While her brother’s back was turned, Rebecca slipped into the valise their father’s smallNew Testament & Psalmsand their mother’s three sketches to remind him of family and home.
———
When John walked out the door, only then did Rebecca let the tears come. She and Rose stood at the window side by side, watching his departure in a duet of soft weeping.
After the men disappeared from view, Rose wiped her eyes with the wadded handkerchief and blew her nose. She said, “Reminds me of the day Daisy left. Although there were more harsh words than tears that day. The tears came later....”
Rose looked up at the clock. “Good heavens. The day’s half gone and I haven’t given a thought to dinner. Are you hungry?I’m afraid there’s little in the larder. Perhaps some cheese...” The woman trudged into the kitchen and Rebecca followed.
There, the cook-housekeeper lifted the domed lid off the cheese keeper. Empty. “Sorry, Miss Becky.”
“That is all right,” Rebecca assured her. “It’s been quite a day already, has it not? And it’s only midafternoon.”
Rose lifted her market basket to the table and reached for the punched tin box, which held her household funds. “I shall go into the village and find something.” She shook the box, and a few small coins clacked together. “Not much in our coffers, sadly.”
“I’ll go,” Rebecca offered. “I have some money left. Lady Fitzhoward paid more of my bill than I expected.”
“But you just got here.”
“I don’t mind. I feel too restless to sit now anyway. My pulse is still racing after that scene.”
“Mine too. Very well. Get some ham and cheese. Fruit, if you want it. And I’ll make some savory scones. I’m sure I have enough flour and such for that.”
“Sounds an excellent plan.”
Donning her outdoor things, Rebecca picked up the market basket and left the lodge. She strode through Fowler’s Wood—glad it was daytime—and into Swanford. Her steps were light and her spirits surprisingly buoyant with relief.
She walked past the church and vicarage without flinching and waved to Mr. Fenchurch coming out of the public house.
Rebecca was halfway to the High Street when the wordsisterechoed through her mind once again.
She stopped then and there on Elderberry Lane and walked back to Henwick Cottage on the corner. Rose’s childhood home. She recalled Lady Fitzhoward staring up at it with a sad, faraway look in her eyes.
Little scraps of remembered conversation began falling over Rebecca’s mind like reviving rain.
“I haven’t spoken to mine in years....”
“Have you been to Swanford before, my lady?”
“A lifetime ago....”
Understanding flickered, then flamed to life.
Rebecca hurried down the lane and turned up the High Street, passing by the butcher’s shop and cheesemonger’s without stopping. Heart rate accelerating, she walked as fast as she could all the way back to the Swanford Abbey Hotel.
She let herself in through the garden door and started to turn right toward her employer’s room, hoping the woman had not already left.
At some faint sound, or internal urging, Rebecca turned left instead, toward the library and writing room. If nothing else, she told herself, she would take a final look at the painting of the abbess.
Pausing in the threshold, she glanced inside.
There sat Lady Fitzhoward, shoulders slumped, head bowed, all alone.
Rebecca stood still and silent, transported back to the day almost a fortnight ago when she’d stepped into the parlour of the inn they’d stayed in prior to coming here.
————
Rebecca had been surprised to come upon Lady Fitzhoward sitting in a high-backed armchair, her posture sagging. She appeared to sink into herself. To shrink. She looked almost like a child in that massive chair.
