Twisted Root - Anne Perry [24]
She stopped scraping the carrots and turned to look at him.
"Left how? Didn’t anybody go after her?"
"They thought at first she’d been taken ill." He told her the story as he had heard it.
She tried to imagine herself in Miriam Gardiner’s place. What could have been in her mind as she ran from the garden? Why? It was easy enough to think of a moment’s panic at the thought of the change in her life she was committing herself to and things that would be irrevocable once she had walked down the aisle of the church and made her vows before God—and the congregation. But you overcame such things. You came back with an apology and made some excuse about feeling faint.
Or if you really had changed your mind, you said so, perhaps with hideous embarrassment, guilt, fear. But you did not simply disappear.
"What is it?" he asked, looking at her face. "Have you thought of something?"
She remembered the carrots and started working again, although the longer it took to prepare dinner the more chance there was she could force herself to eat again. Her fingers moved more slowly.
"I suppose there wasn’t someone else?" she asked. The pan was coming to the boil, little bubbles beginning to rise from the bottom and burst. She should hurry with the potatoes and put on a second pan for the cabbage. If she chopped it fiercely it would not take long.
He said nothing for a few moments. "I suppose it’s the only answer," he concluded. "Treadwell must be involved somehow, or why didn’t he come back?"
"He saw his chance to steal the coach, and he just took it," she suggested, putting the potatoes and carrots into the pan, a little salt in it, then the lid on. "William?"
"What?"
How should she approach this without either inviting him to tell her to give up working at the hospital on one hand, or on the other, implying that she expected a higher standard of living than he was able to offer her?
"Are you going to take the case?"
"I already told you that. I wish I hadn’t, but I gave my word."
"Why do you regret it?" She kept her eyes on the knife, her fingers and the cabbage.
"Because there’s nothing I could find out that would bring anything but tragedy to them," he replied a little tartly.
She did not speak for a few minutes, busying herself with getting out the mutton first and carving slices off it and then replacing it in the pantry. She found the last of the pickles— she should have purchased more—and set the table.
"Do you think..." she began.
He was watching her as if seeing her performing those domestic duties gave him pleasure. Was it she, or simply the warmth of belonging, particularly after the unique isolation of his years without memory, the comforts of the past which did not exist for him, except in shadows, and the fear of what he would find?
"Do I think what?" he asked. "Your pan is boiling!"
"Thank you." She eased the lid a little. It was time to put the cabbage in as well.
"Hester!"
"Yes?"
"You used to be the most straightforward woman I ever knew. Now you are tacking and jibbing like..."
She pushed past him. "Please don’t stand in the doorway. I can’t move around you."
He stepped aside. "What do you think made Miriam Gardiner change her mind so suddenly?"
Fear, she thought. Sudden overwhelming knowledge of what promises she was making. Her life, her fortunes for good or ill, her name, her obedience, perhaps most of all her body, would belong to someone else. Perhaps in that moment, as she had stood in the sunlight in the garden, it had all been too much. Forever! Till death do us part. You have to love someone very much indeed, overwhelmingly ... you have to trust him in a deep, fierce and certain way that lies even closer to the heart than thought, in order to do that. "William, do you think we could afford to have a woman in during the day, to cook for us and purchase food and so on? So that we could spend together the time we have, and be sure of a proper meal?"