Chapter 25 #3
SOON AFTER PETER HOUGHTON’S VISIT, Fleur asked Mollie, the maid from Heron House, if she would like to move to the cottage to keep house for her.
Mollie was delighted at the chance to be housekeeper and cook as well as maid.
But she hinted that Ted Jackson would be unhappy to have her so far away.
Before a month had passed, Mr. and Mrs. Ted Jackson were both living at the cottage, and Fleur had a handyman and gardener as well as a housekeeper.
Once she was no longer alone in the house, the Reverend Booth sometimes visited her without his sister. He found her presence relaxing, he would say, watching her at her embroidery. And he liked to listen to her play the pianoforte.
Fleur enjoyed his visits and looked back with some nostalgia to the time when she had believed herself in love with him.
If all those events had not happened, she often thought—if Cousin Caroline and Amelia had not left for London, if Matthew had not stopped her from leaving the house, if Hobson had not fallen and she had not fled, thinking she had killed him—how different life might be now.
She would have moved to the rectory as planned and lived there with Miriam until Daniel had come with the special license.
They would have been married now for many months.
They would have sat every evening as they often sat now. Perhaps she would be with child.
And she would have been happy. For without the experiences of the previous months, perhaps she would never have seen the narrowness of Daniel’s vision.
Perhaps she too would have continued to see morality in strict terms of black and white.
And she would never have met Adam. She would never have known the passionate, all-consuming love she felt for him.
She would have been happy with the gentle love that Daniel had offered.
Sometimes she wished she could erase the past months, go back to the way things had been.
But one could never go back, she realized, or truly wish to do so, because once one’s experience was enlarged, one could no longer be satisfied with the narrower experience.
Besides, despite all the pain, despite all the despair, she would not wish to have lived her life without knowing Adam. Without loving him.
“You are happy here, Isabella?” the Reverend Booth asked her one evening.
“Yes.” She smiled. “I am very fortunate, Daniel. I have this home and the school and friends. And a wonderful feeling of safety and security after all the anxiety of that thing with Matthew.”
“You are well-respected and liked,” he said. “I thought that perhaps you would find it difficult to settle here after all you had gone through.”
She smiled at him and lowered her head to her work again.
“I sometimes wish we could go back to the way things were before that dreadful night,” he said, echoing her own thoughts. “But we can’t, can we? We can never go back.”
“No,” she said.
“I thought,” he said, “that it would be possible to love only someone I felt to be worthy of my love. I thought I could love other people in a Christian way and forgive them their shortcomings if they repented of them. But I could not picture myself loving or marrying someone who had made a serious error. I was wrong.”
She smiled at her work.
“I have been guilty of a terrible pride,” he said.
“It was as if I believed a woman had to be worthy of me. And yet I am the weakest of mortals, Isabella. I can only look at you and marvel that you have not been embittered or coarsened by your experience. You are far stronger and more independent than you were before, aren’t you? ”
“I like to think so,” she said. “I think I realize more than I did before that my life is in my own hands, that I cannot blame other people for anything that might go wrong with it.”
“Will you do me the honor of marrying me?” he asked.
For all the words that had led up to the proposal, she was taken by surprise. She looked up at him, her needle suspended above her embroidery.
“Oh, Daniel,” she said. “No. I am so sorry, but no.”
“Even though I know of your past?” he said. “Even though I can tell you that it makes no difference to my feelings for you?”
She closed her eyes.
“Daniel,” she said. “I can’t. Oh, I can’t.”
“It is as I thought, then,” he said, getting to his feet and touching her shoulder. “But you have severed all relations with him, have you not? I would expect no less of you. He is a married man. I am sorry, Isabella. I am truly sorry. I would wish for your happiness. I will pray for you.”
He left the house quietly while she stared down at her work.
He did not come alone again for several weeks, though he called sometimes with his sister. And he frequently came to the school.
When he did come alone once more, it was during the afternoon of a day when there was no school. He brought a letter with him.
“I would send it back unopened if I were you,” he said to her gravely as he handed it to her.
“As your minister, I would advise it, Isabella. You have put up such a strong fight against your weaker self and have come so close to winning the battle. Let me send it back for you. Or destroy it without reading it.”
She took the letter from his hands and looked down at the seal of the Duke of Ridgeway and the handwriting that was not Mr. Houghton’s. It had been longer than four months—or perhaps four years or four decades or four centuries.
“Thank you, Daniel,” she said.
“Be strong,” he said. “Don’t give in to temptation.”
She said nothing, but continued to stare down at the letter. He turned and left without another word.
She hated him. She had not expected ever to feel hatred for him again. But she hated him. He had said that he would never see her again, never write to her. And she had believed him.
She had pined for him, thought she could not live on without one more sight of him or word from him.
And he had written. To open the still-almost-raw wound once again. To force her to begin all over again. And in the future she would never again be able to trust him to keep temptation out of her life.
Daniel was right. She should send the letter back unopened so that he would know that she was stronger than he. Or she should destroy it unread. She should give it to Daniel to send back or destroy.
She went into the parlor and stood it, unopened, against a vase on the pianoforte. And she sat quietly in her favorite chair, her hands in her lap, looking at it.