“Don’t look like that, you daft ha’porth!” Claudine shot a furious glare at him. “She’s just tired! If you want to be useful, go and fetch some water from the yard. And if there isn’t any there, tell those blasted men to go and get some.” And without waiting to see if he was going to obey her, she swept Hester along to the bedroom and half heaved her onto the bed. “Now go to sleep!” she ordered furiously. “Just do it! I’ll look after everything.”
Hester stopped struggling and let go.
She woke with a start. The only light in the room was from the candle burning on the small table beside her. In its flame she could see Margaret sitting on the chair, looking back at her, a little anxious but smiling.
Hester shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. She sat up slowly, blinking, but Margaret was still there. Horror welled up inside her. “You can’t have . . .”
“I haven’t,” Margaret said, understanding immediately. She leaned forward and took Hester’s arm. “Neither have you. You’re just exhausted.”
“They shouldn’t have told you!” Hester protested, struggling to sit up. Now fear for Margaret drowned out all other thoughts.
Margaret shook her head. “They didn’t. I came because I couldn’t leave you here alone.” She said it quite simply, without protestations of morality or friendship. It was simply a fact.
Hester smiled widely and lay back, filled with warmth, just for now refusing to think beyond the moment.
Later they met together over toast and jam and a cup of tea, while Hester told Margaret all that had happened since she had left.
“I’m sorry about Mercy,” Margaret said quietly. “I liked her. It seems a terrible sacrifice. She’s so young, and had everything before her. At least . . .” She frowned. “I don’t really know anything except that she is Clement Louvain’s sister. One tends to think that if people have a good family, and are more than pleasing to look at, they will be happy, and that’s silly, really. She may have all kinds of private griefs we know nothing of.” Her face became reflective, deep in her own thoughts, and there was more than a shadow of pain in it.
Hester knew what it was; there was only one thing that would trouble Margaret in such a way. There was all the difference in the world between the ache in the heart caused by love, its disillusion and loneliness, and the fear of any other kind of calamity. She had realized even more intensely in these last days that the passion, the tenderness—above all, the companionship—of heart and mind were the gifts that gave light and meaning to all others, or took it from them.
“Oliver?” she said gently.
Margaret’s eyes opened wide, then she blushed. “Am I so transparent?”
Hester smiled. “To another woman, yes, of course, you are.”
“He asked me to marry him,” Margaret said quietly. She bit her lip. “I had been waiting for him to do that, dreaming of it, and it was all exactly as it should have been.” She gave a rueful, bewildered little laugh. “Except that nothing was really right. How could I possibly accept marriage now and go away, leaving you here alone to cope with this? What would I be worth if I could, and how could he not know that? What does he believe of me that he would even ask?”
Hester watched Margaret’s face. “What did you say?”
Margaret took a sharp breath. “That I could not, of course. I told him that I was coming here. He didn’t want me to, at least part of him didn’t. Illness . . . frightens him . . .” She said it with hesitation, as if betraying a confidence and yet unable to bear it alone.
“I know.” Hester smiled. “He’s not perfect. It costs him all the courage he has even to think of it, let alone come close to it.”
Margaret said nothing.
“Perhaps he can face things we find harder, or even turn away from,” Hester went on. “If he were afraid of nothing, if he had never run away, never failed or been ashamed, never needed time and another chance, what would he have in common with the rest of us, and how would he learn to be gentle with us?”
Margaret looked at her steadily, searching her eyes.
“You’re disappointed?” Hester asked.
“No!” Margaret answered instantly, then looked away. “I . . . I’m afraid he’ll think I am, because I was for a moment or two. And maybe he won’t ask me again. Maybe nobody will, but that doesn’t matter, because I really don’t want anyone else. Apart from you, there’s nobody else I . . . like so much.” She looked up again. “Do you understand?”
“Absolutely. I believe he will ask you, but if he is cautious, you will have to deal with that.”
“You mean be patient, wait?”
“No, I don’t!” Hester responded instantly. “I mean do something about it. Put him in a situation where he is obliged to speak—not that I am in the least useful at doing that sort of thing myself, but I know it can be done.”
Sutton came in through the back door, Snoot at his heels. Hester poured tea for him, offered him toast, and invited him to sit down.
“It’s good to see you, miss,” he said to Margaret, accepting the invitation. The words were bare enough, but the expression in his face was profound approval, and Margaret found herself coloring at the unspoken praise.
Hester took the crusts from her toast and gave them to Snoot. “I know I shouldn’t,” she acknowledged to Sutton. “But he’s done such a good job.”
“He’s a beggar!” Sutton said tartly. “ ’Ow many times ’ave I told yer not to beg, yer little ’ound?” His voice was full of pride. “ ’e ’as done a good job, Miss ’Ester. I in’t seed a rat fer two days now.”
Hester felt a hollowness at the thought that Sutton might leave. She realized how much she relied upon him, even with Margaret back. His resourcefulness, his wry, brave wit, his companionship could not be replaced by anybody else.
