. Twelve, perhaps thirteen.

Gilbert brought a chair for her, and Minerva sat.

Mrs. Fontley smiled. “We’re so pleased to have you joining us, Miss Sand. It’s our honor to escort you to your relations in York.”

Miss Sand? Relations in York? She shot Colin a look full of questions.

The teasing rogue didn’t answer.

Mrs. Fontley stirred her tea. “I think it’s so beneficial for Gilbert and Lettie to make the acquaintance of young people like yourselves. Doing such good in the world. Gilbert has his eye on the Church, you see. He’ll be at Cambridge this autumn.”

Gilbert spoke up. “Miss Sand, your brother has been telling us about your missionary efforts in Ceylon.”

“Oh, has he?” With an air of utter incredulity, Minerva looked to the “brother” in question. “Pray tell. What tales of our good deeds have you been relating, Colin?”

She laid heavy emphasis on his name. His real Christian name. After all, if he were truly her brother, she ought to call him by it.

Now, let’s see if he could remember hers. And use it, consistently.

She propped her chin on her hand and stared at him, smiling.

He smiled back. “I’ve just been telling all about our time in Ceylon, dear . . . M.”

M. So this was how intended to solve his memory problem. Not by actually remembering her name, but by reducing her to an initial. Magnificent.

“Miss Sand, he’s been telling us all about your years of missionary work, ministering to the poor and unfortunate. Feeding the hungry, teaching little children to read and write.”

Lettie’s eyes went wide. “Did you really spend your schoolgirl years curing lepers?”

Minerva set her teeth. She couldn’t believe this. Of all the false identities to assume. Missionaries curing lepers in Ceylon? “Not actually, no.”

“What my dear sister means”—Colin slid his arm around the back of Minerva’s chair—”is that it wasn’t all hard work, all the time. We were children, after all. Our dear parents, may God rest their souls, permitted us ample time to explore.”

“Explore?” Gilbert perked.

“Oh, yes. Ceylon’s a beautiful place. All those lush jungles and mountains. We’d leave our family hut early in the morning, me and M, with just a bit of bread in our pockets. Then we’d spend our whole day out adventuring. Swinging from vines. Devouring mangoes straight from the trees. Riding elephants.”

Minerva looked around at the Fontley family. She couldn’t believe that anyone would believe this ridiculous story. Elephants and mangoes? But they all stared rapt at Colin, a mix of wonder and worship in their matching blue eyes.

Well, at least this was some balm to the sting she’d incurred that night in the turret. She wasn’t his only dupe. Clearly, he employed this talent for willful, wild exaggeration regularly. And with consistent success.

“You’d wander the jungle all day long?” Lettie asked. “Weren’t you afraid of being eaten by tigers? Or getting lost?”

“Oh, never. I might have worried, if I were alone. But there were always the two of us, you see. And we had a little system. A game we played whenever we went out adventuring. If we lost sight of each other in the dense jungle undergrowth, I’d just call out, ‘Tallyho!’ and M would call back . . .”

Colin turned to her, eyebrows raised, as though waiting for her to put the final link on this epic chain of balderdash.

“You’re cracked,” she said.

He slapped the table. “Exactly! I’d call out, ‘Tallyho!’, and she’d call back, ‘You’re cracked!,’ blithe as anything. And that’s how we’d keep from being separated.”

Each and every member of the Fontley family laughed.

“What a clever game,” the beaming patriarch said.

“Nothing will ever separate us, will it, M?” Colin reached for her hand and squeezed it, gazing fondly into her eyes. “I think I’ll never feel such kinship with another soul as I do with my dear sister.”

Across the table, Mrs. Fontley sighed. “Such good young people.”

As the footmen secured her trunks atop the Fontley carriage some time later, Minerva took the first possible opportunity to draw Colin aside.

“What are you doing?” she hissed in his ear.

“I’m making them feel comfortable,” he murmured in reply. “They’d never allow you to travel with them if we told the truth.”

“Perhaps. But must you make the stories so absurdly exaggerated? Curing lepers and riding elephants in Ceylon? How do you even come up with such things?”

He shrugged. “It’s called improvisation.”