Chapter Six
It was a splendid morning. Her parents departed in their three carriages at dawn, and Clara was dressed like herself again, in another men’s shirt and loose-flowing tan trousers that Gwendoline had made for her.
Those trousers were a wonderful thing. A passing onlooker might assume they were a skirt instead, but they held all the functionality of a pair of trousers.
Della had asked Gwendoline to make some for her as well.
Clara ran a hand through the hair she wore unbound in long waves that draped over her shoulders and down her back. Her other hand held a letter, though she seemed unwilling to hand it over.
“Is something . . . amiss between the two of you?” Clara asked, folding her hands behind her back and beginning to walk around the large dining table in the center of the room. “You’ve been exchanging letters rather quickly.”
“You are shouting,” Della muttered. She rose to her feet, stretching her legs after spending too long sitting at the breakfast table. One hip cracked, louder than the stomping of Clara’s feet on the carpet. The opposite knee threatened to buckle under her weight.
“So it seems I am,” Clara shouted.
With an indignant huff, Della gave in. She resolved to the fact that she’d have to explain all of this, whether she wanted to or not.
After she’d stretched her limbs out as best she could in a static position, she began to walk.
Her pace was much slower than Clara’s. Della was unhurried, taking a turn about the room as if she were at a party.
Clara was on a warpath, as if she were heading off to battle.
“It seems Andrew may want to come here. To Westfield Manor.”
“What?” Clara shrieked. “And you’ve neglected to tell me this? That your true love wants to reunite after eight years?”
“He is not my true love,” Della started. She didn’t know how to talk about this, but she knew that much was true. She couldn’t love Andrew, and Andrew certainly couldn’t love her. “We were not betrothed. We were not even courting. He is a dear friend to me, and he has been since we were children.”
She stopped near the door and turned around, following her same path toward the window. Clara had slowed down a bit, enough that they were walking together.
“Why has he never visited you before?” Clara asked, in an unusually soft voice.
“I do not know,” Della answered. “It could be because of my illness, or because he’s been abroad for many years. Perhaps he’s never had any interest in visiting the countryside, or me.”
Clara threaded her arm through Della’s. They reached the window and stayed there a moment, looking out at the verdant gardens below.
“What does it mean that he’s interested in visiting now?” Clara spoke into the windowpane.
“I’m afraid I do not know that either.”
Below them, they watched a bird fly from tree to tree. Della began to count the roses blooming on the farthest bush.
“Do you?” Clara asked. “Want to see him, I mean?”
It was a question Della had never asked herself, for she already knew the answer. Even though it felt impossible, like a fantasy she’d write about in her journal, she wanted to see him. Besides the people she lived with, Andrew was the only person in the world she wanted to see, in fact.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I would love to see him.”
Clara smiled, spinning herself around and letting her arms flutter the heavy curtains. Della turned around and approached the dining table again, albeit slowly. She was still not moving well this morning, despite all of the stretching.
“Oh,” Clara suddenly righted herself, landing directly in front of Della. “I’ve an important question.” She grabbed Della’s arms again as Della lowered herself into the chair at the head of the table. “When your Mr. Lockhart comes, I don’t have to wear gowns and pin up my hair, do I?”
Della could only laugh in response. Clara handed her the letter, finally, and then she left the room.
Della needed privacy for moments like these.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want anyone to see the unbridled joy Andrew brought her, it was just that she wanted to keep it for herself, to keep what little she had of him to be all her own.
Della held the letter in her hands. She ran her fingers over the paper as she always did.
It smelled like him, that worn leather and fresh ink scent she wanted to inhale forever.
Under normal circumstances, she’d carry the letter with her to her chambers, sit down at her writing desk and read the letter several times, then secure it in her drawer and put the next-most-recent letter in her trunk with the others.
There was a routine, a course of action to this that she cherished.
It was practically tradition. Today, she decided tradition could go to the devil.
She tore the letter open, then cursed herself for that bit of recklessness when a bit of the paper ripped. There went her nearly eight-year-long streak of perfectly preserved letters.
As she unfolded the missive, her heart sank.
It was dreadfully short, only a scant few lines in that crooked script she’d come to adore.
That couldn’t be good, she thought. She expected a polite denial.
Perhaps a gentle reproach for her casting up her emotional accounts on him.
She feared even a neutral statement dissolving their friendship.
Dearest Della, she read, after she could take the suspense no longer.
