* * *
ABBIE AWOKE VERY late. Sitting up in her bed, she found that the dizziness returned and so sank back down. Closing her eyes, she waited until the room steadied itself, and when she opened them again, she found her sister beside her.
“Abbie,” Mariana said with what seemed exaggerated concern. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m sorry I fainted. You must all think me very weak and foolish.”
“Don’t be silly.” Mariana looked as if she might cry.
“How is the young woman? I wish I could have been there.”
“Truly, Abbie, there was nothing that could have been done. It is possibly for the best, after all.”
“For the best? How can you say such a thing?” Abbie demanded.
“Miss Russell is seventeen—my age,” Mariana explained. “With no husband, no way to support herself, no chance of getting respectable employment, how was she to raise a child besides?”
“She must be heartbroken.”
“Of course she is,” Mariana answered, and the tear that slipped down her cheek revealed her own feelings about the matter. Or was there something more?
“Miss Russell is recovering?” Abbie asked now. “I would like to see her.”
“She is. But so are you. Let me get the doctor now, won’t you?” Mariana said, wiping away her tears and rising from her sister’s bed. “Everyone’s been so worried.”
Were the tears for her, then? “I fainted. That’s all. Why should there be so much fuss about something so trifling as that?”
“Three days ill in bed with a fever is hardly trifling!” Mariana answered.
“Three days?”
“Three days of pacing, and worrying, and praying.”
Abbie had nothing to answer for this, and did not stop her sister when she turned again to leave.
“How are you, my dear?” the doctor asked upon entering.
“I feel very much recovered,” she said and sat up a little more to prove the point.
The flinch of a smile and a dubious look made up his reply. Placing a thermometer in her mouth and a hand upon her wrist, he took her pulse and temperature. “You still have a bit of a fever,” he said when he’d finished, “but I think you’ll have the better of it in another day or two, though it may be a week yet before you are fit to travel.”
“Travel?”
The doctor looked at her very seriously. “I’m afraid I underestimated the severity of your illness. It was… is… far more serious than I realized.”
“I will soon enough be better, though. I feel much better already.”
“You have improved somewhat, yes. But you will not continue to do so in London.”
She felt both hope and fear with this pronouncement. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I think you should return to the country. As soon as possible. Your sister tells me you have friends in Hampshire. And that you might go to them, at least until you are better. Though I warn you it will not be a quick recovery. Pneumonia’s wasting effects are often felt for some time after the obvious symptoms have abated.”
“Pneumonia?” Abbie answered, and felt a little chill of apprehension at the word.
“Is it true you might call upon friends there? That they might be willing to nurse you in your recuperation?”
“Yes. That is I believe so,” she answered, uncertain what to think of the prospect of returning to Holdaway. Was it right to feel so happy about a decision that had felt wrong but a month ago?
Mariana entered the room and sat down beside her sister. Aunt Newhaven followed, and, with her hands clasped before her, she placed herself at the foot of the bed. “You are better?” she asked, though it sounded more like an accusation than a question.
“I’m very sorry about Miss Russell and her poor baby.”
“Birth is a gruesome and dangerous business. As is life sometimes. You gave us quite a scare, you know.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“There’s no need to be sorry, Abbie,” Mariana reassured her.
“I’ve just told Miss Gray,” the doctor said, “that I think she should be removed, as soon as possible, from London.”
“And you should know, Arabella, that I disagree with the doctor’s opinion. He does not know what dangers await you there.”
“Neither do I, truly, since you will not tell me. They have been very kind to us. If only you knew how kind.”
Aunt Newhaven drummed her fingers against the footboard of the bed. “You don’t know what those people are capable of.”
“I know they can help me, and that I cannot stay here.”
“Of course you can stay here. You can get better here as well as anywhere. All this talk of fresh country air is nonsense when you consider the other risks. And you don’t know that they’ll take you. You refused them once and wisely.”
“I have written already,” Mariana said, and received from her aunt a look of shock. She turned to Abbie. “They want you with them, Abbie, perhaps now more than ever.”
“Do you think if she goes to them now they’ll take her for a week, or a month, and give her back again?” Aunt Newhaven argued, her face full of half-suppressed anguish. “They want her as surely as they wanted my father’s property. And they got it, too! If you leave here, Arabella,” her aunt said, turning to speak to her now, “you will be selling yourself to them as surely as any harlot on the street.”
“Aunt!” Abbie said and immediately fell into a fit of coughing.
“This kind of distress must be avoided at all costs,” Dr. Green said, intervening. “I bid everyone, please, to leave Miss Gray in peace.” He swept everyone out of the room and then turned to Mariana and spoke to her confidentially. “Perhaps you might stay with your sister,” he said to her. “It’s a pity you will not go with her. The separation will be a trial, I fear.”
“For us both, I assure you. But my place is here. I will stay to help my aunt.”
“As you say, child, but you may have some work ahead of you convincing your sister of it.”
“Yes, of course,” Mariana answered as bravely as she could manage, then returned to Abbie’s side.
“So I must leave you,” Abbie said and there were tears in her eyes. “Yet I can’t think how I am to do it. It seems impossible.”
“But you must go. This isn’t the place for you. I can see it. You long for home. Every part of you wishes to return.”
“Even if it’s to live with the Crawfords?” Abbie asked.
“Only you can answer that.”
“What do you think our aunt meant when she said what she did?”
“She did not mean it, Abbie, and she is already sorry for her ill-thought words.”
“Not that, Mariana. About her father’s property.”
“The Crawfords own the land that used to belong to our mother’s family. But you already knew that.”
“Is that why she detests them so?”
“I cannot guess. Perhaps, after all, it is for you to find out.”
“I only pray I don’t regret it.”
“Do you truly think you will?”
Abbie considered this. She trembled with the certainty of what was now ahead of her. “It will not be easy, Mariana. There are trials ahead of me, I know. And this is a risk I truly dread to take. But I do not see another way. While it frightens me nearly to tears, it does feel the right thing. At least it is the only thing I can see to do.”
Mariana blinked and there were tears in her eyes as well. “Do not forget your sister,” she said.
“You know I could never do that.”
“I do know it, Abbie. I know it with all my heart.”
“How strange it is,” Abbie concluded at last, “that our wishes should be traded one for another.”
“What do you mean?” Mariana asked, her tear streaked face now expressing her confusion as well as her sorrow.
“It was your wish to accept the invitation. Mine was to come here. Now you are to
stay and I am to go back to live with the Crawfords. I do not quite understand how it has all come about. Are you sure you do not regret?”
“There is more at work here, Abbie, I am quite convinced of it, than our vain desires alone. Fate has stepped in to choose our parts for us. There is no room for regret, only to live our lives to their greatest potential and to pray that one day we will understand it all.”
“And you are certain we will?”
Mariana considered a moment. Doubt seemed to be winning out over certainty. At last she looked up, a weak but sincere smile brightened her face. “I am certain of it, dear Abbie. In time it will all become clear. Until then we must learn to live with one or two mysteries as our companions, I think. They will be solved when the time is right, and not before then.”
Abbie accepted the answer and held tightly to it. Her sister’s wisdom (when had she grown to be so wise?) would be her guide in the days to come. For the present she could only look forward. Fate had twisted her arm to do it, but she had accepted the Invitation. An invitation to go home.
THE END
(To learn what happens next, read Cry of the Peacock, available at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. To find out more about V.R. Christensen’s other work, including other selections in the Sixteen Seasons collection, visit her web page at VRChristensen.com or check out her Author pages on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.)
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