Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-one
After nine sleepless nights and ten days full of abuse and unappreciated drudgery, Madeline’s patience was reaching the end of its tether, and her compassion was almost completely dried up.
She stood over Diana’s bed now—having just been called a lazy frump because she had insisted the wash water was not as cold as ice—all the while fighting hard against the urge to pour the whole wash basin over her sister’s infuriatingly pretty head!
“Diana, I have a dozen things to do before dinner, and I don’t have time to boil another pot of water for you now. Perhaps Hilary could do it.”
“Hilary is reading to me,” Diana replied haughtily.
“Perhaps Hilary could set the book aside for a few minutes.” And perhaps I should ship you off to a hospital somewhere and let a bunch of cranky nurses take care of you!
Diana glared frostily at Madeline. “Have you no pity? Do you have any idea what I would give to be able to boil that water for myself? To walk down those stairs and see the sun shining in the parlor windows? All I want is to feel clean and comfortable, for that is all I have, confined to this bed. But you…you have never thought of anyone but yourself. You were always so selfish, Madeline, even as a child. You always wanted my hair ribbons and you took them, too, when I was away. I would come home from Auntie’s to find you wearing them! ”
Madeline swallowed over the fury that was rising like a tidal wave in her throat. “I used your ribbons because Papa wouldn’t buy me any of my own.”
Diana gave her a disbelieving frown. “That gave you no right to take what was mine.”
That’s not all I want to take, Madeline thought, squeezing the washcloth in her hand.
She decided she needed to leave the room and be by herself for a little while, for her patience was dangerously close to snapping.
“I’m sorry, Diana, I really do have to tend to dinner. Hilary is going to have to look after your bath. I will be up later with a tray.”
Diana simply huffed and waved a commanding hand to Hilary, who picked up the washcloth and proceeded to continue where Madeline had left off.
Madeline seized the opportunity to dash out of the room before Diana asked for anything else. She went down to the kitchen and met Adam just coming in the back door, wiping his boots on the mat.
He froze there and stared at her. “You look exhausted, Madeline. When have you slept?”
She wiped her hands over her apron and tried to shrug casually. “I have been taking naps when Diana sleeps.”
“From the sounds of it, she has you hopping all night long.” His tone was contemptuous and stern.
“She’s still very uncomfortable,” Madeline explained. “She wakes during the night.”
“And she wakes you, too. I hear you running up and down the stairs for things, and I hear her shouting, scolding you.” He moved all the way into the kitchen, removed his coat and hung it on the back of a chair.
“This is getting out of hand. She treats you like a slave. You don’t deserve to be spoken to in that manner.
No one does.” He ran a hand over the top of his hair and paused before adding, “Do you think she remembers?”
Madeline’s heart lurched. “Remembers that you broke off the engagement?”
“Maybe she’s lashing out at you.”
Madeline considered it. “No, this is not Diana ‘lashing out.’ She would never be able to keep something like that to herself. She would come right out and say it, maybe throw a vase or two at my head.”
Adam gave her a subtle smile, but it held some annoyance. “So this is just Diana’s normal, everyday treatment of you?”
He raised an eyebrow. He seemed to be questioning her, pushing her to think about this.
Madeline didn’t like to admit that it was normal for Diana to be cruel, not just because it seemed traitorous to her sister but because it forced Madeline to face the fact that she allowed herself to be treated that way, and always had.
I allow it. Why?
“Not entirely,” she said in her own defense, skirting the issue that was now niggling at her brain. “The pain has made her personality a bit more…intense than normal.”
“And no doubt, the doctor’s pain medication has exacerbated it. You know what they say—In vino veritas.”
“There is truth in wine,” Madeline repeated.
Adam’s dark eyes softened. “The only reason I haven’t said anything to her, Madeline, is because I know you would not wish me to. But I have been grinding my teeth so much lately, I fear I may be wearing them down to their roots.”
Madeline stared at him in disbelief. She wasn’t sure if she was flattered by his concern and pleased that, through the walls, he had heard the not-so-charming side of Diana’s personality. Or if she was angry with him for making her question her own backbone.
He was right, though. This was getting out of hand. Why had she always cowered to Diana?
