“Because,” MacKay said with a lopsided smile, “you love her. Dorcas saw this coming, damned if she didn’t. ‘For aught that I could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.’ Let me know what you get out of Lykens. He was a tough old boot at too young an age.”

“My regards to your lady, MacKay.”

“And mine to yours.”

Tremont offered a polite bow in parting, but he wanted to apply his boot to MacKay’s backside. Matilda was not Tremont’s lady, and she might well never be.

Also, MacKay had bungled the quote. “It’s ‘for aught that I could ever read,’” Tremont muttered as he watched MacKay stride along the walkway, “‘could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.’”

In that much at least, the Bard had hit upon the sorry, stinking truth.

Chapter Sixteen

“Are we in trouble, Mama?” Tommie asked, snuggling down beneath his blankets.

Matilda had waited until Sunday evening to explain to Tommie that a journey was in the offing. She’d read to him about the tortoise and hare—the story had become his favorite—and then explained that on Tuesday, he’d go sailing with her to start a new life in a distant land.

“We are not in trouble,” she said, sitting on the edge of his bed and brushing his hair back from his brow. “We are soon to be off on an adventure.”

“Because if we were in trouble, Tremont would help us, and so would the men and the ladies.”

“They have helped us, tremendously, and we have helped them. It’s simply time to go.” Parental license rather than a lie, surely.

“Tremont fancies you,” Tommie said, sounding older than his years. “MacIvey says so, and he fancies Mrs. Wink, so he knows the look.”

“MacPherson told you that?”

Tommie grinned. “He bet Bentley we’d hear wedding bells. I don’t want to leave, Mama. I like my bed, and all my storybooks, and old Arthur, even though he isn’t keen on being carried about. I’ve learned how to groom Tidbit and to milk the goats and knead Cook’s bread dough. MacIvey is teaching me how to play the fiddle, and Charlie says I can help him with the boots too.”

More than that astonishingly long list of accomplishments, Tommie had learned what it meant to be part of a household, a family of sorts.

“Everybody has been very kind to us, and we will miss them, but we will also make new friends where we’re going.”

“If we don’t like it far away, can we come back?”

Matilda heard the sound of misery beating desperately on a locked mental door. “Eventually. Travel is expensive, though, so we won’t be larking back to England anytime soon.”

Tommie yawned hugely. “Can Tremont come with us?”