The Delivered Girl
The child arrived by mail coach.
It was a late afternoon in early spring, when Bill Remmer had spent the whole day planting rose seedlings.
“Are you Mr. Bill Remmer?”
The child directed the careful question at Bill Remmer, who stood there looking thoroughly bewildered. Her accent was soft enough to sound strangely unfamiliar.
“Yeah. I’m Bill Remmer, all right.”
Bill brushed the dirt from his hands and took off his straw hat. When his sun-browned face emerged from the shade of the broad brim, the child flinched and swallowed hard. There was nothing new about that. Most people who first laid eyes on Bill Remmer—a giant of a man with a rugged, rough-hewn face—reacted the same way.
“Who the hell are you, then?”
When he scowled hard, his face looked even more fearsome.
“Hello, Uncle Bill. My name is Leila Lewellin. I’ve come from Lovita.”
The child spoke slowly and clearly, enunciating every word. Lovita. Only then did Bill understand the odd lilt in her speech.
“You mean you crossed the border all the way to Berg by yourself?”
“Yes. I took the train.”
She gave an awkward little smile and straightened her posture to an almost unnatural degree. Just then the postman who claimed to have brought her this far approached them.
“Ah, so the girl’s already found Mr. Remmer.”
“Good timing. Why’d you bring her here?”
“I saw her walking alone in front of the station with her luggage, so I asked where she was headed. She said she was looking for Bill Remmer, gardener to the Herhardt family. I was coming this way for a delivery anyway, so I brought her along.”
Smiling, he held out a letter addressed to Bill Remmer. It was from a distant relative living in the neighboring country of Lovita.
Impatient by nature, Bill tore open the envelope right there. Inside was an account of a child who had become a complete orphan and been passed from one relative’s house to another, along with their own circumstances—so crushingly poor that they could no longer keep an extra mouth to feed. The child’s name was Leila Lewellin. So the little girl standing before him was that very orphan.
“Those damn people. They sure didn’t waste any time getting the news to me.”
Bill let out a short, incredulous laugh.
In Lovita, they wrote, there was no relative left who would take in a burdensome orphan. Of all the people who still had even the faintest connection to the girl, Bill Remmer’s circumstances were the best, so they were sending her to him. And if his situation didn’t allow for it either, they added, he should put her in an orphanage.
Muttering curses under his breath, Bill crumpled the letter and flung it to the ground.
“What kind of bastards are these? Even so—sending a little thing like this all the way here alone?”
Now that he understood the whole situation, Bill’s face flushed dark with anger. It was no different from tossing the child across the border once there was nowhere left to pass her around. Handing her nothing but the address of a distant relative living in a foreign country, then driving her out.
“Um, Uncle Bill. I’m not that little.”
The child, who had been watching him quietly, spoke up.
“I’ll be twelve in a few weeks.”
She whispered it in a deliberately grown-up tone and rose slightly on her toes. The sight made Bill snort again. She was so tiny he had guessed ten at most; at least she was older than he thought, if that counted as good news.
Once the postman who had delivered this troublesome girl took his leave, the two of them were left alone in the garden. Bill clutched his head and silently cursed the heavens.
Relative was a fine word for it, but the girl’s father and he had been strangers in all but name.
To take in and raise the child of a distant relative he hadn’t seen in over twenty years. And for this widower, Bill Remmer, to do it—with a scrap of a little girl!
The weather was still quite cold, yet the child wore clothes absurdly thin. And she was so scrawny she looked like a stick. The only things worth looking at were her large green eyes and hair like golden thread.
Taking that child in was out of the question.
Bill reached a clear conclusion. But the only solution that followed was to put her in an orphanage, and that drove him half mad.
He muttered another curse at the people who had caused this mess. The child flinched as if frightened, but her expression remained fairly composed. Still, she could not hide the hands that fidgeted with nerves or the lips she had bitten red.
“Come along.”
Bill shook his head and started walking ahead.
“First we fill your belly, then we think.”
The blunt addition rode the evening breeze back to her.
Leila, who had been standing ramrod straight like a stick, finally took a step. With every step that followed, her gait grew lighter and more cheerful.
“Is that all you’re having?”
