Chapter Thirty-Six
As her carriage rolled the final few meters to Westfield Manor, Della was reminded of the first time she’d approached this place the very same way.
She’d been on the verge of eighteen, riding across the countryside alone to a home she barely knew.
She hadn’t been able to cry, then. All the way from London, she’d ridden in somber silence, an icy numbness taking over her heart.
This time, she’d cried nearly the entire way.
Della thought this must be what it felt like to be in mourning.
A constant state of despair that had no solution and seemingly no end.
She mourned the man she left behind, and she regretted doing so the farther she rode away from him.
A thousand times, she’d thought about turning around.
She’d thought through every word of her letter and wondered if she’d said enough.
She rewrote it in her head over and over again.
There was nothing else to do but listen to the horses trot and the chirp of an occasional bird.
And cry. There was crying to do. The bumpy carriage ride was time spent in grief. The trip was short as possible, and she kept a quick pace so as to minimize the unsafety and impropriety a woman risked when traveling alone.
At some point, she’d stopped wiping her tears with the handkerchief she kept tucked into the sleeve of her pelisse.
Doing so was useless when the tears wouldn’t stop flowing.
Hour after hour. Over time, those tears were for more than Andrew.
She missed him so much her chest ached, but the real mourning was for herself.
Her family. The closer she got to the manor, the more she thought of that young girl who’d been sent here with only an unfamiliar maid for companionship and protection.
She thought of the cruelty and the coldness and the complete disregard for her wellbeing her parents had shown.
They’d cared more for their own reputations than her.
She’d mourned the lost life of a debutante long ago, but now she felt the full force of years of lies and subterfuge and casual mistreatment.
It was cleansing, crying until she couldn’t anymore.
She felt almost renewed, a sense of freshness beneath the exhaustion weighing down her soul.
She would leave the weeping and the mourning here at Westfield Manor and embark on the journey to her new home guided by that refreshed spirit.
Her carriage rolled to a stop, and she heard the muffled speech of the coachmen rattling around. The door opened, and Della breathed in a lungful of fresh, familiar air. It really was clearer in the countryside. She could only hope Scotland was just as nice.
“Harry.” She smiled as her faithful butler reached a hand out to assist her. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Della! What a surprise! We knew you’d be back soon, but you must’ve raced home.” He helped her down the stairs, and Della turned her face to the fading sun. It was warmer here, and brighter, even at sunset.
“A pleasant surprise, I hope,” she told him.
“Of course.” He nodded fervently. “I was a bit concerned, with an unmarked carriage arriving unannounced. I’m sure you were the best possible outcome. Clara will be delighted to see you.”
He seemed poised to speak again, but Della was overwhelmed by an attack on her person. Her walking stick clattered to the ground as she was swept up. The motion was fast enough to be blurry in her vision, but Della would recognize that explosion of energy anywhere.
“Clara, sweetheart, you’re going to break her.” Harry didn’t try to separate them, he only took a step to the side. Della took note of the term of endearment, too. She would inquire about that later.
“I’m not so fragile as that,” Della tried to say, but it really was quite a tight hug. Her ribs might be suddenly misaligned.
“What are you doing here?” Clara asked, pulling away from the crushing embrace to look Della over from head to toe as if examining for injuries.
She wore her old clothes, the trousers Gwendoline had made and a man’s shirtsleeves.
“I mean, I know this is your home for a while longer, but we did not expect you back so soon. You didn’t write. ”
Clara looked around suddenly, at the coachmen loading back up to leave, then to Harry, then back to Della.
“Where is Andrew?” Clara asked. One glance into Della’s tear-wrecked eyes, and she knew. “Oh, no,” she said, reaching for Della’s arms again. “Is that why you look so dreadful?”
“Clara,” Harry huffed. Even chastising her, his voice held a particular fondness. “That’s terribly rude.”
“You know what I mean,” she huffed back, waving a hand in his direction as if in dismissal.
They walked into the manor’s front hall arm in arm, and Della gasped. It was as if the home had been abandoned. All of the furnishings had been stripped away, and trunks were stacked on top of one another in the center of the room. The furniture was covered in Holland cloths.
