The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

She came at me like a small yellow-haired witch, eyes blazing. “Where have
you BEEN?” she shouted. “I’ve nearly gone to the police. Pony’s in the field
with a bridle on, you’re nowhere. It’s almost four o’clock. What on earth were
you thinking?”
She came toward me. I ducked, my arms around my head. “I’m not going
to hit you!” she roared. “Though I feel like it. You half deserve a whipping,
making me worry like that.”
Worry? Worry the way I worried over Jamie, in London? I dropped my
hands to my lap—I’d sat down in one of the purple chairs—and stared at her,
perplexed.
“I know you don’t like strangers,” she said, more quietly. “I couldn’t
imagine a reason you’d go into town. I didn’t think you’d go to the airfield,
but I went there to ask anyway, and they hadn’t seen you. Here it’s the first
time I left you alone—I couldn’t imagine what could go wrong. I didn’t have
any idea where you could be.”
“I thought I was allowed to go outside,” I said. My foot hurt, worse than it
had for days. I hadn’t walked so far without my crutches since I’d first come
here. I had a scratch down my arm too, that had left a thin trail of blood.
“You can’t leave without telling me,” Miss Smith said. She looked less
angry, but still unpredictable. “You’ve got to let me know where you go.”
How could I have done that? “I had to help Maggie,” I said. I told her
about the horse, how the plane spooked it, how Maggie fell.
Miss Smith snorted. “Maggie? Who’s Maggie?”
I tried to explain. I told about the big horse, and the house and stables.
“The Honorable Margaret Thorton?” Miss Smith asked, her eyes widening.
“Lady Thorton’s daughter?”
I shrugged. “I suppose. She’s got a brother called Jonathan.”
“The girl we met with Lady Thorton, last week in the market?”
I nodded.
Miss Smith sat down in the other chair. “The whole story,” she demanded.