Chapter 7 #3
“I hold your father in regard. He has been kind to my family when he had no obligation to be. Whether that regard will deepen into love if I were to accept, I cannot say. I should very much like it to.” Elizabeth held the girl's gaze.
“I will not pretend to feelings I do not possess merely to make this conversation more comfortable. You asked for truth, and that is what I offer.”
Moira was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice had lost some of its edge. “My mother died when I was three, and he's never stopped grieving her. I remember her singing. She had a voice like...” She stopped, her throat working.
“I am sorry for your loss.” Elizabeth meant it. She thought of her own father, of the hollow space his absence had carved in her chest. “I do not seek to replace her, Moira. I could not, even if I wished to.”
“Then what do ye want?”
Elizabeth considered the question. Outside, the wind rattled the bare branches of the oak tree that had stood sentinel over Longbourn since before her birth.
What did she want? Security for her family, certainly.
A home that would not be stripped from them by law and circumstance.
But there was more to it than that, something she had only begun to acknowledge in the quiet hours of the previous night.
“A partnership,” she said at last. “Someone with whom I might share the burdens and satisfactions of managing a household, raising children, building a life. I wish to be useful, Moira. I wish my days to have purpose beyond needlework and morning calls.”
“Ye want to matter.” The girl spoke as though this were a revelation, though Elizabeth suspected she understood the sentiment better than most adults would.
“Yes. I want to matter.”
Moira unfolded her arms. She did not smile, for she was not, Elizabeth suspected, a child who smiled easily. But something in her posture eased.
“My mother used to walk with me along the shore,” she said. “Every morning, no matter the weather. She said the sea kept her honest. She said you couldnae lie to yourself with all that water stretching out to forever.”
“That sounds rather wonderful.”
“Aye. It was.” Moira looked towards the window, her dark eyes distant. “I miss the sound of it. The waves. Here everything is so quiet. Even the birds sound wrong. They dinnae cry properly.”
This was not the hostile child who had descended from the carriage yesterday. This was someone young and displaced and desperately homesick, trying to make sense of a world that had tilted beneath her feet.
“I cannot give you the sea,” Elizabeth said quietly.
“But I can tell you that the strangeness of a new place does fade, eventually. I can tell you that missing somewhere does not mean you cannot also come to love somewhere else. And I can promise you that whatever happens between your father and myself, I will never ask you to forget your mother or your home.”
Moira turned back to her. “You're not what I thought you would be,” she said at last.
“Nor are you.”
“Is that good or bad?”
Elizabeth considered the question with the seriousness it deserved. “I think we shall have to discover that together.”
Moira regarded her for another long moment. Then, slowly, she uncurled from the chair and moved towards the door. At the threshold, she paused, one hand resting upon the frame.
“You said you'd show me the walking paths.”
“So, I did.”
“I suppose,” Moira said, with the air of one conferring a great favour, “that I might be willing to see them. Since there's nothing better to do.”
Elizabeth rose and reached for her spencer of dark green wool.
“Then let us go before the light fails entirely. I shall show you where the blackberries grow in summer, though there is little to see now but bare brambles. And there is a spot by the stream where, if one is very patient and very still, one might occasionally glimpse a kingfisher.”
“We have eagles at home,” Moira said, but there was less challenge in it now. “Great golden ones that hunt the mountainsides. They make a sound like nothing else in the world.”
“Then you must tell me about them. I have never seen an eagle.”
They walked out together into the grey afternoon.
The wind was sharp, carrying the scent of woodsmoke and dying leaves and the distant promise of rain.
Moira pulled her cloak tighter and fell into step beside Elizabeth.
Her stride was longer than one might suppose for such a small frame.
She was accustomed to walking rough country, that much was plain.
“Tell me about Skye,” Elizabeth said as they passed through the garden gate. “I have never been to Scotland.”
Moira was silent for several paces. Then, slowly, she began to speak.
Of the Cuillin mountains that rose black against the sky and the seals that gathered upon the rocks below the house.
Her voice lost its careful precision as she spoke, the Highland cadence strengthening with each sentence until Elizabeth had to listen closely to catch every word.
It was not trust. Not yet. But as they made their way along the lane towards the copse of oaks that Elizabeth had loved since childhood, she thought it might be the beginning of something.