“Tea?” Daniel asked, signaling to the innkeeper.“Please. Or anything that is hot.” She pulled off her gloves, pausing to frown at a little hole that was growing at the tip of her right forefinger. That wouldn’t do. She needed all the dignity she could muster in that finger.Heaven knew she shook it at the girls often enough.”

“Daniel immediately knelt at her side, pulling her close. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Everything is going to be all right.”Anne shook her head. “No, it’s not.” She looked up, her eyes shining with love. “It’s going to be so much better.”

“Deep inside, she knew who she was, and that person was smart and kind and often even funny, but somehow her personality always got lost somewhere between her heart and her mouth, and she found herself saying the wrong thing or, more often, nothing at all.”

“She wandered over to the enclosed range, a rather modern-looking contraption that Cook had purchased earlier in the year. “Do you know how to work this?” she asked.“No idea. You?”Daphne shook her head. “None.” She reached forward and gingerly touched the surface of the stove top. “It's not hot.”“Not even a little bit?”She shook her head. “It's rather cold, actually.”Brother and sister were silent for a few seconds.“You know,” Anthony finally said, “cold milk might be quite refreshing.”“I was just thinking that very thing!”

“He stepped toward her, and her heart just ached from it. His face was so handsome, and so dear, and so perfectly wonderfully familiar. She knew the slope of his cheeks, and the exact shade of his eys, brownish near the iris, melting into green at the edge.And his mouth-she knew that mouth, the look of it, the feel of it. She knew his smile, and she knew his frown, and she knew-she knew far to much.”

“He turned to her. “Didn’t you see the lightning strike the steeple?”She recovered with a sip of tea, then smiled sweetly. “I was listening too devotedly to the sermon.”“Claptrap last week,” Lady D announced. “I think the priest is getting old.”Gareth opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, his grandmother’s cane swung around in a remarkably steady horizontal arc. “Don’t,” she warned, “make a comment beginning with the words, ‘Coming from you…’”“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he demurred.“Of course you would,” she stated. “You wouldn’t be my grandson if you wouldn’t.” She turned to Hyacinth. “Don’t you agree?”To her credit, Hyacinth folded her hands in her lap and said, “Surely there is no right answer to that question.”“Smart girl,” Lady D said approvingly.“I learn from the master.”Lady Danbury beamed.”

“Something she knew she did not have the right to ask him about. But she wished—oh, how shewished—that when he was ready to face his fears, she could be the one to help him.”