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Ross has been terribly secretive of late and Demelza doesn't like to admit it, but it's made her rather cross.

She's still not back to work and so she has a good amount of free time and while Demelza knows she's supposed to be grateful for the time she's able to spend with her children, she also finds herself terribly bored and in dire need of something else to do. So she's come to look forward to Ross' arrival home with great anticipation. Abby is lovely company, but she is technically Demelza's employee, as strange as that may be, and since Demelza herself is home so often now, they don't need Abby's help as often as they will once she's back at work and so she finds herself alone a good amount of time. Waiting for Ross to come home and fill her time with something more interesting than diapers and colouring on paper is perhaps unfair of her, but she can't seem to help herself.

So when he begins to spend more and more time away from home, Demelza notices.

At first he denies it, claims it must be traffic making him later than usual. Then he tells her he's taken on a few extra lessons to make a bit more money after the holiday season. He says people buy their children riding lessons for Christmas and there's need for more work, which she supposes must be true, but she just doesn't believe it.

Still she trusts Ross. She trusts that whatever he's doing, it isn't going to harm her or their family in any way. She's merely annoyed he can't share it with her, but she's doing her best not to let that show. Darrow is a strange place for the both of them and they have to get by as best they can.

Even so, she'd brought out her new books tonight for when he arrives home. She had saved money from small side jobs she's done in the apartment building -- sewing mostly, but also caring for children here and there when their parents needed some time away -- and had bought what she knows are GED study books. She hasn't yet told Ross, so perhaps having them out and revealing a secret of her own will prompt him into telling her what's going on.

More likely not, but that doesn't stop her from sitting at the table with one of the books open, Jeremy chirping and cooing away on her lap.

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Demelza gives Jeremy over willingly enough, returning some of her attention to the letters and figures in the book in front of her. It will take some doing, she thinks, looking over all she has to learn. Plenty of hard work and persistence, certainly, and she knows Ross is right, she certainly has that in her. Without him, she'd have not had the opportunity, but without him she knows there's every chance her father might have killed her eventually. Had he not, she supposes she'd have been married off to some miner in a desperate attempt to simply get her out of Tom Carne's house.

Her life would be a very different one without Ross and not simply due to her letters.

Ross says perhaps it's something he might do when he has ample time and she arches an eyebrow at the choice of words, but says nothing. There's a reason he doesn't currently have much extra time to spare, something he's chosen without informing her of what it is, but she won't ask him. She can't. It's the sort of thing she wants him to tell her willingly, not something she pries out of him.

"I d'think they'd want you there for as long as you'd be willing," she says instead, looking up at him again. "You're that good with the horses, Ross, and I expect 'ee know more than most do. Perhaps teaching others is not something I ever imagined for 'ee, but you're that good with the children, too. Tis only the upper class snobs that might have cause to worry."

Ross doesn't miss the look she casts at him; rather, he simply chooses to ignore it.

Perhaps it'll make her cross with him for some time, but he'd expected as much. Keeping the house a secret will be worth it in the end, just to see her face, Ross is certain of that. If he has to face her suspicions about what he could possibly be doing in the meantime, he's more than up to the challenge. Everyone he's managed to recruit to help with the home has been sworn to secrecy so he's quite confident this will work out precisely the way he intends.

"It's a good job," Ross concedes. "A steady one, anyhow, a far more reliable source of income than Wheal Leisure."

Even so, he does miss the thrill of finding copper, that sense of excitement that'd always come with a another taste of success. True, it'd started to fall apart by the time he'd arrived in Darrow but now that he's far enough away from it, Ross can let himself look back on the endeavor more fondly.

"But you miss it," she says and there's no question at all in her tone. Perhaps Darrow has afforded them opportunities they might not have had otherwise and although they are certainly not rich, they've made themselves a comfortable enough life between both their incomes and what the city supplies to them. Even so, she knows they both miss things about the home they've left behind in Cornwall. Demelza misses the friends she'd made and she misses Verity terribly. She misses the way the air smelled and how lovely it was to wake before the sun and be able to walk out her front door and watch as the sun rose over the edge of the water.

Ross misses the mine. He misses the cliffs and being able to ride. He misses Dwight and perhaps, though he'd never admit it even to himself, Francis as well. He'd not say it to Demelza and for that she's grateful, but she's certain he misses Elizabeth, too.

"I know 'ee miss it," she says. "Tis nothing to fault you for, there's so much I miss of Nampara, too. I miss Jud and Prudie if 'ee can believe it." She's smiling suddenly, remembering all the awful things they'd done, the hateful words they'd said, the cuffs to the back of her head she'd received more than a few times from Prudie before she and Ross had married. "They were worst servants in perhaps all the free world, though. Tis a good thing I didn't learn how to be a kitchen maid from them, isn't it?"

Ross doesn't say anything in response, Demelza doesn't need him to say it out loud to confirm it. Yes, he misses it. He misses home, his friends, his life in Cornwall. A part of him, a selfish part, even misses the reputation he'd had among those who'd respected him because their opinions had been the ones that mattered most. Those in his own class, most of them had been fools, and Ross would be the first to say so; but his friends had treated him as one of their own most of the time and frankly, Ross couldn't have asked for anything more.

"I do not miss Jud and Prudie," Ross settles on saying, though that's not entirely true. They'd been tiresome, to be sure, but they'd been loyal. To an extent. "My dear, if you'd learned to be a kitchen maid from either one of them, you would not have remained my kitchen maid for long."

He's teasing, of course, and he smirks at her as he says it. The truth of it is, as much as he misses home, there's no comparing it to what he's been given here. His daughter back, his wife well, his son. Ross would never trade any of this for the chance to return home, to a life without the three people he loves most.

"It would have been as good as hiring Garrick as a maid, I expect," he adds, lifting his chin in prepared defiance.

"Garrick would be far more eager to clean the dishes," she points out with a smile, looking right back at Ross with a steady gaze. As far as she's concerned, her dog can do no wrong -- and he had no crawlers on him, no matter what Ross said -- and that includes being a kitchen maid if it were to come down to that. Mostly she's teasing, of course, but Garrick has been her friend and her protector longer than anyone and she fears deeply for the day he may no longer be around to watch over them all. Dogs die, she knows that, they don't live nearly as long as their humans, but she will never be prepared for it, no matter what she may know to be true.

"And at least he's never dropped Julia on her face like Prudie did," she continues. "If we consider it, Garrick is proving to not only be a better kitchen maid, but a far superior child minder as well."

Ross is teasing her regarding having lasted as his kitchen maid, she knows that, but she supposes there's a bit of truth to it as well. He'd not loved her from the start, he wouldn't have kept her out of some simple need to be around her and although she knows he'd wanted to protect her -- he'd proved as much when her father had come looking for her -- she doubts she would have been so welcome had she not already proven to be an asset to his house.

Her irritation at his secrets dissipates suddenly and she reaches across the table to touch his arm, the one he has wrapped around their son. "I'm that lucky you kidnapped me, Ross Poldark. Garrick and I both are."