“Then where is it?” Grayson asked bluntly.
“I don’t know.” Aunt Dimity’s gaze swept the stained-glass window and the dimly lit walls of the chapel, then she drew herself up and looked down at the boy. “But the Fête’s a long way off, and we have more pressing problems to attend to. Your face, for example.” Clucking her tongue, Aunt Dimity retrieved a fresh hand towel from the bag and began wiping the tear-streaked smudges from Grayson’s cheeks. “I know how distressing these changes must be for you,” she murmured, “and I won’t tell you to be a man about it. Grown men too often forget their dreams, and some dreams are worth holding on to.”
Tilting the boy’s chin up, Aunt Dimity examined his face critically, then brushed his honey-blond hair back from his forehead. “You do have dreams for Penford Hall, don’t you?” she coaxed. When the boy maintained a sullen silence, Aunt Dimity persisted. “You mean, there’s nothing you love at Penford Hall? No one?”
All that I love is here, Grayson thought. I would do anything to save it, anything to keep Kate here and bring the others back. Aloud, he muttered, “What’s the use? It’ll all be gone soon and it’ll never be the same again.”
“Tush. Stuff and nonsense. Twaddle.” Aunt Dimity sniffed disapprovingly. “My dear boy, if you expect me to pat you on the head and say, ‘There, there, what a hopeless muddle,’ then you’ve mistaken me for quite another person—someone with whom I would not care to be personally acquainted. I’ve no patience with such foolishness and neither would your grandmother. Your father won’t always be the duke, you know. One day Penford Hall will be yours.”
“It’ll be empty by then.”
“Then you must fill it up again.”
“It’ll be years before—”
“If it’s worth having, it’s worth waiting for.”
“But—”
“And worth working for,” Aunt Dimity stated firmly. “If you were not overwrought at the moment, you would see it as plainly as I do. Then again,” she added, half to herself, “perhaps I’m not making myself clear.” Staring thoughtfully at the lady window, Aunt Dimity put her arm around the boy, her fingers smoothing his windblown hair. “She would not have lost hope,” Aunt Dimity said, her gray eyes fixed on the lady’s brown ones. “And she faced far worse things than you’re facing. Do you know the legend of the lantern?”
With a nod, Grayson dutifully recited the words he’d heard so many times before: “Once, long ago, a lady fair did love a captain bold—”
“Great heavens!” Aunt Dimity exclaimed. “Is that what Nanny Cole taught you? A lady and a captain? Dear me. Why do they fill children’s heads with such piffle? She was no lady, my boy, but a hardworking village lass who served as a parlor maid at Penford Hall. And her love wasn’t a captain, but the duke’s son, shipped off as a common seaman. The only thing Nanny Cole got remotely right is that they loved each other.” The halo of white hair nodded slowly. “Listen closely, Grayson, while I tell you the true story of the lantern. Perhaps then you’ll understand why you must go on loving Penford Hall, come what may.”
Grayson doubted that a story would save Penford Hall, or bring the servants back, but Aunt Dimity’s arm was warm around his shoulders, and he had nowhere else to go. The boy nodded, then leaned against Aunt Dimity, his bandaged leg swinging listlessly.
“It is seldom wise,” Aunt Dimity began, “for a poor girl to fall in love with a duke’s son. Love may be blind, but fathers most certainly are not, and the duke was not amused at the prospect of having a parlor maid as a daughter-in-law. He loved his son too well to forbid the match—I’ll grant him that—but he decided to test the boy’s devotion, for both his son’s sake and the family’s.” She glanced down at the boy, saw that his leg had stopped swinging, then went on.
“The maid was sent back to the village and forbidden to set foot within sight of Penford Hall. The son was sent away for a year and a day, to sail the wide oceans as a common deckhand. The duke hoped that a taste of hard labor would cure the boy of his infatuation.
“But this was no mere infatuation. The duke’s son had found his heart’s desire and he vowed that his first journey would be his last. ‘If you are here when I return,’ he promised the girl, ‘I will never leave you again.’ And with that, he rowed out from Penford Harbor to meet the great four-master that awaited him in the safe waters beyond the Nether Shoals.”