“Why should I come back?” Nicholas spat in a sudden burst of anger. “I hate this cursed place.”
Maggie shook her head, denying the truth of his words. “Don’t say that.”
“I hate everything about it. I hate Sir Roderick and I hate Fred Burton-Smythe. I hate the vicar’s wife and your Aunt Daphne. I despise working in this damned stable and—”
“What about me?” she asked.
He felt a spasm of deep anguish. “How can one good thing outweigh all of this misery?”
“Well, you can’t go away and never come back. As horrible as everything else is, Jenny’s here, and I’m here, and you have someplace to sleep, and a chance to earn your living—”
“Earn my living? As what? A groom in your father’s stable?” Nicholas laughed bitterly. “I’ll never be a gentleman if I remain here. No matter how much you teach me about books and music and dancing. Bastards and commoners can never be made into gentlefolk, by no miracle. I’ll never be anything more than a servant to you. And one day…” He looked at her, his chest constricting with torment. “One day you’ll marry Fred Burton-Smythe, and you’ll forget I ever meant anything to you.”
“I would never!”
“I can’t be here when that day comes, Maggie. I’d rather be dead. And if I remain here, I might as well be. There’s no future for me as a servant at Beasley Park. Can’t you understand that?”
“But where else can you go?”
“To Bristol. To the sea. I’ll go to find my father.”
“Your father?” Maggie repeated. “Do you mean…Gentleman Jim?”
“Jenny says that the last time she ever heard anything of him, he was on his way to Bristol. Perhaps if I can find him, if I can convince him I’m his son, he’ll allow me to stay with him. To ride with him on his travels.”
“But you don’t even know for certain that Gentleman Jim is your father! Jenny has never admitted—”
“She’s never denied it. And everyone who remembers what Gentleman Jim looked like says I’m the very image of him.”
“Yes, I know that, but no one has seen him in ages. What if you can’t find him?”
Nicholas’s jaw hardened. “I will find him.”
Maggie glared at him, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Confound you, Nicholas Seaton, you know there’s no time to argue!” She stamped her foot. “Oh, very well.” She reached into the folds of her cloak and drew out a small, heavily filled sack. “If you insist upon going, then you must take this with you.”
Nicholas eyed the sack warily. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes. Most of my pin money and all of the little tokens Papa has given me in the last several years. A shilling here, a guinea there. I daresay it has added up to a tidy sum. I was going to give you a few coins to sustain you until Papa returns from London, but under the circumstances I think you must take it all.”
No.” Nicholas took a step back from her. “It’s a king’s ransom.”
“Good. Then I’ll never have to worry about you freezing to death or going hungry.” She thrust the sack of money at his chest. “Take it. And take Miss Belle, too. Ride her as far as the crossroads and then set her loose. She can find her way back to Beasley Park from anywhere in the county.”
Nicholas swallowed hard as he accepted the money. “Maggie Honeywell, you’re an angel.”
At his words, the first tears spilled over onto Maggie’s cheek. She dashed them away with her hand. “I know I will never see you again.”
Nicholas stepped closer, and reaching out, caught her little cleft chin in his hand. It was an old habit. Something he’d done since she was a little girl. But this time the gesture wasn’t playful or teasing. He didn’t, as a brother would, give her chin an affectionate pinch and then let her go. Instead he gently tipped up her face so that her large blue eyes were forced to meet his. His thumb brushed away a tear, and then, before Maggie could guess his intention, he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her very softly on the lips.
It was a brief kiss, and considering her tears, not a particularly romantic one, but it was the first kiss they’d ever shared. And it was nothing at all like the kiss that a brother would give to his sister.
“Wait for me, Maggie,” Nicholas said. “I’ll find Gentleman Jim, and when I make my fortune, I’ll come back for you.”
He held her gaze for what seemed like an eternity.
“No matter how long it takes,” he vowed. “I will come back.”
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The character of Mr. Atkyns was inspired by Edward Atkyns Bray, a vicar living in Tavistock who died in 1857. Bray was a great proponent of the Dartmoor pony and actively worked to replenish its dwindling numbers. According to his wife, Anna, who wrote extensively on the flora and fauna of Devonshire after her husband’s death, Mr. Bray “reared great numbers of these horses, which were disposed of at an annual sale held on the moor. Since the death of that gentleman the breed is become almost extinct.”
Clara’s experience “shadow-attending” Cambridge was also inspired by Victorian fact. Ambitious girls of that period, often schooled at home along with their brothers, could find it very hard when said brothers departed for college and left them behind. This very situation comes up in Charlotte M. Yonge’s 1856 novel The Daisy Chain.
Ethel is schooled at home with her brother, Norman. When he goes to Oxford, she tries to keep up with him. The situation leads Ethel’s elder sister, Margaret, to utter a few Victorian home truths:
“No,” said Margaret; “but don’t think me very unkind if I say, suppose you left off trying to keep up with Norman.”
“Oh, Margaret! Margaret!” and her eyes filled with tears. “We have hardly missed doing the same every day since the first Latin grammar was put into his hands!”
“I know it would be very hard,” said Margaret; but Ethel continued, in a piteous tone, a little sentimental, “From hie haec hoc up to Alcaics and beta Thukididou we have gone on together, and I can’t bear to give it up. I’m sure I can—”
“Stop, Ethel, I really doubt whether you can. Do you know that Norman was telling papa the other day that it was very odd Dr. Hoxton gave them such easy lessons.”
Ethel looked very much mortified.
“You see,” said Margaret kindly, “we all know that men have more power than women, and I suppose the time has come for Norman to pass beyond you. He would not be cleverer than any one, if he could not do more than a girl at home.”