A Rose for Beauty

Chapter 21

"Let me go! Let me go up! I am sure I can be ready to leave in the morning."

"Clara, don't you think that's a bit hasty?" Thomas kept his arm around her shoulder to stop her darting for the stairs. "We're not prepared for another journey."

"I don't care," she said. "I would not spend one unnecessary day here. Not one unneeded hour! I will go on foot if I must, to be home again!"

She began attempting to pull away in earnest, but suddenly Anna cried out.

"Father!"

All at once their attention was riveted on their ailing father who, forgotten in the excitement, had collapsed and begun to slide out of his chair. Lydia dashed across the room towards him but Henry, being closer, arrived first and stopped him falling. Anna took up a position on his other side and the two of them hoisted him between them gingerly.

"Tea, Lydia," Anna said, her voice urgent. "He needs his tea."

Throttling down her anxiety, Lydia nodded. Anna was right. She must not fixate on Henry and Anna, gently carrying their father's frail body up the stairs and to bed, but instead do something useful, the thing that no one but she could do for him.

Passing by a distressed Clara, deep in feverish argument with Thomas and William, Lydia assembled the ingredients. It was almost automatic by now; three stirs clockwise, and then the words. Tonight she focused harder than ever as she imbued the tea with her strength, and she willed courage and fortitude to follow the love down into the cup. After she was finished she laid the spoon down beside the sturdy saucer and closed her eyes. Her heart felt as though it would leap into her throat in a moment, and her hands began to shake. I have suffered a shock, she realized, although the thought felt as though it came from a great distance.

"Lydia, is the tea ready?" Anna called as she swept into the kitchen.

Her eyes shot open at once. "Oh, Anna! How is he?"

Anna paused, one hand on the teacup, and her mouth tightened. "A shock like that was the last thing he needed. I shall endeavor to get his tea into him, and we shall let him sleep, and in the morning we shall see how much damage has been done to his recovery." She lifted the cup and saucer with careful hands and turned back towards the stairs.

"Anna," she said softly, "what do you think will happen?"

Anna stopped, but did not turn around. "I do not know," she said, "and for the moment it does not matter." Then, without another word, she continued upstairs.

Lydia moved to join Thomas and William, now sitting at the table on either side of Clara, who no longer made any attempts to rush away. She sat without speaking, but her eyes were uncommonly bright. Before Lydia had quite settled into her own seat, Henry returned from upstairs and all four of them turned silently to face him with their questions in their eyes.

"It goes without saying that Father cannot be moved in his current state," he began. Clara made a noise as though she would like to object, but she smothered it as Henry turned his gaze upon her. "Father can not," he repeated firmly, "be moved. At any rate, all we have at this moment is the intelligence that the Pelican had not yet been lost when this letter was written, more than three months gone. We cannot tell what its situation is now."

"What do you propose we do?" William's voice was low, but a thread of suppressed excitement rippled through it, proving that no matter how level his head was compared to Clara's he was not immune to the electrifying effect the letter had had on their family.

"There is little enough that can be done from here, but there is no sense at all in journeying back ourselves unless the Pelican has made port. We must send a letter to our solicitor - assuming he will still accept our correspondence."