The Ghost of Winn Peterson

36. Winn

25 December

It snowed again this past week and filled the house with a biting freeze that we are unable to dispel. Even the maid, with all of her scowling and grumbling affection for the doctor, couldn't hold back her complaints about his refusal to allow a fire in the house. The only ones who weren't affected by the weather were Atticus and his father! Surrounded by the boiling waters of endless soups and screaming kettles of tea, they were well-warmed indeed. I would have volunteered for more than a few kitchen duties, had I not been confined to the bed by absolutely everyone. How am I to make my escape and find the rector of the doctor's initial sighting if I am tied to my pillows!

Even Dr. Radcliffe's insistence that I remain safely under my sheets is not without an appropriate cause for concern, though. With the cold and the drafts that wrestle endlessly through this terrible house, I am once again taken with illness. If I had been living with my parents still, this wouldn't worry them - my sicknesses take their turns with the seasons, and come Christmas, I am nearly always crippled and confined to the sick bed. It is no more a threat to my survival than the pain my womb gives me when it strikes (a malady thankfully delayed by the freezing conditions and my overall poor appetite). Still, neither Evie nor the doctor will be persuaded to leave me alone and forgo their hennish attentions. I suppose in this regard, they are well-suited for one another. Neither is willing to give up!

If only I could convince the doctor to light one small fire.

With Atticus distracted by his duties, my ability for socialisation was severely lacking. Evie herself had a thousand things to scurry around and do when she wasn't replacing the cloth over my brow, one of which was writing. I don't know who she scribbled to, but nearly every time I saw her, she was pulling a quill and a sheet of paper from her bosom (much the same way she'd had when we discovered the letters in my attic). Each flash of her pale chest came with the scratching of something on the parchment, the crinkling of her stuffing it out of sight again. I would not have been surprised if she had revealed a chest stained with ink.

Desperate not to catch myself thinking about Evie's chest, I asked her this morning what she was writing so much of. She set down my tea on the little dresser by the bed and sat herself down next to me. "Letters, Ms. Peterson." Smiling in spite of the pressure in my sinuses, I realised she had not called me that since we lived in Dorset (what a curious a thing to say! It does not feel as though we live here, regardless of how long we may rest in the beds and eat in the kitchens under this roof). "I've been attempting to isolate a day when Lord DeCourt may come and collect you."

"Oh!" I attempted to clap but only succeeded in starting a coughing fit and tangling my hands in the sheets. Once I had calmed down, Evie gently pulled me free.

"Yes, Oh. He'll be coming by later today, so don't die on me just yet. Another social visit, if you will. I wager we'll have you out of here by the new year, but you'd better come back, or you'll have me to answer to." She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead, and how grateful was I to have my fever as an excuse for the heat that flooded from me! "I've already packed all of your things for you, or as much as I could get away with, so you'll really only need to recover before we can whisk you away."

How I wished to leave sooner, but there was no sense in my roaming around the country if I couldn't even clap my hands without an attack. Still, the closeness of my journey nearly overwhelmed me and I was grateful to be bedridden. I feared for what would happen if I was left to my own devices. What manner of trouble would I be in if I roamed around the house in nervous desperation? To busy myself, I focused on writing. There wasn't much else to do while I waited. Between my need to scribble the reminders of what I needed to talk to the rector about and the snippets of story ideas I suffered through when I couldn't sleep, one could say I was well busied. In the past two or three days, I have been able to write a handful of chapters, but they really only reflected my current moods and frustrations.