Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [37]
Sally Morris had told her what everyone was saying about her. They said she looked less bright and perky than she used to, that there were tired lines on her face and a weariness in her walk that told her old neighbors that Frank Aysgarth pushed her too hard. They said she was twenty-six now and never been courted. They said that when Josh got married that would be the end of Annie Aysgarth because then she would be stuck with old Frank, knitting away her winter evenings and her life until he died and she was finally alone. She would be the spinster, the nuisance maiden aunt forgotten by her brothers with no young ’uns of her own to bless her declining years. She would be a lonely old maid.
She sank down onto the bed, her head in her hands, tears trickling between her fingers. She was only twenty-six and life was over and she had never even had a chance.
After a while she slid to the floor, put her hands together and closed her eyes. She prayed for her dead mother and she prayed for her brothers, Bertie and Ted, and for Josh, whose sadness had only served to bring out her own misery. And then she prayed for herself. “Oh God,” she begged, “please let me know life. Let me know what it feels like to be loved. Let me taste adventure and excitement. Let me have children of my own so I can let go of our Josh when the time comes….”
The hot stone wrapped in a bit of flannel sheeting had warmed a tiny patch of the bed and she pushed her cold feet gratefully against it. But when she finally fell asleep she was still worrying about Josh, and still wondering how life would ever catch up to her.
It was a few weeks later that it happened. Things had drifted slowly back to normal, Josh was back with Sammy and they were always out somewhere together. Frank was coughing over his pipe and grumbling about his dinner, like usual, and Annie didn’t know how she was going to stand it all much longer. She had sacrificed her youth to her father’s selfish demands and now she was losing Josh, too, to his own world. Resentment choked her.
The winter evenings became long, silent, desperate hours by the fire with her father in the chair opposite. Her fingers fumbled clumsily with the knitting she had always been able to do automatically over endless years of pullovers and mittens, as she dreamed restlessly of a different world, like the one she read about in the newspapers where ladies wore satin ball gowns and danced with tall, distinguished men, or sailed away to foreign countries on fabulous steam yachts and married counts and princes who loaded them with enormous jewels and love. Living, she told herself enviously, that’s what they were doing.
Josh had still not come home by the time she went wearily to bed and she left the door on the latch so he could let himself in. She was up again at five the next morning as usual, wrapping her woolen dressing gown around her, shivering as she hurried noiselessly downstairs to bank up the coal fire. She was filling the kettle from the tap in the scullery when she heard a noise at the window.
“Sammy,” she cried, flinging open the door, “whatever brings you here at this hour?”
“Shhh,” he whispered, a finger on his lips, “not so loud, Annie.”
She stared at him open-mouthed, taking in his disheveled appearance, his torn jacket and muddy boots. His face was a colorless gray and his dark eyes wild with panic. “It’s Josh,” she said, fear suddenly clutching her heart. “Something’s happened to him?”
He nodded reluctantly, and she clutched at his arm. “Is he hurt?”
Sammy shook his head. “Josh isn’t harmed,” he said hurriedly. “Don’t ask me what happened, Annie. But he’s in bad trouble. As bad as any man can get. He sent me to see you. He said if you love him you’ll help him. You know there’s no harm in Josh, Annie,