In fact, everywhere she looked she noticed little changes. Broken spindles along the staircase had been replaced with new ones. Damp spots had been filled with new plaster. Peeling paint had been sanded away and replaced with a fresh, white coat.
But the most striking change was the sound. All she heard was their footsteps. The room no longer moaned with the wind, like it was haunted.
“Welcome home,” Adam said quietly.
“Did you do all this?”
His face was tentative again, like he was not sure how she would react. “I hope you don’t mind. I had a few men with some spare time, and I wanted you to be comfortable. And the babe. If you, ergh, came.”
Sweet man. She walked over and brushed his hair out of his pretty eyes. “Thank you.”
“I also left something on your desk. A gift.”
“Shall I look now?”
“If you wish.”
She took his hand and walked through the door to her study. On the desk was a scroll of architectural plans. An Institute for the Equality of Women was written in the margin.
She smoothed it out over her desk, revealing a drawing of a building, tall and elegant, with graceful lines and a classical symmetry and enough height to leave no mistake as to the importance of its purpose. The pages that followed showed a pretty garden, a lecture hall, a large central lobby that looked like a gentleman’s club crossed with a lady’s boudoir. The design showed respect for the occupants, and awareness of their needs and comforts—a little mirrored dressing table built into each wall of the residence, desks that folded down for practicing lessons, a nursery for children.
Every fanciful idea she’d told him that day he’d sketched here was accounted for. It was as though he’d absorbed the vision from her mind’s eye and translated it to pencil and paper.
She was so touched she could barely speak.
“It’s perfect,” she said.
“You don’t have to use these, of course, if you prefer to consult another architect. I just wanted to do something. To help your cause.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll build it for me,” she said decisively. “We’ve already raised enough to buy a parcel of land. Once Cornelia’s series begins to sell, we’ll have enough for construction.”
“I’ve broken with Mayhew,” he said, “so I’d have to take on new apprentices. Perhaps you might direct me to some eligible female candidates.”
She grinned at him. “Now you are just trying to impress me.”
He considered this. “I am trying to impress you. I suppose I hope you will become attached to me.”
She went over and scooped him into her arms. “I already am,” she whispered.
He rested his chin on her head, and they stood there for a minute, just enjoying each other’s nearness. Finally, she kissed his cheek and stepped away. “Go home to your children before it’s dark. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
He kissed her tenderly before he went.
She watched him through the window as he walked up the coastal path. She pressed her hand over her womb. “That’s your father,” she told her baby. “I think that you will love him very much.”
Tompkins poked her head inside the door. “Ah, you’re back. You have a visitor. I told her you were out but she insisted on waiting.”
Sera winced. Trust Kestrel Bay to be abuzz with word of her arrival an hour after her carriage drove past the village square.
“Oh dear,” she sighed. “Who is it?”
Tompkins handed her a card. The Baroness Trewlnany. “She’s waiting in the parlor.”
Sera rushed out of the room, not sure if she was excited or afraid.
She found Tamsin perched on the sofa, her posture bracingly straight. On her lap, she held a brass cage. Inside it were two kingfishers.
The sight of them knocked the wind out of her.
Tamsin stood up and put the cage on the ground. “Sera. I’m so sorry to call without notice, and I hope it’s not too great an imposition.”
Sera sat down in a chair opposite, trying not to betray her nerves at the sight of those birds. “No imposition. Though I suspect your husband would not approve of you paying me a call.”
Tamsin sucked in her lips. “There is much about my behavior that fails to meet his approval of late.” She paused and narrowed her eyes. “And the feeling is decidedly mutual.”
Sera had always loved Tamsin’s tart, efficient way with words. Their barbed tongues had been the basis of their affection for each other back when they’d spent every day roaming the cliffs and reading books in Seraphina’s attic room.
Tamsin had not spoken to her like this in so many years she’d almost forgotten how it used to be between them.
“I can’t imagine why,” Sera quipped.
Tamsin nodded, but the smile fell off her face.
“I was grateful to you for standing up to Bell at my lecture,” Sera said. “It was a courageous thing to do and I’m sure it cost you more than I know. Thank you.”
“Oh, Sera, I don’t desire nor deserve any thanks. I read your book, you see. And it made me understand how badly I have behaved. You can’t know how sorry I am.”
Sera felt her throat becoming unpleasantly tight.
Tamsin’s betrayal of her all those years—marrying Trewlnany after Sera told her of her pregnancy and his responsibility—had never been something she’d understood.
They had been such close friends that the loss of Tamsin had been almost worse than the loss of Jonathan. It had always seemed like Tamsin might have broken the engagement, knowing the man to whom she was promised had strayed so wildly. Knowing that he was the father of Seraphina’s child.
But she hadn’t. She had simply disappeared from Sera’s life without another word.
But she was here now. And Sera was glad to see her.
“I blamed you then, perhaps, but not now,” she said. “I recognize you were in a difficult position, Tamsin. You were only a girl. Your father had expectations of you, just as mine did.”
“Sera, I knew I should call it off when I learned he’d been courting you in secret,” Tamsin said. “But you see . . . I didn’t feel I could. I had been with him, too.”
Sera’s head shot up. “Pardon?”
Tamsin nodded, her face aggrieved. “Before our engagement was announced, before I knew about you and him, he . . . had his way with me.”
“The bastard.”
“No, I don’t mean it like that. I wanted to. I was in love with him, and he was so handsome, and . . . well, you know. Everything you wrote in your book. Exactly that. It was impossible with him, wasn’t it?”
Sera felt like she might not be able to draw another breath so long as she lived. “Oh, Tamsin.”
Tamsin nodded. “I know. So when you told me about him and the baby . . . Sera, it pains me to say it but I believed him when he said you seduced him. He assured me the scandal would go away, that his father would pay for the child and some other man would marry you. And then, when you threw that fellow off and fled . . . I began to suspect I had made a terrible mistake. But by then it was too late for me to reconsider. I was married.”
Tamsin lost her composure on the word married.