Page 63 of Sleepless in Saunton
“Where did you learn that word?”
Tatiana shrugged. “Mama said it last night. She said she could not remember the English word for it.”
Barclay rubbed his fingers over his forehead. His daughter must have heard her mother say it in the past, plucking it from an old memory. He might not be able to think of a situation in which Natalya would have been discussingvodorosli,but that did not mean she had not had an occasion to use the word with Tatiana. “Algae. The English word is algae.”
“Al-gee. That is a funny word!”
Barclay smiled. Their conversation was bizarre but, in an instant, Tatiana was just a nine-year-old girl again, and her simple view of the world utterly charmed him.
Brushing a frond of silver-blonde hair away from her face, he acknowledged that Tatiana had been right. She needed a mother, and he needed a wife. Not just anyone, but someone who could help him navigate the complexities of emotional intimacy. Someone sensitive to the issues his daughter and his mother faced. Someone sensitive to his own needs. Someone like—
“Jane!”
Snapping his head up, Barclay found Tatiana beaming. She was looking over her shoulder at the entrance of the cave where Jane now stood, a hand resting against the cave entrance while she panted from exertion. Across the pond, Aurora came into view as she stepped out of the woods, evidently following Jane to find them. Both women had their hair bared, apparently having hurried to the grotto without taking a moment to fetch their bonnets.
“Thank … the … Lord!” exclaimed Jane between pants. “I … am so … happy to … see you … Tatiana!”
His daughter wriggled off his lap, landing on the cave floor to race over to Jane and throw her arms about Jane’s waist. “You came!”
“Of course I came … I needed to ensure you were safe.”
“Did you get my note?”
“Your note …? No, I … worked out … where you were. You talked … to me … about readingAladdin, but it … took me an hour or two … to remember that you called … the grotto your cave of treasures. I would have … remembered earlier … but my head was aching … and I could not think properly, so I searched for you … in all the wrong places before it came to me. Where was the note?” Jane was still recovering her breath, endearing in her haste to find his child safe and well.
“With your strawberries on your breakfast tray. I asked you to meet me here.”
“Oh. I was too tired to make my strawberry water this morning.”
Barclay stood. If there was anything to clarify Jane’s suitability for the role of Tatiana’s mother, certainly her knowledge of the inner workings of his daughter’s mind was a clear sign. Not that the young woman would still consider him eminently suitable after his cloddish avoidance of her.
Nevertheless, he could not help noticing that she was ravishing—if only he could sweep her up in his arms to plant a kiss on her soft mouth, irrespective of his daughter and his mother’s presence.
You cannot—the young woman may have accepted a proposal this very morning.
Barclay’s gaze found the roof of the cave to inspect the composition while Aurora walked up behind Jane, also panting while she released the skirts she had been holding up to speed her progress. The women must have jogged through the woods as he had done. “Ta … tiana! You … scared me … to death … child!” Indeed, his mother had a sheen of sweat across her overheated face, but she looked overjoyed to see her granddaughter.
“I know how to look after myself,” protested the girl with an indignant squaring of her shoulders.
“Of course you do, child. But you cannot stop us from worrying after you. Thirty years from now, we shall still worry after you as if you were still a babe.”
Tatiana groaned. “Adults are so fearful.”
“It is true.” Barclay spoke from the interior of the cave, pulling those ice-blue eyes of the woman he loved to rest on him. He could not read her thoughts, because those windows to her soul were shuttered, revealing nothing.
Was Jane aware he had dissuaded Tatiana from spending time with her—a further insult it embarrassed him to have committed. Fortunately, it did not seem to have affected the relationship between her and his daughter. He had not the right to have said what he had to the child—to interfere in their friendship, which had done nothing but bring Tatiana respite from her grieving.
Aurora looked between Barclay and Jane, her curiosity evident. “So, why are we here?”
Tatiana grabbed her hand to pull her into the cave. “It is a grotto, and it is magical. Come see the other statue.”
“I have been here before,” Aurora responded. “I have seen the statue. Is that why we are here?”
Jane and he both were silent. He raked his hair once more before responding. “Tatiana wanted me and Jane to speak.” He flung his arm up to gesture at the interior of the cave. “She felt we might work out our differences here because … it is magic.”
Aurora tilted her head and turned her eyes up to the roof, back at Persephone, and then toward the hidden entrance to the second cave. “I can understand that. Love has grown here before, for at least one party. The other party … he is dining at the devil’s table in the halls of hell.”
Barclay grimaced. He had done his best not to ponder the question of where at Saunton Park he might have been conceived, but he feared he could now guess the answer. He could imagine a young Aurora having her head turned in such a romantic spot, especially if the old earl had been as handsome in his youth as his younger sons, with their striking green eyes and sable hair.
