he went on as if he hadn’t noticed she was thinking better of her plan to reach the top of the slender tree.
‘Cucumbers and rice pudding.’
‘Oh, dear me no, I can’t think of a worse combination.’
‘Not both at the same time, idiot,’ she said scathingly and felt less confidently for footholds on the way down and his heart seemed about to take up residence in his mouth as he watched her fumble, then find one.
‘How, then?’ he made himself ask as if he hadn’t a serious thought in his head while she hesitated between the next unsteady foothold and an even less likely alternative. Luckily the first held long enough to let her find a better and he sucked in a hasty breath and tried to look calm and only mildly interested when she found the nerve to look down again.
‘Rice pudding is worse, it looks like frogspawn and tastes like it by the time it gets to the nursery all cold and shuddery,’ she told him rather shakily.
‘I know exactly what you mean, but it goes down much better with big spoons of jam. I would never have got through school without wasting away if my brother hadn’t insisted I have jam with my pudding or succumb to a mysterious ailment unique to our family.’
‘I wish one of my brothers would think up stories to get us out of having to eat cold rice pudding on its own,’ she said wistfully and moved a few feet closer to the ground.
James estimated she was still about thirty feet above his head and worryingly unsafe when the girl’s elder sister appeared at the edge of the clearing, looking visibly shaken and pale as milk. She seemed about to distract the girl with a terrified exclamation and part of him whispered it would be good if she turned out to be a widgeon and released him from the spell he’d been in danger of tumbling into since the first day he laid eyes on her.
This wasn’t about him, though, so he shook his head and glared at her to keep quiet. He’d done his best not to know the Finch family better after spotting this disaster of a female hovering on the edges of it after church a few weeks ago. And who would have thought he’d let himself be cajoled and persuaded inside one of those for the good of his sooty soul quite so often?
‘I don’t think my brother would save me from rice pudding at every meal now we’re grown up if that makes you feel better,’ he shouted cheerfully enough.
He held his breath as the next branch the child tried gave an ominous crack. Again she skipped hastily on to the next and both watchers let out a quiet sigh of relief. The girl in the tree had frightened herself with her own daring and he had to keep her calm enough to take the next step to safety and the next, until she was low enough to catch if she fell.
‘Why not?’ she quavered bravely and how could he not put all he was into saving a girl who seemed as reckless and brave as Virginia must have been as a child?
Despite her mass of golden hair and bluest of blue eyes, she reminded him of Hebe’s little daughter Amélie. The defiant determination not to cry and admit how frightened she was put him in mind of the poor little mite he’d smuggled out of Paris at the behest of Hebe’s mother. The Terror had taken her husband and sons, now treachery had robbed her of her daughter, but she was still brave enough to part with her grandchild. Now it was up to him to see that the child had a better life than her mother and the responsibility felt terrifying at times.
‘We argued,’ he admitted, although it wasn’t exactly true. The problem was he and Luke hadn’t even had the heart to argue, they just let each other go and that was that.
‘Me and Jack argue all the time,’ the girl said matter-of-factly.
‘Is he your only sibling?’ he said with a warning glance at the one he wanted to know about least right now.
‘What’s a sibling?’
‘A brother or sister.’
‘Oh, no, but Nan’s only a baby and can hardly walk yet. I’m next, then there’s Jack, he’s two years older. Sophie is fifteen; Josh is at Oxford. Joanna is quite old and she’s getting married in November. Rowena has been grown up for years and years; she lived with her mama-in-law for ages but she’s home now. I hope she stays with us. She’s really old, but much more fun than Sophie. It’s nice to have one big sister who doesn’t scold all the time.’
James couldn’t spare a glance at Mr Finch’s eldest daughter to see how she’d reacted to that quaint summary. ‘Your parents must be busy with such a large and enterprising family,’ he managed coolly.
‘Oh, Papa and Mama are always busy. What with Papa’s pupils and all those services, Mama says it’s a wonder we ever see him.’
‘You must be Reverend Finch’s daughter, then?’
‘Why do people always say that as if it’s a surprise?’ the girl grumbled.
‘I really can’t imagine,’ he said wryly.
His breathing went shallow as the child stretched a grubby bare foot to find her next precarious hold. At a crash of unwary movement behind him he turned his head to bark a furious command at Mrs Westhope and saw a gangling stripling stumble into the clearing. Shock at the sight of his sister perched halfway up the wretched tree was written all over the boy’s ashen face. James drew breath to shout out an order to be silent just too late.
‘Good Lord, this time she’ll kill herself, Rowena,’ the boy shouted furiously.
The girl in the tree started, snatched at a much-too-slender branch to steady herself and screamed when it snapped off. This time there wasn’t another close enough to grab and save herself. She did her best to stumble on to another slender branch and shuffle her way back to the relative safety of the trunk. James’s heart seemed to jump into his mouth as he tried to calculate where best to stand to break the child’s fall, at the same time as briefly snatching off a prayer she wouldn’t need him to in the first place, since it was so hit and miss. The force of even her slender little body made the fine branches whip away or break as she grabbed at them. He winced for the scratches and bruises they would cause even as he reminded himself far worse would happen if he didn’t get in the way and stop her fall.
‘Stay back, you’ll do no good,’ he ordered the boy who looked about to dash forward and get in the way.
James had to forget him and hope his elder sister would stop the boy. She must have dragged her brother away, because James could pick the best spot to try and catch the child. He braced himself against the impact of the solid little body now hurtling towards him in a flash of flailing arms and grubby petticoats. A pity she couldn’t grow wings like the buzzards he’d been watching earlier, he found time to reflect as stalled time passed sluggishly. He did his best to second-guess gravity and snatch the girl from the shadowy arms of death by adjusting his stance as she fell. An image of this intrepid child lying lifeless and broken if he failed flashed in front of his eyes to truly horrify him, even as he stepped back to compensate for a little flail she managed, as if trying to slow her flight on the way down. He couldn’t quite think her a hell-born brat as every sense he had was intent on saving her from as much harm as he could.
Time flooded back in a rush. The girl’s speed crashed into him with all her slender weight behind it. He frantically closed his arms and caught her close. In the flail of limbs and hammer of his own heartbeat he knew he was between her and the dry, hard-packed earth. For a long moment it seemed they would escape winded and a bit bruised. Then he felt his foot slide on the smooth bark of an
