Chapter Twenty-One #2
By afternoon, she’d also pulled out her typewriter and begun transcribing the early chapters. Her father had written everything
in his distinct loose italic style. The curves were as familiar as his voice in her head.
Intermittently, she stood to stretch, refresh her tea, and stare out past the old oak to the fields of Fenbridge land. She
couldn’t see the dig site from the cottage, but she imagined the others and Tristan working there.
Dominic’s absence felt like a tangible thing. A hollowness in her chest.
She wanted to believe he’d come back, but some dark fear whispered that he wouldn’t. That she’d driven him away. That her own fear of being hurt again had kept her from any kind of happiness and might always do so.
A knock at the cottage door pulled her from her sad musings.
Mrs. Wells was due to return today, though she wouldn’t bother knocking.
Tess tidied her hair and went to answer the door.
Priscilla Walcott stood on the doorstep, the afternoon light catching the sheen of her fine silk sleeves. She carried herself
with her typical confidence, yet her smile was unfamiliar based on their previous interactions. She looked downright . . .
friendly. She’d never paid a friendly visit to Foxdene.
“Hello, Miss Hawthorne.” Priscilla hesitated, looking a bit uncertain. “May I come in?”
“Of course you may.” Tess stood back to admit her.
She was garbed in far finer clothes than Tess’s simple day dress, and her rich perfume was so different from the scent of
old books and wood smoke in the cottage.
“If you have a seat, I’ll prepare a tea tray,” Tess told her.
“Thank you. That would be lovely.”
When Tess returned to the drawing room, Priscilla was standing near the mantel, studying the photographs and knickknacks.
She seemed fixed on a drawing Tristan had made of their father.
“He was such an excellent teacher,” Priscilla said almost wistfully.
“He was.” Though their father had encouraged her and Tristan to pursue passions of their own, his love for history had been
so infectious that Tess had fallen in love with it too. “And he was always impressed with your abilities.”
Priscilla looked taken aback. “Was he?”
“Oh yes. Some questioned why he took on a girl tutee to study history and geography and Latin and French, but he’d simply tell them that you excelled at those subjects.”
“He told my mother much the same,” she said with a little hint of bitterness. “She thought I should take up watercolor and
piano. My father championed academic subjects for young ladies.” She smiled at Tess. “As did yours.”
Once they were settled on the face-to-face settees in the middle of the drawing room, Tess began to pour.
“Sugar and cream?” Tess didn’t even know Priscilla well enough to know how the young woman took her tea.
“Yes, please.”
Tess handed her cup over and tried to find something in her seemingly guileless gaze. Some hint of why she’d come. A nagging
feeling told her it had something to do with Dominic.
“You’re studying me as if I’ve committed some crime and might reveal a clue.”
Tess huffed out a chuckle. “Forgive me, but you must admit this is unusual.”
“I consider it long overdue.”
“Do you? Then why did you wait to come and call?”
Priscilla stirred her tea, eyes fixed on the steaming liquid. “Embarrassment, I suppose.”
Tess’s own fingers tightened on the handle of her cup. She set it aside lest she break the dainty porcelain. She could feel
perspiration on the back of her neck and had an overwhelming urge to stand and stride from her own house to avoid this conversation.
“I can see from your reaction that you feel as I do. It’s not a pleasant topic. That is why I haven’t come before.” She drew
in a sharp breath. “Even speaking the man’s name seems as if I’m giving him some power he does not deserve.”
“I try to avoid any thought of him too.”
“And does that work well?”
Tess shot her a sharp look, one that Priscilla seemed to understand. She nodded. “It doesn’t work well for me either. So I
thought perhaps the avoiding is what gives it power.”
Tess tipped her head back, staring up at the exposed beams of the cottage’s roof. It had always been a place of safety and
comfort. She let out a slow breath and dropped her gaze back to Priscilla.
“Perhaps you’re right. I’m sorry that we share a similar history in that regard.”
“As am I.” Priscilla tipped her head as she looked at Tess. “Though I think you’ve taken a great deal more blame onto yourself
than you should.”
“I was foolish. Impulsive. I let myself be ruined.”
“No.” Priscilla shook her head vehemently. “You were lied to. Seduced. Taken advantage of by a man who preyed on your trust.”
