“A wonderful periodical,” she explained, eyes bright with excitement in her dark face. “Gaia, as you may know, was said by the ancient Greeks to be the mother of all life…”They moved off, heads bent together. Honoria and the other girls moved off after them as well. Leaving Bronwyn and Ash alone on the pavement.
He remained silent beside her, his body stiff against her arm. For an anxiety-ridden moment, she feared she had overstepped by getting the Gadfelds involved.
When she cast a glance up at his face, however, it was to see it flooded with emotion.
“Ash?”
He swallowed hard, his gaze on Regina’s retreating form. “She has never had a friend, you know,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Can you imagine, sixteen years old and never had a friend?”
Tears burned Bronwyn’s eyes. “I can imagine, very well,” she replied softly.
He looked down at her, understanding lighting his face. “You can, can’t you?”
They stood that way for a time, gazing at each other. And Bronwyn, for the first time in her life, felt truly seen. It knocked the breath from her.
Eliza and Nelly chose that moment to tumble from the bakery, arms full of brown paper packages, mouths full of sweet buns. Bronwyn fully expected the moment between her and Ash to have been shattered with their appearance, that his mood would revert to the same tension-filled one as before.
Instead, he instructed them where they were headed, and gave Bronwyn a small smile as they all started for the Quayside. And Bronwyn felt she wasn’t walking so much as she was floating beside him.
***
A strange kind of truce had cropped up at Caulnedy since the trip to the town center three days ago. And while the time Ash spent with Bronwyn and the girls was not without tension, there was a new, cautious politeness among them.
And it was all due to Bronwyn.
He glanced across the library to the large desk in the corner, where she sat surrounded by piles of papers and books and stacks of shallow wooden display cases. Eliza and Nelly were hovering about her, seemingly captivated by what she was working on. As he watched, she answered one of the myriad questions the girls were peppering her with, handing Eliza a small magnifying glass and pointing to a specimen in one of the cases.
“Here you can see the life cycle of the tansy beetle,” she explained as the girl hunched over the case in question. “I managed to collect specimens from all aspects of the cycle, and I’ve pinned them here in this case. This stage,” she continued, indicating something out of Ash’s view, “is called the larva stage. It’s much like the beetle’s adolescence.”
Nelly pushed forward, trying to squirm her way between her sister and Bronwyn. “Let mesee, Eliza,” she demanded.
Ash frowned, preparing to reprimand her. Bronwyn, however, quickly defused the situation.
“While you wait for your turn,” she said, firmly yet gently as she maneuvered the girl to the seat beside her, “shall I tell you how the beetle transforms from such an unassuming creature to the brilliant jewel that it eventually becomes?”
“Oh, yes please.”
Bronwyn riffled through the piles before her, finding a portfolio and opening it to a series of watercolors. “Here you can see how the larva burrows underground. Over the winter its body makes the most fascinating transformation…”
She rambled on, her passion for her subject obvious. Nelly, to his surprise, remained rapt, hanging on her every word. Eliza, too, soon lifted her head and focused her full attention on Bronwyn.
His chest swelled with emotion. The expression on both the girls’ faces was, for the first time he could recall, full of absolute wonder. They always seemed defiant, as if they were preparing for anger or disappointment. Now, however, there was none of that.
This was how it should have been for them. They should not have experienced so much upheaval and uncertainty in their lives. Perhaps, just perhaps, he had finally done right by them in marrying Bronwyn.
But they, of course, had not been the ones to suffer the most. He looked to Regina, who sat curled up in an overstuffed chair not far from him. When last he’d looked her way, her nose had been pointedly buried in a book, one of the large tomes on fossils she had borrowed from the Quayside. He fully expected her to still be in that defensive position, neither joining the others nor inviting conversation. Which would be a sight better than her typical open defiance.
Yet instead of reading, her book lay forgotten on her lap as she craned her neck, trying to see what it was that had the rest of them so transfixed.
His heart ached for her, looking from the outside in. It had not always been thus; Eliza and Nelly had used to look up to her and rely on her when he had first taken them in. Three ferocious, defensive kittens clinging to one another.
As the years passed, however, the two younger girls had branched out on their own, becoming increasingly rebellious to Regina’s attempts to care for them. And Regina had responded by lashing out, drawing into herself, pretending she did not care. Though hadn’t Ash seen hints that she did care, very much? Her determined sleuthing to learn where her sisters had run off to, insisting on purchasing sweets for them before their arrival at Caulnedy, and now the longing in her eyes as she gazed at them; these all were proof that she loved her sisters and mourned the loss of the closeness they’d once had.
Pressing his lips tight in uncertainty, he nevertheless put his own untouched book aside—truly, he’d forgotten it was even in his hands—and leaned forward in his seat. “I’m certain they wouldn’t mind your company,” he said softly.
Regina started guiltily, as if being caught doing something embarrassing, before she shrugged her shoulders and, schooling her features into cool unconcern, turned back to her book. “I don’t know what you mean,” she muttered. “I don’t have any interest in insects.”
After the past several days of carefully tiptoeing about one another, her reaction cut deeper than it should have. Sitting back in his chair, he cursed himself for his misstep. He should have let well enough alone.