Bill frowned as he glanced at the food on the child’s plate.
“Yes. I only eat a little. Really.”
She smiled, and Bill’s heart grew a little more uneasy.
“Listen, kid. I can’t stand picky eaters.”
At Bill’s offhand remark her eyes went round. The lamplight that lit the table fell across her thin wrist, exposed by a sleeve that was far too short.
“You need to eat hearty, like a cow.”
Bill’s expression turned even more gruff.
After blinking slowly and thinking it over, Leila transferred another piece of meat and a chunk of bread onto her plate. She must have been very hungry; she began devouring the food in a hurry.
“Like a cow might be a bit hard, but the truth is I do eat well, Uncle.”
With breadcrumbs clinging to the corner of her mouth, she beamed.
“Yeah. You sure look like you do.”
Bill snorted and lifted his glass again.
“Aren’t you scared of me?”
He deliberately scowled. But the child did not look away; she stared straight into his eyes.
“No. You don’t yell at me, Uncle. And you give me delicious food. So I think you’re kind and good.”
What kind of life must she have lived for something that trivial to make her grateful?
A sudden bitterness filled Bill’s mouth. He stood abruptly and filled a large glass with beer.
The letter had said the child’s mother had abandoned her husband and child and run off with another man. Heartbroken, the father had drunk himself into the ground until illness took him. After that she had been passed from one relative’s house to another; it was easy enough to guess what her life had been like.
Still, raising that child made no sense.
Gulping down the beer, Bill Remmer made up his mind. He would settle the matter of the child by next week at the latest.
“Have you all heard? Mr. Remmer the gardener’s going to raise a little girl.”
A young maid came rushing into the servants’ lounge and chattered excitedly. Every eye that had been resting turned toward her at once.
“A girl? Mr. Remmer? It’d sound more believable if you said he was raising a lion or an elephant.”
One of the footmen snorted.
Bill Remmer, gardener to the Duke of Herhardt’s household, was a man with a natural gift for cultivating flowers. Thanks to that talent he had held the post for twenty years already, despite a thoroughly unsociable and blunt disposition.
Remarkably fair-minded, Bill Remmer treated the ducal family no differently from anyone else, and yet he was trusted. The Dowager Duchess above all. Exceptionally fond of flowers, she granted him infinite understanding and forbearance in anything connected with her gardens. It had been her decision to give the gardener the cabin in the forest behind the estate.
Bill Remmer’s life was simple.
He worked in the gardens and rested in the cabin. Aside from the occasional evening spent drinking with servants of his own age, he passed most of his time surrounded by flowers and trees. His wife had died of illness more than a decade earlier, and he rarely sought the company of women.
That wooden block of a man and a little girl?
Just as everyone was agreeing it was absurd, the maid standing by the window let out a cry.
“Oh my. It must be true! Look over there.”
Wide-eyed, she pointed beyond the glass. The servants who crowded to the window soon wore the same astonished expressions. Across the garden Bill Remmer was working in his usual stooped posture. And a tiny girl who was probably the one in the rumor was following behind him.
Her golden hair, braided in a single plait, swung like a pendulum behind her as she trotted along.
“I’m thinking about it.”
Whenever anyone asked about the child, Bill Remmer gave the same answer.
“Can’t keep her here, so I need to think it through properly.”
While his thinking stretched from spring into summer, Leila Lewellin settled into the estate as if she belonged there. The sight of the child roaming diligently through the gardens and the forest had, before long, become a familiar landscape to the Herhardt servants.
“She seems to have grown a bit already.”
Mrs. Mona the cook smiled as she glanced out the window. Leila was walking through the woods behind the cabin, examining every sort of plant and flower.
“She’s got a long way to go yet. She’s so tiny to begin with.”
“Listen, Bill Remmer. Children aren’t like those flowers you tend. They don’t shoot up overnight.”
Mrs. Mona shook her head and set the basket she had brought onto the table.
“What’s this?”
“Cookies and cake. There was a tea party for the Duchess at the manor yesterday.”
“I hate sweet things.”
“So? These are for Leila.”
Mrs. Mona’s calm reply made Bill Remmer’s thick eyebrows twitch.
