Julia blinked. “Your mother?”

Daisy nodded, as solemn as a little judge. “She’s here.”

The fine hairs rose on Julia’s nape. She felt, for an instant, as if a goose had walked over her grave. “I don’t understand—”

“She’s outside,” Daisy said. “Sleeping in the garden.”

Twenty-Three

Jasper found Charlie and Alfred in the east wing of the Hall in what had once been the servants’ quarters. The damp set of rooms boasted peeling walls, rotting floorboards, and mildewed furnishings covered in dust-covered sheets long yellowed with age.

Jasper didn’t dare venture over the threshold. The flooring couldn’t support anything greater than a child’s weight. It was precisely why the boys chose the room.

“Your hiding places are beginning to lack creativity,” Jasper said, propping one shoulder against the doorframe. “This is the first place I looked.”

Charlie and Alfred were perched in the deep-set window embrasure, a stack of playing cards set between them.

“Not the first place,” Charlie said under his breath.

Jasper ignored the remark. The boys were aware that, when it came to his study, he trusted no one. He always made it his first stop on returning from his travels, even if he’d ventured no further than Hardholme. “I suppose Daisy is in one of the kitchen cupboards?”

Alfred’s lips twitched.

“No?” Jasper made an effort to mask his impatience. “Where, then?”

“She’s in the wardrobe in your bedchamber,” Alfred said.

Jasper stiffened. Good God. What was the little devil playing at? Did she intend to leap out and scare Julia half to death?

But no.

He recalled the fleeting glance Julia had cast over his shoulder and the smile that had followed soon after it. She must have observed Daisy spying on them. No wonder Julia had emphasized how much she wanted to meet the little girl.

Knowing all the children’s whereabouts should have set Jasper’s mind at ease.

It didn’t.

The boys were notorious for their ill-advised remarks. And Daisy was no better. Lord only knew what horrors she was relating to her new stepmother.

“Is there anything else you’d like to confess?” Jasper asked the boys. “Any other surprises in the offing?”

The boys resumed their card game in mutinous silence.

“If this is another battle of wills,” Jasper said, “may I say it’s poorly timed.”

Charlie slapped down a card. “What care we what she thinks.”

Jasper wasn’t wholly unsympathetic to his feelings. As a boy, Charlie had been abandoned by his own mother, left to languish in the workhouse. The betrayal had hurt him deeply. Even now, after six years in Jasper’s care, Charlie would still rather reject someone outright than risk the chance of, ultimately, being hurt or rejected himself.

“You don’t know her,” Jasper said. “If you did, I suspect you’d like her.”

Charlie only snorted, but Alfred chanced a cautious glance in Jasper’s direction.

One year younger, Alfred was often led by his older brother. Often, but not always.