In the Land of the Long White Cloud

breakfast to room, yes?” Kiri asked. “Fresh waffles, Moana made for saying sorry to Mr. Warden. But Mr. Warden still not awake.”
    Gwyneira wondered how she was ever supposed to face Gerald Warden again. She felt somewhat better after she had soaped herself up several times, thoroughly washing Gerald’s sweat and stench from herself. But she was still sore and it hurt to move the least bit. That would pass, she knew, but the disgrace she would feel for the rest of her life.
    Finally she wrapped herself in a light bathrobe and left the bathroom. Kiri had opened the window in her room, and the tatters of her clothes had disappeared. The world outside seemed freshly washed after the rainstorm. The air was cool and clear. Gwyneira breathed deeply, trying to bring her thoughts to rest as well. Yesterday’s experience had been abominable—but no worse than what happened to some women every night. If she worked at it, she would be able to forget it. She simply had to act as though nothing had occurred.
    She nevertheless shrank back when she heard the door. Cleo growled, sensing Gwyneira’s anxiety. But it was only Kiri and Fleurette. The little girl was in a disgruntled mood. Gwyneira couldn’t blame her. Normally she woke the child herself with a kiss, and then she and Lucas had breakfast together with Fleur. This “family hour” without Gerald, who was generally still sleeping off his whiskey at that hour, was sacred to them, and all three of them seemed to enjoy it. Gwyneira had assumed that Lucas had seen to Fleur that morning, but apparently, the child had been left on her own. Her attire was correspondingly adventurous. She wore a skirt that she had pulled on over an incorrectly buttoned dress like a poncho.
    “Daddy’s gone,” the little girl said.
    Gwyneira shook her head. “No, Fleur. Daddy is not gone. Perhaps he went for a ride. He…we…we had a bit of a fight with Grandfather yesterday.” She admitted it unwillingly, but Fleur had so often been a witness to her confrontations with Gerald that it couldn’t possibly come as a surprise to her.
    “Oh yes, maybe Daddy went for a ride,” said Fleur. “With Flyer. He’s gone too, I mean, Mr. McKenzie said. But why is Daddy going for a ride before breakfast?”
    Gwyneira also wondered about that. Clearing the head at a gallop through the wilderness was more her style than Lucas’s. He also rarely saddled the horse himself. The hands joked that when it came to farm work, he let the shepherds call his horse while he sat on top of it. And why did he take the oldest workhorse? Though Lucas wasn’t an enthusiastic rider, he was a good one. Now only occasionally ridden by Fleur, Old Flyer would make for a dull ride. But maybe Fleur and James were both mistaken and Flyer’s and Lucas’s disappearances had nothing to do with each other. The horse might have broken out. Such things were always happening.
    “Daddy will no doubt be back soon,” Gwyneira said. “Have you already checked his studio? But come now, eat a waffle first.”
    Kiri had set the breakfast table by the window. She poured Gwyneira some coffee. Even Fleur received a spot of coffee with a lot of milk.
    “In his room he isn’t, miss.” The housemaid turned to Gwyneira. “Looked in, Witi. Bed not touched. Surely somewhere on farm. Ashamed because of…” She looked at Gwyneira meaningfully.
    Gwyneira began to be worried. Lucas had no reason to feel ashamed…or did he? Had Gerald not disgraced him just as he had her? And she herself…it was unforgivable how she had treated Lucas.
    “We’ll go looking for him right away, Fleur. We’ll no doubt find him,” Gwyneira said, uncertain whether she meant to comfort herself or the child with those words.

    They did not find Lucas, either in the house or on the farm. Flyer had not reappeared either. James reported that an ancient saddle and an often repatched bridle were also missing.
    “Is there something I should know?” he asked quietly, looking at Gwyneira’s pale face and noting her difficulty walking.
    Gwyneira shook her head, accepting that, having hurt Lucas, she was now hurting James too: “Nothing that has anything to do with you.”
    James, she knew for a fact, would have killed Gerald.

6
    L ucas’s absence stretched into weeks. A circumstance that, astoundingly, contributed to somewhat normalizing Gwyneira and Gerald’s relationship—after all, they had to make arrangements for Fleur between the two of them. In