“Do be a dear brother and bring me a cover and pillow for my arm, please.”
“Don’t you have a couple of lady's maids and a few footmen for this? I hear you may soon have enough for a cricket team.”
“Ha. Ha. They all leave when you come to see. Whether in fear or relief I can’t be certain.”
“Ha. ha.” They bantered as he brought her requested cover and pillow.
“Ooomph,” she struggled using one arm to make herself comfortable. “Ow!”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, let me, please.” He propped the pillow under her hurting arm and pulled the blanket over her to keep her warm.
“So you do remember what it’s like to be kind?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nevermind.”
“Come now. Don’t throw out barbs you’re not willing to explain. Without an explanation I can’t decide whether to accept them or throw them back.”
“Fine. All I’ll say is, we used to look up to you.”
“We?”
“You know who I mean.”
“The devil, Margaret, people can’t change?”
“They can.”
He didn’t hear her. “Some people have to grow up and be responsible.”
“They do.”
He rampaged on since he was gaining momentum. “They become what they need to be, not just who people think they are. No one’s perfect. There’s pain. It changes people. Sometimes for the better, but not always, and never at first.”
“I completely agree.”
Stupefied, Gregory stopped mid-rant.
“You do?”
“I do.”
“Then what’s your point?”
“What’s your point?” she echoed back.
He shook his head and pushed his hair back now more confused than ever. Too muddled to make sense of anything at the moment, he joked, “I think that’s the laudanum speaking through you now.”
Laughing, she threw her pillow at him.
It was good to connect with his sister again. Something had been missing since his return from the continent, but somehow in the jumbled conversation that had just ensued, a piece of their relationship had been restored.
As he left his sister’s room, his thoughts turned to Mary, for whom he had been receiving three daily reports, on all three women actually. The most recent of which reported that she remained unconscious but had developed a fever. He still had not entered her room. He had been close. He had placed his hands on the doorframe and even leaned his forehead against the door. He had even thought in his mind to knock and had even whispered her name. But he couldn’t go in.
She probably hated him. He deserved that. And it made it easier to stay away.
But worse, what if he never found out whether or not she hated him and instead she just never woke up again?