She wasn’t even a child they meant to keep, yet at some point the ducal servants had begun looking after Leila. Asking after her, bringing her food, sometimes even coming by just to see her. It was a headache.
“You’ll have to buy her some clothes. A little more growth and her skirts will be up above her knees.”
Watching Leila run after a bird, Mrs. Mona clicked her tongue. Bill could not argue. Even to his untrained eye it was plain that Leila was wearing clothes that did not fit her.
“Oh my! Oh my goodness! Look at that child!”
Mrs. Mona, who had been about to leave, gasped and rushed to the window.
Bill gave a casual glance in the direction she indicated. The bird she had been chasing settled on the tip of a branch, and Leila scrambled nimbly up the tree. Her movements were as light and agile as a squirrel’s.
“She’s got a decent knack for climbing trees.”
At Bill’s indifferent reply Mrs. Mona’s eyes flashed.
“Bill Remmer! You knew and you just left her? How on earth are you raising that child?”
“As you can see, she’s growing up strong enough.”
“You’re raising a girl like a little tomboy! Heavens above.”
Mrs. Mona launched into a loud scolding, but Bill only half-listened while he peered out the window. Leila sat perched on a branch, watching the birds that played in the treetops.
In the months he had observed her, Leila Lewellin was a child endlessly curious about everything in the world. Flowers and grass, birds and insects—everything her eyes touched filled her with wonder and questions. Once, when she failed to return even after evening fell, he had gone into the forest and found her sitting quietly by the river, watching a flock of water birds. She had been so absorbed that she did not answer even when he called her name several times.
Only after delivering a long, ear-splitting lecture did Mrs. Mona finally leave. Shuddering, Bill made his slow way out behind the cabin.
“Uncle!”
Spotting him, Leila brightened and waved.
She came down the tree as quickly as she had gone up and was soon standing right in front of Bill. Her faded gray dress was short not only in the skirt but in the sleeves as well. He could not very well have her greet the Duke looking as if she were wearing someone else’s castoffs; he would have to buy her at least one proper dress.
“Get ready and come out.”
Standing at the back door of the cabin, Bill spoke on impulse. Confusion crossed Leila’s face, then a flash of fear filled her eyes.
“Ah—Uncle?”
“We’re only going into town to buy clothes, so wipe that look off your face.”
Bill cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck.
“The Duke of Herhardt will be arriving soon. Greeting him looking like this wouldn’t be right.”
“The Duke—he’s the master of this estate, isn’t he?”
“That’s right. School’s out, so he’ll be coming home.”
“School? Does the Duke go to school too?”
Leila tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. Bill laughed heartily and ruffled her tousled hair.
“Even a duke has to go to school when he’s eighteen. No choice about it.”
“What? Eighteen? The Duke is?”
The child’s almost fainting astonishment was so endearing that Bill’s laughter grew louder still. The soft, flyaway hair under his rough fingertips felt as light as cotton fluff.
The train from the capital pulled into the platform at Carlsbard Station.
The waiting servants moved in perfect order toward the first-class carriage. By the time they had formed a neat line, a tall, slender boy stepped down onto the platform.
“Welcome home, my lord.”
Beginning with Butler Hessen’s impeccable greeting, every servant bowed their head toward him. Standing straight and elegant, Matthias answered their welcome with a light nod. His lips, curved in a smile that was neither too much nor too little, were red.
Only when Matthias took a few long strides did the Herhardt servants begin to move. Onlookers who had been glancing their way hastily stepped aside to clear a path. Matthias crossed the platform without slowing his pace.
“A carriage.”
Spotting the coach waiting in front of the station, Matthias gave a soft laugh.
“Ah… yes, my lord. The Dowager Duchess simply cannot trust automobiles.”
“I know. To Grandmother they’re nothing but unbearably vulgar and dangerous hunks of metal.”
“I apologize. From now on—”
“No. Classic, for once, isn’t so bad.”
Matthias climbed lightly into the carriage. The long limbs that still looked not quite fully grown lent a sense of ease even to unhurried movements.
The carriage carrying him soon picked up speed. After they passed the square and the bustling shopping streets, the road grew quiet. The baggage coach kept a proper distance as it followed the one that flashed with the brilliant golden crest.