garden, we will ask her for seeds and cuttings.”
What Helena said was not something perfectly suited to either a nod or a shake of the head. Bea appeared disoriented for a moment. After a while she simply looked down and turned the page again.
Now there was a thatch-roofed cottage, its windowsills brimming with asters and geraniums. The cottage was located at the edge of a pond. A flower-lined cobblestone path bisected the lawn and led down to a small pier, where a rowboat was tied.
Helena glanced toward the murals again and found a house exactly like it—except the rowboat, instead of being tethered to the pier, was in use on the pond. “Is this where Tobias and his friend live?”
Bea turned back a page to show the girl duckling’s name, written above her shoulders. Nanette. She then proceeded to the page after the illustration of the cottage, where the first lines of text appeared, and waited expectantly.
She meant for Helena to read the story aloud.
Helena complied. “‘It has been a while since Tobias and Nanette encountered an Adventure. Two weeks, to be precise. Now, you might say two weeks is hardly any time. But for ducklings, Adventures are like cake. Once you have tasted cake, two weeks becomes a long time to go without.’
“Are you the author, too, Hastings?” she asked without turning her face in his direction.
“Yes.”
The Boy Who Leered would grow up to write and illustrate children’s stories. Why did that make her feel so…cross? Or was she angry because she preferred the simplicity of anger to the staggering complexity of the rest of her emotions?
Bea, who’d already turned the page, tapped on it to gain Helena’s attention. Helena smiled apologetically and went on. “‘But on this bright, late-summer morning, they did not need to seek Adventure. Adventure arrived all the way from Egypt on four legs. For you see, it becomes unbearably hot on the Nile this time of the year, and Mr. Crispin Crocodile therefore takes his annual holiday in the north, where the summers are as cool and refreshing as a lemon sorbet.’”
And there was Mr. Crispin Crocodile, in his seersucker summer suit, mopping his brows with a handkerchief. He looked huge and hungry.
“‘Tobias was taking his usual morning walk around the pond. All his neighbors—the squirrels, the beavers, the bunnies, et cetera—seemed to have disappeared. “It must be the time of the year for holidays,” he mused to himself. But he was quite happy to remain at the pond with dear Nanette, until he saw Mr. Crispin Crocodile setting down his travel satchel to feel for his keys in his pocket. All of a sudden Tobias understood why his neighbors had fled, and why he was able to purchase his marvelous little cottage the previous autumn at such a bargain.’”
The Boy Who Leered would grow up not only to write and illustrate children’s stories, but to do so with exceptional charm and assurance.
Bea tapped at the page again, waiting for Helena to continue.
“I can read for her if you’d prefer not to,” Hastings offered.
Still without looking at him, Helena said, “I’m fine. I’ll read the rest.”
Miss McIntyre, Bea’s governess, came to retrieve her at the end of tea, leaving Hastings and Helena alone in the room. He expected Helena to depart on Bea’s heels, but instead she leveled him a severe gaze and said, “That is a very good story.”
His heart almost left his chest at her compliment. “Thank you. I’m glad you like it, since you are publishing that story—and eleven others like it.”
Her brow furrowed in fierce concentration, as if she were trying to gather every last detail from all the correspondence and documents she’d recently read. “So you are Miss Evangeline South and this is one of the Old Toad Pond tales.”
“Correct.”
She leaned forward and picked up a cucumber sandwich. He stared at the line of her arm. She had wonderfully long, lissome arms. In a ball gown they were a sight to behold.
“You could have asked for more than one hundred and ten pounds for the copyright,” she said.
He shrugged. He didn’t need the money and he’d been thrilled she’d offered as much.
“Let me guess: You never told me that you are the author.”
“Correct.”
Her expression was not revolted, as it had been earlier, but merely, though deeply, irked. “Why not?”
He shrugged again. “I didn’t want you to make fun of me.”
“I won’t deny that I might have made fun of you—at first. But in the end I do not laugh