Chapter 142

He didn’t speak again until they were settled into the car, the boys crowding in on either side of her, and that was all right. That felt safe. “Mom…” Andrew said then, “did Wes say something? You seem…flustered.”

“I don’t…don’t quite know,” she admitted. Eleanor patted Andrew’s hand, frowned at the black glove that kept her from feeling him and tugged it off. It was comforting, her son’s warm hand. “He was speaking of business and…perhaps I misunderstood his meaning. I…surely he would not say such a thing with Charles not even…”

Winston, her son’s young man, made a noise that under normal circumstances she might have been affronted by, rude and loud in his throat. “Wouldn’t put much past that man, honestly, Missus Howard.” She liked the way he sounded, all dark-voiced with a gentle accent.

Winston and Andrew exchanged a look over her head. “What did he say, Mom?” Andrew asked, so sweetly and carefully.