Harry paused. He needed a moment before he could go on. It had been quite some time since he'd had to put himself back in that mindset of being without Ruth, of having so little faith that she could return home to him.
Ruth noticed his sudden quiet. "Should I perhaps tell my part now?" she suggested softly.
Penny immediately gasped in that way that exuberant children often do. "Yes! Yes, what were you doing? Where did you go?"
With a laugh, Ruth took Penny's little face in her hands and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I will tell you," she promised. "But remember that this isn't my story, it's Harry's. And so you jump in whenever you want to, Harry, alright?"
Harry nodded. "I'll jump in whenever I want to. But I realize that I don't think I've heard the full story of what all you did during our time apart. You didn't tell me everything, I'm sure."
"No, I didn't," she conceded. "But it wasn't a particularly happy time in my life, to kiss you goodbye and get on a boat on the Thames to run off and hide in some remote corner of the world till you could come get me. Even if I did believe it would only be for a few weeks."
A cloud of sadness crossed Harry's features. Both Ruth and Penny immediately noticed. Damn his retirement for causing his tradecraft to desert him this way. Though, to be fair, he never quite could hide his feelings from Ruth. He'd never much wanted to. Not in many, many years.
To everyone's surprise, even her own, Penny got up from where she was seated on the sofa with Ruth and crossed to Harry's armchair and clambered up on his lap. Harry lifted her up so she could be seated comfortably. She buried her little face in his neck and clutched at his shirt tightly. "Don't be sad," she murmured. "We're all together now."
Harry smiled, his whole being filling with warmth. "Yes, you're right, darling girl. We're all together now."
Penny sat up a bit so she could look up at Harry's face. She took her little hands and smushed his cheeks. Thanks to age and weight fluctuation, his face didn't have any of the firmness it might have once had. And since she was barely big enough to use her own baby hands, Penny had liked to grab at his cheeks this way. It was perhaps unflattering, but Harry was beyond delighted when young Penny wanted anything to do with him. Catherine certainly hadn't been so affectionate when she was that young. Then again, Harry had been quite a different man when Catherine was small.
Ruth watched the silly little things that Harry allowed Penny to do to him and could barely keep from laughing with joy. Wrapped around her finger, he was. And even Ruth, who had long since known the tenderness that Harry possessed, deep down, would not have dreamed that he might behave this way with little Penny. But she was ever so glad of it.
A moment later, Penny seemed to lose interest in squishing Harry's face. She scrabbled about, readjusting how she sat on Harry's lap. She grabbed his arms and wrapped them around her, snuggling into his embrace. He pressed a kiss to her curly hair.
When she was at last satisfied with her position, she turned her attention back to Ruth. "Where did you go when you left?" she asked once again, demanding that Ruth now take up the storytelling.
Ruth could not help a sad little sigh. "I went to a magical, wonderful place. Like paradise on earth," she said. "But for me, it was like some very sick torture. I couldn't be happy there, even when it was so beautiful and perfect."
"Why not?"
Harry met Ruth's eyes and saw her give him that very particular look. Ruth explained, "Because I left my very heart and soul on the banks of the Thames."