“Uhm… well, you see, Miss. Edith is here,” Annie mumbled and stumbled as she tried to explain why she knocked on Marjorie’s room at an unusual time of the morning, urging her to get dressed. “She will come upstairs any moment.”
“My dear Annie, Edith has seen me in much less clothes than what I’m wearing now,” Marjorie waved her hand dismissively. “Just send her up, and prepare some tea for us, please.”
At that moment, Marjorie could hear some giggles from the hallway, through the door that was ajar. She propped herself up in the bed, and looked behind Annie, but she could see nothing. The giggles died down as quickly as they had appeared.
“What was that?” Marjorie asked.
“Uhm, what was what?” Annie responded with a question, as she pressed her thin little lips close. Marjorie wondered if she was suppressing a giggle herself.
“I thought I heard something,” Marjorie explained. “Like a giggle.”
“It is probably Miss. Edith.”
“Why isn’t she here with me then?” Marjorie thought this was all slightly odd. “Edith always comes straight up to see me, even if that means waking me up. And now these strange noises coming from my hallway. What is happening, Annie?”
Annie turned to the door, then back at Marjorie. She was smiling now, there was no doubt about it. Her face was blushing, as if she were caught in a fib, but a harmless one.
“Annie?” Marjorie called out again.
“Oh, bother!” Edith barged through the door, followed by Alexander, and an onslaught of all the children from the inn. Within seconds, Marjorie’s bedchamber was brimming with laughter and chatter, with smiles and bright, joyful faces, with all eyes resting on her. “You really cannot allow yourself to be surprised, can you?”
Marjorie’s lips were still rounded into an O sound of shock and utter surprise when she as well burst into laughter. “You lot are not very good at hiding yourself, are you?”
“We couldn’t stop giggling,” two boys in the back admitted, then the whole group started laughing again.
“Never mind,” Marjorie smiled, as she sat covered by her blanket in her bed. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this lovely surprise?”
“We come bringing picnic things!” Jonathan was the first to exclaim. “Breads, and ham, and sandwiches, and– “
“Water cider!” Another young voice chimed in.
“But I can’t…” She gestured at her foot, hiding underneath the covers.
Alexander, who had been silent up to that moment, allowing himself to be swallowed up by the crowd around him, approached the bed.
“Doctor Chillingworth said you need to stay off your leg. I shall carry you downstairs, into the most comfortable chair, so you’ll still be resting your ankle, only you will be doing it outside, with all of us there, enjoying the weather.”
“Oh, that sounds lovely,” she gushed. “Two days inside, and I truly thought I would go mad.”
Alexander chuckled. “Fortunately, we came to the rescue.”
“Come now, children,” Edith gathered everyone and led them out the door. “Let Marjorie change her clothes, and she shall join us outside shortly.”
The chatter dissipated somewhere down the staircase, and then, it was led outside. The house was silent once again, with only Marjorie, Annie and Alexander left in the room.
“I should go, too,” he said, scratching the back of his neck a little awkwardly.
“Did… did you arrange all this?” she asked, her lip trembling.
“I have some good news to share,” he smiled. She could almost feel the palpable warmth of his gaze, which enshrouded her, it made her feel cherished and protected. She knew she would never feel like this with any other man. “I wanted it to be a special announcement for both you and the children.”
“Is it the house?” She dared to ask, painfully hopeful.
“You really can’t allow yourself to be surprised, can you?” he chuckled again, repeating Edith’s words.
She smiled, but deep down, there was sadness that she carried from her earliest days, a melancholy he could never understand. But he was endeavoring to comprehend, and she was more than grateful for it.
“From early on, I learned that life only had unpleasant surprises for me,” she admitted, swallowing heavily as she spoke. Sometimes, words were too hard to say aloud. Thinking them kept them in control, it kept them subdued. But saying them aloud meant releasing them into the world where anyone could make of them what they wished. “So, I learned not to allow myself to be surprised.”
