Neither Mother nor Father would look at Audrey. Alfie offered her a weak smile. Hysteria bubbled up inside Audrey like a fizzy drink that had been shaken. Knowing the reaction her tears would receive, she asked to be excused and fled to her room to weep alone.
She didn’t know how long she’d wept when she heard a soft knock on her door. Her pillow was damp, her eyes swollen and sore. “Who is it?” It wouldn’t be Mother or Father. She prayed it wasn’t Miss Blake.
The door opened and Alfie stuck his head inside. “May I come in?”
She scrambled off her bed and ran to hug him. “Isn’t it awful how they’re sending us away?” she asked.
He gave her a quick squeeze, then wriggled free. “Don’t take it so hard, Sis. We knew this day was coming.”
“I didn’t!”
“I’m nearly fourteen, Audrey. That’s a bit old to take lessons in the nursery with a governess, don’t you think?”
“But you’re my best friend!”
“Listen, you’ll make plenty of new friends in no time.”
The thought of making friends frightened her. She didn’t know how to do it. Father had recently turned sixty, and none of the men who came to Wellingford Hall for his shooting parties had children her age. Mother’s friends, all in their early forties, never brought their children when they visited from London. “I don’t want to leave and go away to school,” Audrey said. “I refuse to go.”
“I really don’t want to, either,” Alfie said. “But Father is quite set on it. He wants me to have all the advantages he never had. All the upper-crust boys go to this school. And he donated a lot of money to get me admitted.”
Audrey sat on the edge of her bed, exhausted after crying so hard. “I’ll miss you, Alfie. It’ll be so quiet around here without you.”
“I’ll be home on holidays. And we’ll still vacation by the sea every summer and sail on Father’s boat. I’m old enough to captain it myself now. I’ll take you out, just you and me. I’ll even teach you how to sail it. Would you like that?”
“I would!” The idea terrified her, but she wanted him to think she was brave.
“Good,” he said with a grin. “That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”
Alfie left for boarding school a month later. It was the worst day of Audrey’s life. She watched him climb into Father’s automobile, piled high with trunks and suitcases, then couldn’t bear to watch him drive away. She fled up the curving stairs to her room without looking back.
The school she was to attend didn’t start for another week. She’d had a month to adjust to the idea but Audrey still didn’t want to go. And yet Wellingford would be unbearable with only dreary Miss Blake to talk to all day. She stared out her bedroom window at the settling dust cloud from the auto. The distant woods at the far edge of the lawn beckoned to her. She would run away.
Audrey tiptoed down the stairs and into the lounge, careful to listen and look in all directions. The French doors stood open to let in the late-summer breezes, and she hurried outside, avoiding the crunching gravel walkways in the formal gardens and crossing the lawn to the woods as if chasing a ball that had gotten away. They would find her too easily if she took the road into town, so she would simply vanish into the woods. Anger and sorrow propelled her steps at first, but the deeper into the woods she walked, the harder she struggled to make her way through the tangled underbrush. The trees grew closer together, their branches snagging her clothing and scratching her bare arms and legs. Her flight halted when she came to a brook, the water gurgling like a fountain as it rushed over rocks and dead limbs. She had no idea how to cross it. Tears of frustration welled and overflowed.
“Hello down there!”
Audrey cried out, startled. She clutched her heart as if to keep it inside her chest as she looked up. A girl in a faded cotton skirt and blouse sat on a tree branch above her, bare legs swinging.
“You frightened me!” Audrey said.
“I know!” the girl said, laughing. “You should have seen your face. You jumped straight up in the air like a scared rabbit.” Audrey watched her climb down, as strong and nimble as a boy. She landed in front of her, grinning as she brushed moss and bark from the front of her clothes. Her gray eyes danced with amusement. Freckles covered her nose and cheeks like gold dust. “You’re Audrey Clarkson, aren’t you?”
“How did you know?”