her hair had not been brushed well and her clothes were not only inappropriate for the coming weather and far too small, they were threadbare as well. That pretty young girl was dressed like a pauper. What sort of living had their father managed to obtain for them in Spain? Had they gone by choice or had he been banished there for his sins, his children paying the price?
Glancing over at the other two, she considered their garments as well. While their clothing was adequate for the moment, if terribly worn, she knew that the earl had been correct in his assessment that they did not have all that they needed for the coming winter. Further, it showed just how lax their previous governess had been. She should have inventoried what they had and what they needed and presented a list to their guardian upon her arrival. And if the governess could not have done so, then the housekeeper certainly should have. It seemed as if every moment spent in the company of those children was simply another opportunity to discover how the adults in their lives had failed them.
“What do you think of your uncle, Claudia? The earl?” Callie asked her.
“He doesn’t like us very much,” Claudia said softly. “He says we’ve turned his world upside down.”
Callie smiled at that. “I suppose you have, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you. I think it rather means he isn’t quite sure what to do with you or what to make of you. He is a bachelor, after all, and children have, for him, always been the province of other people.”
“I suppose so. But he’s always telling us not to do this, not to do that, not to get in trouble. I’d just like for once, for people to tell us what we can do,” she said rather forlornly. “What we’re supposed to do!”
Callie placed her arm about the young girl’s shoulders. “I shall endeavor to do that. Every morning, when we begin lessons, I will try to give you a list of all the things we can do during the day.”
“Like what?”
Callie grinned, “Like we can race to that tree at the end of the lane, if you want. Or we can sit on that bench just over there. Or we can play in the dirt with your sister.”
“We can get dirty?” Claudia demanded.
“Of course we can! People can be cleaned and so can clothes. A little bit of mud or dust never hurt anyone,” Callie answered. “Is that what you want? To get dirty? To have mud under your fingernails and streaked on your face?”
“No,” Claudia answered. “I don’t really like it. But I like knowing that I could if I wanted to.”
Curious, Callie found herself asking, “And what sorts of things did you do when you were with your mother in Spain?”
They walked on in silence for a long moment, circling the small grassy area where the other children played. Finally, Claudia answered, “We tried to be quiet. Our mother didn’t much like us either. She was always taking to her bed to escape us, especially William. She always said her head ached and we made it worse with our noise.”
The very words seemed to pierce Callie’s heart. She glanced up, her gaze landing unerringly on the boy who was currently having a sword fight with a mighty oak tree. He was sweet, feral, precious and completely incorrigible. It was a combination that she wasn’t certain anyone who actually liked children would be able to resist. “That must have hurt your feelings terribly… and William’s.”
Claudia looked at her in a way that belied her years. In that moment, she looked impossibly grown up despite her braids and her pinafore. She wasn’t really a little girl, at all, Callie realized. Oh, certainly she was a child still, but she hovered on that terrible precipice between being a girl and being a young lady. Dolls no longer held her interest, but neither did embroidery, watercolors and all the things that would make her an accomplished young woman when she entered the marriage mart. So while William climbed trees and Charlotte spun in circles until she was dizzy and laughing, Claudia walked beside her and confided to her as she would have done if they were friends rather governess and charge.
“She had her reasons, I suppose,” Claudia murmured.
Realizing that simply denying the girl’s claim was an insult to her intelligence and also to the pain she had clearly experienced, Callie