“What happened here?” Della asked, her eyes roaming the space like she’d never seen it before. She certainly hadn’t ever seen it like this.
“You told us to pack,” Clara shrugged. “So we packed.”
“Yes.” Della rolled her eyes, breaking away from Clara to pace the overly empty floor. “I told you to pack, but I did not ask you to take everything that wasn’t attached to the home itself!”
This was absolutely not what she’d imagined when she’d sent Clara and Harry back here ahead of her. She’d simply wanted everyone to have a chance to secure their belongings. She’d never expected them to ransack the entire home.
“Actually,” Clara smirked, “we might have taken some things that were attached, at one point.”
“And what would that be, exactly?”
“That is not your concern.” Clara had the temerity to blush. “And Harry made me promise you’d never know.”
Della nodded solemnly. Her parents would be furious.
She thought of all that crying she’d just done.
She thought of the woman she’d grown up to be during her time at Westfield Manor.
The young girl who arrived here eight years ago would’ve put each and every item back in its rightful place and begged her parents’ forgiveness.
That girl would never have left the house to begin with.
The woman Della was now—the Baroness of Kinloss—could not be bothered to care about ornamental vases and silverware. If her mother became apoplectic over her missing tableware, then so be it.
“And how are we to get all of this,” Della gestured around them, “to Kinloss? The journey will be difficult enough, just getting ourselves there safely—”
“Again,” Clara began with a smile, “that is not of your concern. Let me worry about that.”
Della considered that for a moment. She’d followed Clara’s lead thus far in terms of their move to Kinloss, and the world hadn’t crumbled.
Even thinking about the complicated logistics of transporting herself, her household, and all of their belongings to Scotland made her head spin.
To her, it seemed an impossible task. To Clara, it seemed a challenge, one she appeared eager to undertake.
“I suppose you have everything well in hand.” Della ran her hand over the corner of one trunk, feeling the leather straps that held the metal buckles.
“We were just about to have supper,” Clara said, grabbing her arm once more. “Everyone will be glad to see you.”
Della didn’t know about that. She’d decided to uproot their lives and give them what felt like an unimaginable choice: to leave the country with her, or potentially lose their positions—or their livelihoods depending on the mercurial moods of her parents.
“Miss Della!” Gwendoline arose from her seat at the table, approaching her with significant enthusiasm, but a much gentler hug than Clara had. “How was your trip? London must be so incredible, I cannot even imagine all the adventure you’ve had!”
Della so often thought of Gwendoline as a much younger girl than she’d been at her age only a few years ago. With the unbridled excitement shining in her eyes at the thought of the big city, she truly looked it. She practically bounced on the tips of her toes in front of her.
“It was lovely,” Della lied. She didn’t have the energy to explain the kinds of adventure she’d been up to, but she didn’t want to shatter the image of London that Gwendoline held. It wasn’t her place to impart that particular dose of reality.
“Sit down,” Mrs. Goldsmith said, gesturing to Della’s empty seat at the table. “Everyone, sit. I did not cook all of this to sit here watching it go cold.”
Della laughed. She hadn’t missed this place, not the furniture or the wallpaper or even whatever fixtures that Clara had somehow unaffixed.
She had missed them, though. She’d missed the sight of each of their faces and the passing of bowls of stew and chunks of bread.
She even held a fondness for the way they all seemed to forget their manners and no one cared which fork or spoon anyone else used.
“Clara has told us congratulations are in order,” Mrs. Goldsmith said once everyone had begun eating her delicious roast and gravy.
Her smile was so kind. It reminded Della of Alice, and that sent a twinge of regret through her heart.
She’d left a letter for her, too, but just as with Andrew, it no longer felt like nearly enough.
“I don’t know about that.” Della stared at her plate. “It is just a title. It was . . . a gift. From my late mother. I am grateful for it, but I did nothing to earn it.”
“Oh, please,” Clara scoffed. A bit of potato flew off her fork as she dropped it against her plate.
“You did nothing? My goodness.” She shook her head, and Della felt sufficiently chastised, but she had no idea what for.
“You fought the people who had taken it from you. You stood up to the people who were profiting off of your estate.”