daughters’ playroom. The designer he’d hired on recommendation from his in-laws had done a wonderful job. The room was bright and sunny, decorated in blue and white. The girls were busy playing with their three-story dollhouse and talking for the dolls. He loved watching them and stood quietly at the door until they noticed him.
“Papa!” Polly jumped up and ran to him with her younger sister, Lilly, right behind her.
“We missed you, Papa!” Lilly said, kissing him on the cheek as he gathered them both up, one in each arm.
“We truly did,” Polly agreed, giving him a kiss on the other cheek.
He took them to the settee and sat down, one on each side of him.
“I went to Mrs. Heaton’s to ask—”
“Without us? Oh, Papa, we love taking tea at Mrs. Heaton’s!” Lilly exclaimed.
They’d gone only once to have tea with Mrs. Heaton and her daughter and granddaughter. But they’d taken a liking to their neighbor right away. “We’ll go another time, I’m sure, Lilly. But today I needed to ask her assistance in finding someone to help out—at least until I can find a permanent nanny.”
“Oh, Papa,” Polly said, “we don’t want any mean old nanny. Why couldn’t Mary stay?”
“Why did she have to leave us?” Lilly asked in an overly dramatic tone.
“She got homesick for England and I’d promised I’d send her home if she didn’t want to stay.”
“Why wouldn’t she want to stay with us?” Polly asked, her eyes filling with tears. “She’s been with us since we were born and after Mama passed away, too.”
“You know Nanny loved you both. It was hard for her to leave you. But she missed her family and she doesn’t like cities.”
“Oh,” Lilly said, a tear plopping out of her eye. “But we miss her.”
“I know you do. And I’m sure she misses the two of you, too.”
Mary had been a good nanny and the girls did love her. She’d cried when he took her to the ship to leave, telling him she knew how much he and his girls had already lost and that she felt as if she was deserting them. Which was exactly how Tyler felt, too.
He’d heard Mary was thinking of leaving from Tate and Mrs. Biddle, but she’d kept it from him and the girls as long as she could. But she had been miserable. In the end, she missed her own family too much to stay, and Tyler felt he had no choice but to let her go back.
“Well, I hope you’ll like the next nanny better than the one I hired to replace Mary and then the next one. You weren’t very nice to her, you know.”
“She wasn’t nice to us when you weren’t around, Papa,” Polly said.
“I’m sorry. You should have told me, instead of trying to run her away.”
“We weren’t exactly trying to do that, Papa. We were kind of...” Lilly looked over at Polly.
“If she wasn’t going to stay, we wanted her to leave as soon as possible,” his older daughter stated matter-of-factly. “If they don’t want to be nanny to us, we don’t want them to be.”
Tyler sighed and pulled his daughters closer, kissing them each on the top of the head. He didn’t know what to say. He understood their reasoning, but he felt terribly inept at figuring out what to do in this situation. It seemed he questioned every decision he’d made since Ivy had passed away.
All he really could do was pray for the Lord to help him talk Mrs. Biddle into staying, and for Mrs. Heaton to come up with someone to help out as soon as possible. He’d never thought the move to America would be such a huge adjustment for them all. And that might have been the root of the problem. He hadn’t thought things through at all.
* * *
Sir Walker’s dilemma had been on Georgia’s mind ever since he’d left Heaton House. She’d heard his daughters playing in their courtyard from time to time when she’d been out in Mrs. Heaton’s small garden reading. They were pretty little girls and she hated that not only did they have to adjust to a new country without their mother, but they also didn’t have a nanny to care for them in her place. She’d mulled over Mrs. Heaton’s suggestion and prayed about it and thought she’d come to a decision.
She dressed for dinner in a pink silk damask-and-satin dress trimmed with cream lace and silk braid. Then she went through the bathroom she shared with one of the new boarders, a seamstress named Betsy Thomas, and knocked on the door to her room.
“Georgia, come in. I was just about to go down to dinner. That pink looks lovely on you.”
“Thank you. You look very nice, too.” Betsy was quite pretty with dark, almost black, hair and blue eyes. She was dressed in a silk gown almost the same shade as her eyes. “We’ll go down together.”
“I appreciate that. It still feels a little awkward entering the parlor alone. I don’t know why, when everyone has been so kind to me.”
“You’ve only been here a few days. By next week, you’ll be breezing in without even thinking about it.”
“I hope so.”
Mrs. Heaton had put out her sign the week before. Her boarders seemed to have a propensity to fall in love while living at Heaton House, and she had to keep putting out a sign to fill the boardinghouse once more. But it never took more than a few days to accomplish that.
Georgia loved living here and getting to know the other boarders. They were a tight-knit group who enjoyed spending time with each other—even after they married. They enjoyed going on all kinds of outings together. And one of the best times was having dinner together.
With Mrs. Heaton at the helm, it was a time to share how their days had gone and to either commiserate or rejoice with each other, depending on what had happened.
She and Betsy joined the others in the parlor. Julia, the boarder who’d been there the longest, and Emily, who was fairly new, were there with Stephen and Joe—they’d moved in at the same time Emily had. Then there was Samuel and Dave, who’d joined the mix a few days ago at the same time as Betsy. The men dipped their heads to Georgia and Betsy as they entered, just as Mrs. Heaton announced dinner was ready.
It was customary for the men to escort the ladies to the table, and tonight it was Stephen who crooked his arm for her. But as he pulled out her chair, it was Emily he had his eyes on. Samuel beat him to her this evening and Georgia could tell Stephen wasn’t at all happy about it.
It was such fun wondering who might be the next couple to come out of Heaton House. Georgia knew for sure that she would not be part of one. She was barely over being rejected by the one man she’d thought to marry until he’d become her brother-in-law. Since then she’d vowed she would never give her heart to another.
Mrs. Heaton brought Georgia’s attention back to the present as she asked Stephen to say the blessing. Then Gretchen and Maida, Mrs. Heaton’s household help, brought in dinner and began to serve. As dishes were passed around the table, their landlady asked about their day. That conversation didn’t take long tonight, as nothing out of the ordinary seemed
