Lizzie, never exactly calm in normal circumstances, stood over Miss Cooper, tutting and fussing. “Is she breathing?” Short and round with curly brown hair that was forever springing from her bun and freckles that covered her fair skin, Lizzie looked very much like her Irish mother. Both her parents had worked for my father at our country estate. When I left for America, she and Jasper had asked to join me. Initially, I brought only Jasper but sent for her as soon as I was settled here in Emerson Pass. She’d been making delicious meals ever since.
I knelt at the side of the couch and picked up one limp arm to feel Miss Cooper’s pulse. “Strong,” I said.
“Shall I fetch tea?” Lizzie asked, looking as if she were about to burst into tears. “For when she wakes?”
“Yes, and smelling salts,” Jasper said. “We need smelling salts.”
“And loosen her corset,” Lizzie said. “God knows that’ll help.”
Jasper coughed and turned red.
“Let’s try smelling salts first,” I said, almost laughing despite the gravity of the situation.
Lizzie nodded and flew from the room and down the stairs to the kitchen.
“I had no idea she was young,” I said to Jasper.
“It’s not proper for her to travel alone,” Jasper said. “Americans have no sense of propriety.”
At times, I found Jasper’s reluctance to accept America’s ways irritating, but this time I agreed with him. A wave of shame washed over me. Why hadn’t a companion accompanied her? It wasn’t proper. Every young woman should travel with a companion. I should have paid for someone to chaperone her. Dangers lurked around every corner on a train headed west. Not to mention here in Emerson Pass. Rough and lonely men would do terrible things to her if given the chance. How could I have possibly suggested she stay at the boardinghouse? She wouldn’t be safe there. Miners and prospectors stayed there, forever enraged that the gold they hoped for never appeared. They stumbled home at night from the saloon, drunk and violent. It would be fine for an older woman who had more than likely seen a thing or two, but this innocent woman would be in constant danger.
She would have to stay here in the house. We had more than enough rooms to accommodate her. I’d built this house with three extra bedrooms, hoping for family and friends from England to come for extended stays.
I heard the clamor of my children filing down the stairs. They’d come to say good night. Would seeing their teacher splayed out upon their couch scare them? I feared it might. Especially after what had happened to their mother. I glanced at Jasper, who uncharacteristically seemed as rattled and unsure as I. Before I could decide upon a diversion, the children burst into the library. All five of them. Wearing their flannel nightgowns, they looked clean and shiny and smelled of lavender soap. I loved them after their baths.
For once, the children seemed stunned into silence. They gathered around the prone body on the sofa and stared.
Flynn, one of the nine-year-old twins, not unusually, found his voice first. “Who is she, Papa?”
Before I could answer, Cymbeline, only six years old but particularly articulate, stepped closer to Miss Cooper and whispered, “Is she a princess from a faraway land?” Cymbeline’s dark curls, still damp from her bath, stuck to her rosy cheeks.
/>
Nanny Foster, from behind, spoke in a sharp voice. “Cymbeline, don’t get too close. She might be sick.”
“No, it’s all right, Nanny,” I said. “She’s only bumped her head.”
“Is she a stranger, Papa?” Josephine asked in a voice much too old for only being thirteen. “Have we taken her in from the cold?”
“No, this is our new teacher. Harley had an accident in the sleigh.”
“The small sleigh?” Flynn asked.
“What does it matter?” I asked.
“I’m just wondering,” Flynn said, grinning. “Because if the larger one is wrecked, then we wouldn’t be able to go into town for school.”
“You’re out of luck. It was the small one,” I said.
Fiona, my smallest daughter, slipped her hand into mine. At three, she still looked like a doll, with dark ringlets and round blue eyes that could melt the heart of the fiercest man. Especially her father. “Papa, I’m scared.”
I lifted her into my arms. “No need to be afraid, my darling. Doc’s on his way. He’ll fix her right up.”
“What if he can’t?” Theo asked. The quiet, worried half of my twin set didn’t have to explain his question. He would be thinking of his mother, who had walked into a blizzard and died when Fiona was a baby. Theo had been the one to find her. The doctor had come then, too.
“Let’s not worry ourselves,” Nanny Foster said in her brisk, unemotional way. “This looks like a strong but rather foolish young woman.”
I wasn’t sure how a bump on her head made her foolish, but I’d learned not to follow up with Nanny Foster’s observations unless I wanted a few more paragraphs of her opinions.