fingers brushed, making her catch her breath. She hoped he couldn’t tell how flustered she felt.
“You’re welcome.” He stood and so did she. “I suppose I’d best go listen to those prayers. They already pray for you, you know.”
“How sweet,” Georgia said as they walked out into the foyer. “I pray for them as well. I’ll see you all on Monday or at church on Sunday, I suppose.”
“You will. Have a good weekend, Miss Marshall.”
“You, too, Sir Tyler.”
He gave another smile and turned to the stairs while Mr. Tate showed her out.
“Good night, Miss Marshall,” the butler said.
“Good night, Mr. Tate.”
She heard the door shut behind her and hurried over to the steps of Heaton House. Happy as she was to have the weekend off, she felt a little guilty for leaving Sir Tyler and Mr. Tate.
Then she scolded herself. She wasn’t indispensable, after all! She heard the boarders in the parlor as soon as she opened the door and hurried inside to join them.
“Georgia! How nice it is to have you home for more than a few hours!” Julia exclaimed.
“Oh, it is!” Emily added.
“I’m glad to be here. I’ve missed evenings at Heaton House. What have you got planned for the weekend?”
“Your favorite meal, for one,” Mrs. Heaton said from behind her. “It’s good to know we have you for the whole weekend.”
“Mostly we’re going to enjoy spending time with you,” Julia said. “But remember, Matt and Millicent’s housewarming is next Saturday.”
“Oh! I’d forgotten about that. Are we going in together on a gift?”
“We were just talking about that. Mrs. Heaton suggested we get a brass bowl similar to what we got for the other couples. We can go down tomorrow morning and pick one out together, if you’d all like,” Julia said.
“Oh, I’d love to help.” And hopefully it would take her mind off of Sir Tyler and his daughters. The girls should be asleep by now, but what was he doing? She always wondered about that once she left. The first night, she’d stopped at the window of the upstairs hall that looked out on Mrs. Heaton’s garden. She’d seen a glow of lamplight on the courtyard next door and thought it must be coming from Sir Tyler’s study window.
And as she went up for the night with the others tonight, she was drawn to that window once more after the other girls went to their rooms. Sure enough, a splash of light shone on the yard. She hoped Sir Tyler was working, for the thought of him just sitting all by himself in his study late at night saddened her deeply.
Dear Lord, please help them to have a good weekend. I do feel so bad about leaving them. And yet the girls are asleep and Sir Tyler is doing whatever it is he does of an evening. I’m sure he has his own routine, and besides, it’s none of my business at all! I must stop thinking of him so much. Please help me to put him out of my mind and remember that my job is to see that his daughters are well taken care of in my charge. And that is all. In Jesus’s name, I pray. Amen.
The weekend passed quite pleasantly for Georgia. She’d gone with Julia and Betsy to Macy’s to look for the brass bowl for Matt and Millicent on Saturday morning, and then the group went to the ice-cream parlor for sodas that evening after dinner. She did get to see Polly and Lilly the next day at church and they seemed as glad to see her as she was to see them, as they ran up to her as soon as the service was over.
She also remembered to broach the subject of their wardrobes to Sir Tyler once the girls ran off to talk to Jenny. “I did want to speak to you about something and I kept forgetting last week—”
“You aren’t going to give notice, are you?” he asked.
The concern in his eyes had her rushing to reassure him. “Oh, no! I’m sorry to have given you any cause to worry. No, it’s about the girls’ wardrobes. I think they might need some new things and—”
His laughter was a sound she hadn’t heard before and it warmed her heart to know she’d evidently relieved his mind.
“Their wardrobe? Of course. I’m glad you brought it to my attention. We’ll decide what to do tomorrow.”
“Thank you. That sounds good. I know you want them to—”
“Look like proper young ladies. And you’re right about that. In fact, their nanny mentioned something about it when I took her to the ship, but I was so upset about her leaving, I’m afraid I didn’t pay much attention.”
“That’s understandable. We’ll take care of it.”
“We will. I’m sure they could use a few new things,” Sir Tyler said.
They needed more than a few items, but she’d wait until the next day to go into detail about all that.
As the girls had waved goodbye to her, Georgia had almost wished she was going with them. She feared she’d become attached to them much too quickly, but how did one keep from doing so when they had no mother to turn to?
Still, she had to remind herself that she was only their acting nanny and that she would be replaced one day. She couldn’t let herself become too fond of them—or their papa.
He’d been very kind to her, but she really knew little about him other than he was part of English gentry and had been married to a wealthy American, according to Mrs. Heaton. Besides, she just could not trust her instincts where men were concerned. Otherwise she wouldn’t have believed that she would marry Phillip for all those years. She still thought he’d led her on. But at the same time, Georgia felt she should have seen the truth. It was her sister that Phillip was truly interested in and he was only using Georgia as a reason to visit and see Meredith.
Georgia still felt a little pang remembering the day they’d announced their engagement. It’d been all she could do to stay in the room and congratulate them instead of running up to her bedroom to sob as she’d done later that night.
If she couldn’t trust her intuition with someone she’d known all her life, how could she ever trust it with a man she barely knew? And why was she even thinking about any of this anyway? She believed Sir Tyler was still mourning his loss. And even if he wasn’t, she’d vowed never to lose her heart to another man. No matter how kind and handsome he was.
Now, on Monday morning, as she let herself into the Walker home and greeted Mrs. Biddle, she shored up her resolve and turned her attention to the job she’d been hired to do.
She hurried upstairs to find the girls still asleep, which surprised her, for they’d been up waiting for her all last week. It looked as if they might be hiding under the covers and she grinned. They probably thought they’d jump out and give her a scare when she approached. “Polly? Lilly? Are you being sleepyheads today?”
She gave the small mound in Polly’s bed a little shake, but it felt
