Even Mercy grinned. “Papa, me can see the chickens again?”
“We will get new ones. After we get up a new cabin. New land.”
“And me can see Blayney?”
“Umm-hmm.”
“And have corn?”
He nodded.
They settled their heads back into the bed then, Mercy tracing his injured face and asking if a bear had tried to eat him, John rambling about rifles and woods and deer and traps. They all spoke in whispers. He rubbed their faces with bandaged hands. More than once, Mercy leaned up to kiss his cheek, and John beamed at Simon as if he was the sun and moon and stars.
From the doorway, something creaked.
Simon glanced up long enough to see Miss Whitmore’s face through the cracked door. His heart thundered. Regret prickled, either from the rash decision to leave or the sinking realization she had heard.
The door pulled shut and her footfalls echoed away before he had a chance to call out.
He was not certain what he would have said if he did.
CHAPTER 21
She was hollow to the core of herself. She did not think or feel. Her body moved of its own accord—offering gratitude and farewells to Mr. Oswald, climbing into the carriage, approaching the town house door that had changed so little in all her life.
The hall embraced her like an old friend.
Nellie beamed and pranced around, flyaway curls framing her face, talking faster than usual in excitement. Mamma and Mr. Lutwidge surprised Georgina with a dinner of roast stubble goose and applesauce—her favorite.
All the curtains in her bedchamber had been washed.
The bed was wrinkleless.
Vibrant zinnia flowers decorated a vase by the window, which was open to allow in a warm and comforting breeze.
The first day passed without much disturbance from anyone. Georgina burrowed deep into her bed with the excuse her burns rendered too much pain for movement. She slept a little. Mostly, she begged herself to cry.
She needed tears.
She needed to feel.
The second day she went downstairs to the library. She sat where Papa’s body had thudded to the floor when they cut the rope, and she ran her fingers over the rug, the coarseness reddening her tips.
Nothing made sense to her.
Not Papa.
Least of all Simon.
She wished she had done everything different. She wished she had married him. She wished she would have taken his name, and raised his children, and lived in his home because then…
Maybe, one day, it would have happened.
Maybe he would have glanced up at her absently some lazy afternoon, as she was fixing Mercy’s braid or answering John’s question—and the one thing she needed would have been in his gaze.
Likely, he would never say the words.
She knew that.