“What would you have me do, then?” she asked, still not ready to admit that her obliging nature with Diana was anything more than an abnormally generous sense of duty. “She has been through hell, Adam. It is natural that she should be bitter about—”
“She has a broken leg, Madeline. It will heal.”
“But she’ll have to walk with a cane, and she’ll have a scar on her forehead.”
“A cane and a scar? That won’t be the end of the world.”
“It will be to her. Her appearance matters to her.”
He considered her point. “And I thought I was compassionate to a fault. It seems I’ve met my match.” He moved toward her, close enough that she could smell the scent of the outdoors on his skin.
How long had it been since she’d been outside these walls with him? How long had it been since she’d spent any time alone with him, talking easily, as they used to do? She promptly felt hungry and deprived of…of what? Of companionship? Of love?
Love.
“I do not believe that compassion is ever a shortcoming, Adam.”
“It is when it lays you out like a doormat.”
“I’m not anyone’s doormat.”
“You are. Your guilt has made you into one, when you have done nothing wrong.”
She let out a huff. “It’s not guilt that makes me care for her, it’s—” She stopped.
“It is what, Madeline?” He stepped forward. His eyes searched hers.
Madeline felt the air sail out of her lungs, taking with it her resolve to be strong and keep her emotions in a tight harness. She felt the rigid muscles in her neck and shoulders go slack.
“Diana needs me now. Maybe, if I am there for her and I help her, maybe she’ll…maybe she’ll…”
Adam’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe she’ll love you?”
Madeline felt tears of realization filling her eyes. “Neither she nor Father ever said a kind word to me, or made me feel important to them. I suppose…” She paused for a breath. “I suppose I just want to matter to someone. Is that so wrong?”
He took both her hands and held onto them. “You matter to me, Madeline. Why won’t you let me love you? Why can’t you let go of what Diana will never be?”
“She is my sister. My flesh and blood.” Madeline could feel herself melting into him. “I have to try and save us—as a family.”
Adam raised her hand to his lips and tenderly kissed the back of it. “This is about your mother, isn’t it?”
She shook her head. “No, I—”
“Yes, that’s it. You think it’s your fault that Diana and your father were so miserable all your life.
It’s not your fault that she died, Madeline.
God has His reasons for taking those we love from us, and we must accept it.
If Diana and your father deprived you of love because of it, they hurt themselves as much as they hurt you, for look at your family now.
You are spread out and distant from each other in your hearts. ”
“But I don’t want to be distant. That’s the point. I want us to love each other. I look at your family, Adam, and I long for what you have been able to create and nurture and sustain.”
He clenched his jaw in frustration. “Talk to her, then. I know you’ve been afraid of opening your heart, but you must, if you are ever going to fix what is broken in your life.
Tell Diana how much she means to you, for love is as much about what you say and do, as it is about what you feel inside.
Perhaps Diana needs to learn that as well. ”
Madeline felt a spark of recollection flicker inside her. “Mary said those words to me once—about how important it is to show your love.”
“I have said those words to Jacob many times.”
So the lesson she had learned from Mary and Jacob had really come from Adam, for it was he who had passed that knowledge on to them.
Madeline stood in the warmth of the kitchen, gazing up at the man who had come riding into her childhood on a big black horse, looking like her very own prince charming, coming to rescue her from her locked prison in the tower.
She hadn’t known how long it would take, or how he would do it.
Scale the walls perhaps? Fight off a dragon?
Who would have thought that he would simply hand her a key made of hope, to open up her heart?
Her voice quivered with a flood of emotion. “Adam, I have pushed you away. I have tried to drive you away, yet you continue to be a friend to me.”
He smiled down at her, but she knew he was not entirely pleased about this. He was sending her to reconcile with her sister, knowing that a reconciliation might bring them closer together, but leave him standing outside in the cold.
* * *
With nervous apprehension, Madeline returned to Diana’s room to find her quietly reclining on the pillows while Hilary read aloud to her. Madeline moved fully into the room. “I am sorry to interrupt, but I would like to talk to you, Diana. In private.”
Diana nodded at Hilary, who closed the book and left the room.
Madeline sat on the bed. Diana held her head high, her chin slightly elevated. Madeline knew that look all too well. She was still angry at Madeline for having walked out on her earlier, disobeying her orders and leaving Hilary to finish the sponge bath Madeline had started.
This was going to be exceedingly difficult.