“Listen, Miss—”
Harriet bit back an angry retort, because Miss Wraxhall’s expression had shuttered. The teasing light bled away, the smirk faded, the color in her cheeks now shame instead of excitement.
Harriet found she didn’t like this change, not one bit.
Harriet turned at a soft sound to see Mrs. Wraxhall standing beside her, the very picture of reproach in her mourning dress, with her grey hair swooping over her ears and pinned at the nape of her neck. “Lydia, dear—your father will need you to sit with Mrs. Ramsay. Her girl has just come by to say she’s taken a turn.”
“Of course.” Lydia’s hands rubbed against her skirts, once and then again, as if trying to scrub the grain from her palms even though her hands were empty. She turned back to Harriet. “Can we continue this tomorrow, Mrs. Boyne? Your chickens will be safe here until then. We’re not eating them.”
Mrs. Wraxhall made a soft sound of reproach, but that pointed little dig sent a trickle of relief through Harriet. “Of course,” she said.
Mrs. Wraxhall led her back to the front door with a stiff dignity that set Harriet’s teeth on edge. She felt her spirits lighten, relieved, with every step that took her further from the house. She no longer wondered why Miss Wraxhall had chosen snow and solitude yesterday, if this was the home she had to return to.
The chickens were of course still in their pen the next afternoon. They even seemed to be curious about the other hens—or were at least making less of a fuss whenever the older birds wandered near their cage.
Miss Wraxhall, however, having just finished spreading new straw on the floor of the coop, looked rather the worse for wear, with deep bags of exhaustion under her eyes and lines of strain at the corners of her mouth.
“How is Mrs. Ramsay?” Harriet asked.
Miss Wraxhall lowered her eyes. “Not suffering any longer.”
“I’m so sorry.” Condolences came easily, out of habit, but not emptily: Harriet seemed to feel each death a little more than the one before, even if it was a stranger who’d died. Like they were all the same death, somehow, connected, whether it happened in an old bed beside a familiar fireplace, or in mud and misery on the far side of the world. “Do you often attend deathbeds?”
“Not as often as Father Lloyd or Dr. Penrose—but yes, as a doctor’s daughter and a charitable woman of the parish, I find I can be useful when a person approaches the end. Especially in cases of people who have no family to do for them.”
“I’m sure Mrs. Ramsay appreciated that.”
“She was asleep when I arrived, and she never woke up.”
“Still,” Harriet insisted.
Miss Wraxhall’s eyes narrowed. “Did you have a particular errand here today, Mrs. Boyne?”
“I’ve come to ask you to tea.”
Miss Wraxhall’s head snapped up, eyes wide. “Tea?” she blurted.
Harriet felt a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “At Thornycroft Hall. You can even inspect our chicken run, if you’d like. Make sure it’s worthy of its promised tenants.”
Miss Wraxhall stared for another moment. As if this was the first such invitation she’d ever received. When that couldn’t possibly be the case. You only had to look at the woman to deduce that.
“All right,” the woman said at last. “For the chickens.”
They set off soon after, up the road that ribboned between the hills that bubbled between Thornycroft and the rest of the village. Harriet hadn’t intended to issue the invitation, but she was glad for whatever impulse had slipped the words to her tongue.
In Harriet’s experience there were two kinds of people: those who could be counted on when death came calling, and those who turned away. No wonder Dr. Wraxhall could keep a noble, romantic picture of a corpse at the center of his home: he had Miss Wraxhall to do all the unbeautiful work for when someone was actually dying. The washing of limbs, the changing of sheets, all the embarrassing, unspeakable business of a body at the end of its time. And the waiting—all those eternal hours asking yourself silently if this would be the last breath, or this one, or this.
Maybe there was more to it: maybe the good doctor had other reasons for leaving Mrs. Ramsay to his daughter’s care. But somehow Harriet didn’t think so.
And if you hadn’t been able to help with the dying, you helped the ones who did. For instance, you could offer them tea, in a place where nobody could stick their head out the window and find another chore for them to do when they were exhausted and wrung out.
Which reminded Harriet: “May I make a confession, Miss Wraxhall?”
“Of course.”
“This is the first time we’ve had a guest here at Thornycroft since we returned to England. My friends and I are still… It was…” Harriet stopped, and sighed, and started again. “Everyone goes to the war together—but we come back separately shattered. If you see what I mean.”
“I do,” Miss Wraxhall said. “I was planning to make a few remarks about the weather, and possibly ask where your friends grew up.”
