“Rashers are pigs?” Adeline wailed. “No one told me they are pigs!”
“A town-bred child,” Sera said dryly to Marianne, who was trying not to laugh.
“I’m afraid so,” Marianne agreed.
Sera bent down to the distressed girl. “Never mind the poor pigs, Miss Adeline. Every creature is some other creature’s supper, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not a creature’s supper!” Adeline said, indignant.
“You are if wolves eat you,” Jasper said solemnly.
Adeline’s face crumpled at the thought.
Seraphina picked her up before she had a chance to cry. “Aren’t we lucky there are no wolves in Cornwall? Come, Jasper, on to the matters of the day. Your costumes for Golowan. I believe our dear Miss Tompkins found an entire box of them.”
She led them to the old trunk of her stepmother’s, which Tompkins had lugged down from the attic.
“Jasper, the men wear tunics and carry torches, and the boys accompany them with wooden staffs wrapped up in burlap and trim.” She pulled out an old garment her stepmother had sewn for her father. “This will be too large for you, but perhaps your aunt can mend it so it fits.”
“Of course,” Marianne said.
“And for Miss Adeline, the little girls wear white frocks and string flowers in their hair.” She pulled a dress that had been hers as a child from the trunk. “This will do nicely.”
Adeline giggled at the old-fashioned garment.
“Do you know how to thread a flower garland?” Seraphina asked Marianne.
“I’m not sure I do. Perhaps you could show us. If you have the time. We wouldn’t want to impose.”
She’d rather do anything than write, so she rummaged in the box for scissors, needles, and a spindle of twine. “Let’s go outside and pick our flowers.”
She spent the next hour with Marianne and the children in the sunshine, wandering the garden beside the house, until they had collected far more wildflowers than were needed and a tall branch that could serve as Jasper’s pole.
Once they had a full basket, they returned to the terrace, where Seraphina spread out their bounty and showed the children how to pierce the center of a flower with a needle and attach it to thread to make a crown. Maria brought them lemonade sweetened with honey and by the time the sun was overhead, the four of them were laughing like old friends.
Sera always forgot how much she liked children. Their amusing antics and strange observations were such a soothing distraction from her dread of the work awaiting her that she lost track of the time. She was surprised when a man shouted a greeting from the distance.
It was Adam Anderson, walking up the coastal path.
God, he was handsome. It should be a crime to look like that.
The breeze blew his hair in the wind, and he’d become more tan, no doubt from working out of doors. He was so different from the pale men she knew in London, who had the crouched posture and narrow shoulders that came with a life toiling over words. Adam looked natural against the backdrop of the cliffs, full of rugged health and vigor. She wanted to go up to him and breathe him in. He’d probably smell like sweat and earth.
“Papa!” Adeline cried, running to greet him with a large bunch of flowers. “Look, we’re druids!”
He glanced at Sera briefly over his daughter’s head, his eyes flashing with something sharp and aware. Was that excitement to see her, or alarm at the sight of his children learning pagan rites under the tutelage of a loose woman?
She willed his eyes to linger on her with abject arousal or unrequited longing, or at least some sign that in the week since she’d last seen him he’d thought of her with anything like the frequency she’d thought of him. But he turned his attention to the children.
“I was on my way to the cottage to collect you,” he told them. “Are you ready for our voyage?”
“Yes!” cried Jasper.
“No!” Adeline objected. “I want to stay with Miss Arden.”
Sera repressed a smile. At least dear Adeline was suitably enamored with her.
“Perhaps Miss Arden would like to join us,” Marianne suggested, turning to Sera with a warm, genuine smile. “It is time for luncheon, after all, and we have worked up enough of an appetite to eat at least one pasty each.”
Seraphina shook her head without even considering it. It was not her place to intrude upon a family outing. And she did not wish to go into the town, where she might see people she had once known. “Oh, thank you, but I must return to work.”
Adeline looked at her with huge, beseeching eyes. “Oh, please, Miss Arden, come and watch me eat the pie!”
“I’m sure it will be quite a thing to watch,” Sera laughed. “Our pasties are the size of your wee head.”
Adeline wrinkled her nose. “My head isn’t wee.”
“Yes, it is,” Jasper informed his sister, after a brief assessment.
“Are you certain, Miss Arden?” Adam asked, looking her way with more intensity than was warranted by an offhand invitation. “We’d all love the company.”
The way he said it, low and warm, sent a flutter through her.
He had thought of her. She knew it. She could feel it, running between them. Piercing her. Still, she searched his eyes, wondering why he would want her company. She detected a slight note of challenge in the way he held his shoulders. Whether he issued the challenge to her or to himself, she was not sure.
Adeline flew into a rapture at her father’s encouragement. “Yes, come with us!” she pleaded, dancing about at Sera’s feet.
Perhaps she would.
After all, hiding in her crumbling house was not the way to signal her defiance to whoever wished to drive her out of town. Sharing a meal with a wholesome family would prove to anyone watching her that she was neither scared nor ashamed.
And it had been ages since she’d eaten good pasties.
Good pasties were her bloody birthright.
Sera smiled down at Adeline. “Very well, luncheon it is.”
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Adam smile and look down at his feet. It made her want to smile back.
Adam focused on his children’s every word as they made the voyage to the inn. In part because it was nice to spend an afternoon with them, and in part because focusing on their chatter helped him not to lose his wits over the nearness of Seraphina Arden.
It had been a perverse impulse to encourage her to join this outing, given that he’d conceived of the trip to distract himself from his thoughts of her. And though it was ungracious to dwell on it, there was a risk to being seen out with her in public, when word of their acquaintance could filter out to the village and fall upon the wrong ears. He was certain Pendrake, who led a faction of Conservatives, would not approve of Miss Arden’s sort.
But when his sister had invited her, it had seemed rude not to second the invitation, given she’d spent the morning entertaining his small children.
But really, he’d just wanted her to come.
And now that she was walking a few feet from him, he was a mess of nerves. It was a peculiarly specific feeling—the desire not to betray how nervous one was in the presence of a woman one could not stop thinking about. He was grateful for her ease with the children; listening to her make light conversation with them gave him something to focus on besides worrying that he seemed too eager, or wondering how he looked, or trying to discern whether she was watching him.