Page 72 of A Family Of His Own
The boys watched closely as Toby dealt with the flopping fish, removing the hooks and placing both in the basket, then with renewed enthusiasm, the pair rebaited their hooks and reset their lines.
Smiling, Toby reeled in a fish of his own, completing the general satisfaction.
As they settled again, Toby glanced at one young face, then the other. Both were focused, concentrating. Absorbed and engaged.
He gazed at the spot where his line vanished into the water. The boys were enjoying themselves. They were settling and growing more confident in themselves day by day.
Diana’s earlier reference to Fellows floated through his mind.
The way Toby saw things, by edict of Fate, it had fallen to him to expand the boys’ horizons. To open their eyes to the possibilities of their world, just as his family’s elders had done for him.
In that respect, the one cloud on the horizon, the single most-definite niggle in Toby’s mind, was the question of what the children’s lives would be like once he and Diana delivered them to their great-aunt.
How old was Fellows’s great-aunt?
Would she know how to care for children?
Had she ever had any of her own?
Those were questions to which Toby—and he felt certain Diana, too—didn’t know the answers.
He glanced again at the dark heads to either side and made a silent vow.
While the children are under my care, I will do all—everything and whatever—I can for them.
* * *
Later that evening,after the house had fallen silent and a fine mist had closed in about the island, after checking on Evelyn, Diana returned to the drawing room to find it empty.
She could hear movement in the kitchen.
It seemed too early to retire. She walked farther into the room and spotted Toby in the dining room, standing by the long windows and looking out over the terrace at the fog-shrouded lake.
He truly was an attractive man in oh-so-many ways.
She studied the view, then elected to sink into one of the armchairs near the drawing room fireplace.
Apparently hearing the rustle of her skirts, Toby glanced over his shoulder, and she grasped the opportunity to ask, “How long do you think we should stay here?”
How much longer will I have, in this place of peace and safety, to explore what’s growing between us?
Because something was. Of that, she felt sure.
He turned and came toward her, moving with the long-limbed grace that was such an innate part of him. He crossed to the armchair facing her and, with unstudied elegance, sank into it. “That depends.”
“On?”
“When we consider it safe enough to leave.” He paused, then said, “Four days more at least. A full week would be better. The longer both Heinrik and Eva and Jager and Koch flounder around, trying and failing to pick up our trail, the better.”
“The more likely they are to decide they’ve missed us and race to Calais or Rotterdam, thinking to head us off up there?”
He nodded. “I truly doubt that they’ll show up here. Or rather, at Orta. But if four more days pass and they don’t, then we should be safe in assuming they’ve missed us and have moved on.”
“So four days more, possibly six or seven.” That should give her time to explore… whatever this was that hovered between them, even now.
Toby tried to read her face, tried to divine from her expression what thoughts were passing through her mind.
He would give a great deal to know.