If she let her mind race any further, she would cast up her actual accounts all over the carpet at her feet.
That would be an incredible waste of a good day gown.
She continued on, heartened at least for the moment by still being something dear to him.
I must admit I was concerned after reading your last letter.
Della’s breath caught in her throat, a painful tightening that felt like someone had tried to tighten a set of stays around her neck.
She closed her eyes for a moment, bracing herself.
It would be all right, she thought. She had to convince her own heart it would be so before she could read on.
This was not the end of them, even if she so deeply feared it would be.
For once, she chose to believe in her mother’s philosophy of illness—even though it had no basis in anything scientific.
As she lost herself in caring for Della, Esther began to believe that her remaining ill was Della’s own fault.
Her mother thought if Della believed she’d feel better, she would.
In this instance, Della decided that if she believed that Andrew wasn’t abandoning her as everyone else had, he wouldn’t be.
She knew such a thing was impossible, that no matter how strongly she believed in anything, nothing could change the words on the paper she held in her tightening hands.
She had to put her faith in that misguided philosophy just this once, because she could do nothing but hope.
She took a deep breath. Opened her eyes.
I don’t believe I’ve ever read a letter in such a tone, to be candid with you. I can’t imagine what it must be like to find out about an inheritance in such a manner. I don’t blame you for your alarm.
Oh. Della exhaled. The thick cloud of terror over her person seemed to dissipate. He was concerned for her. She hadn’t thought that was a possibility.
Quite frankly, I blame your parents for many things.
I hope you’ll forgive me for insulting your family, but I blame them when my breakfast is cold.
I blame them when I step in a puddle. I blame them when I lose the spectacles that I eventually find on my face.
I can forgive these minor transgressions, but you can be sure that if they have in fact been hiding your own property from you, that will never be forgiven.
Della laughed, then she gasped. At first, the idea of stern, steady Andrew blaming her parents for his every inconvenience was comical.
She could imagine him with wet socks cursing the viscount’s name.
She couldn’t imagine the level of anger those last words held, though.
Andrew had never been angry. She’d never seen him fly into a rage over anything.
She simply didn’t know if he was capable of such a thing.
The idea that he’d be so aggrieved on her behalf was preposterous.
The idea that her parents’ slight was something unforgivable to him was remarkable.
If she’d bared her soul to him in her last letter, he was doing the very same thing now. There was a brutal honesty to his words that she’d never felt before. An almost aggressive tone that she didn’t recognize, and it was for her.
There was one short paragraph left, and Della pressed a hand to the middle of her chest in an effort to calm her racing heart.
It wouldn’t do if she swooned right in the middle of the breakfast room.
The doctor would have to be summoned, and she despised that wretched man.
Besides, if she dropped dead right now, she’d never know what else Andrew had to say.
My ill-will toward your parents aside
Your parents’ horrid actions aside
Della giggled at the words he’d hastily marked out. It was unlike him to send a letter that was less than pristine, but she guessed they were both feeling a particular sense of urgency lately.
Besides, if you are ever in need of help, you have it. You are the only reason I ever made it back down from those tall trees, after all. I’d hoped you knew by now that I am always at your service.
It might be terribly forward of me, but I plan to leave London for Westfield Manor tomorrow morning.
You may turn me away at the door, of course, but it’s my hope that you won’t.
I do not know if I am capable of climbing into the sky after you, but I can certainly travel to the countryside for that purpose. I’ve missed you, too.
Yours,
Andrew
Della’s racing heart attempted some maneuver in her chest for which she was not prepared. It flipped or dropped or skipped a beat. Something terribly uncomfortable. The letter slipped from her fingers, drifting over her skirts to the floor.
“Clara!” she called, with as much vigor as her fragile body and even more delicate heart could muster.
She heard the sound of someone clambering down the hallway, each footstep a pounding on the wood. She made such noise for such a small person, especially one who did not even wear shoes. Della had no idea how she’d heard her from all the way up there.
“What is the matter?” Clara asked, strolling into the room she’d just left with a casual air about her, as if she had not been practically sprinting.
Della pointed to the letter laying at her feet. Her mouth was suddenly dry. It was difficult to form words.
“Andrew is coming here,” she croaked. “To Westfield Manor. Now.”
She looked up at Clara, who had yet to shed that casual air. Della wondered how she could possibly not be roused by this, the best kind of emergency.
“Oh. Well.” Clara picked up the letter from the carpet. “You did not answer me before. Must I go change?”