Tess didn’t disagree, but she knew the part she’d played. The warnings she’d ignored. The choices she’d made.
Priscilla shocked her by standing. Tess thought perhaps she meant to depart. Instead, she came around and settled on the settee
next to Tess. Without a word, she took Tess’s hand. The gesture was gentle and completely unexpected.
“May I be potentially rude?” she asked softly.
Tess laughed. “Well, when you ask so nicely, how can I refuse?”
“I heard that Mr. Prince has left Norfolk.”
Tess’s heart leapt a little at the mere mention of his name. “Yes, for a brief time, he says.”
“Oh good.” Priscilla gave Tess’s hand a gentle squeeze.
“That pleases you?” Tess asked, side-eyeing the young woman who’d flirted with him rather mercilessly the day they’d met.
“Oh, not for my sake, silly. For yours.” She hesitated. “I thought perhaps you’d . . . pushed him away.”
Tess frowned and pulled her hand away. “I’m not certain why that’s your concern, Miss Walcott.”
“Oh, please let me explain.”
Tess searched again for any hidden agenda in the young woman’s eyes but found only seeming sincerity.
“Say what you’ve come to say.”
Priscilla squared her shoulders and cleared her throat in the most quiet, ladylike manner. “Do you know how many suitors I’ve
had since . . . Shaw?”
Tess frowned and shook her head. “Of course not.” Though looking at Priscilla’s pretty face and imagining the size of her
dowry, she guessed. “Quite a few, I suspect.”
“Six.”
Tess blinked, yet it wasn’t an unbelievable sum considering her beauty and wealth. “None of them suited you?”
She closed her eyes a moment and then looked up as if she’d bolstered herself. “One did quite well. I can admit now that I
loved him. Truly loved him.” Her voice broke and a tear slipped down her cheek.
Tess dug in her pocket for a kerchief, but Priscilla produced one she’d had tucked in her sleeve.
“I knew I’d need one,” she said with a chagrined smile. “I realized in the weeks after I’d refused Robert’s proposal that
I made a terrible mistake.” Biting her lip, she looked out the same window Tess loved looking out, where the old oak stood
protectively watchful. “I thought I was guarding my heart, but it cost me a chance at love.”
Tess knew then. Priscilla had come with a cautionary tale, and it hit her with all the impact she’d likely intended.
She reached for Priscilla’s hand as the young woman dabbed at her eyes with the other.
“Could you not reconcile with him?”
Priscilla sniffed and shook her head. “By the time I learned how to overcome the fear, he was engaged to someone else.”
Tess tried, for the flicker of a moment, to imagine Dominic proposing to someone while he was back in London and immediately
felt as if she’d cast up her accounts.
“I’m sorry. He should have had more patience,” she told Priscilla vehemently.
“I never told him about Shaw. He didn’t understand why I pushed him away.” She gave Tess a wry smile. “But yes, I often wished
he would have tried just a bit harder. Or that I’d been a bit braver.”
Tess understood that desire entirely. “You will be the next time.”
Priscilla took a shuddery breath. “That’s what I tell myself too.”
For a moment, they simply sat together quietly.
Then Tess asked, “How did you overcome the fear?”
Priscilla gripped Tess’s hand tighter. “I wanted a chance at joy more than the comfort of all the ways I told myself I was
protecting myself. And . . .” She turned and focused on the photograph of Tess’s father on the mantel. “Did you know your
father had me read Aristotle?”
At the swift change of subject, Tess shook her head. “It’s not surprising. He loved Aristotle.”
“I’m going to bungle this but . . . ‘the courageous endures fear and dares the deeds that manifest courage.’”
Tess understood. Her father had written out his favorite quotes from ancient philosophers and pinned them to the wall next to his desk.
“One builds courage by daring to do things in spite of fear. That’s how I always interpreted it.” Priscilla watched Tess,
her gaze fierce, as if willing her whatever courage she could.
“Thank you for coming and teaching me a lesson.” Tess grinned. “My father would have loved that you managed to work in a bit
of Aristotle.”
They both laughed. Then they drank their tea and talked of Tristan’s news, of Priscilla’s father’s investment in a new publishing
venture that interested her, and, finally, of the train times to London and that the fastest train was from Norwich.