What You Wish For

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

The next day was a Sunday. Mr Hale and Margaret went to church but Carrie didn't feel like going today and told the Hales she was unwell. She roused herself enough to get dressed and allowed Dixon to do her hair, but only because Dixon seemed to take it as a personal affront when she did her own hair.

She had left all of her belongings from her old life with Mr Thornton. She knew she would have to get them back at some point but she couldn't face him just yet. Her computer and phone would probably have run out of battery by then, but she could hardly recharge them so it had to happen at some point.

She spent the day in a kind of dreamlike state, not quite in the present but not quite gone either. She drifted, doing as she was told and speaking only when she was spoken to.

Right now she missed her music even more than she missed her copy of North and South, for since Mr Thornton had broken her heart she found it difficult to be quite so enamoured of that story any longer. At home, whenever she was sad or angry or frustrated she would sit at her piano and play as loudly as she could, sometimes singing along and using that to vent her feelings. Here though she had no such outlet.

Still, she found sad music running through her head, comforting her in a small way, though it did nothing to help her improve her mood.

The family ate lunch together and Carrie did her best to join in the conversation. The character of Fred had always interested her in the books and she wanted to get to know him a little better, she just didn't feel as if she had the energy to, right now.

After lunch she sat by the window in the parlour, looking down at the street below, watching everyone as they went about their business, though their pace was much more leisurely today than usual. It was almost four o'clock when she saw Mr Thornton striding up the street towards the house, carrying the basket she had left at the mill the day before.

Suddenly her body flooded with adrenalin. He must not be allowed in the house in case he saw Fred, but he also couldn't be left out on the street because she feared what would happen if someone else were to discover the things he carried in the basket! She would be kidnapped and interrogated for her knowledge of the future or put into some insane asylum and left to rot, or her belongings stolen and used to enhance technology here early, causing Skynet to build Terminators and wipe out humanity.

Okay, that probably wasn't the most objective reaction but it was hard to keep a level head when you had so many balls in the air at once.

She didn't know what to do for the best. She ran down the stairs, oblivious to the Hale's stares as she passed them, and opened the front door before Mr Thornton could knock.

She pulled him inside and manhandled him into the study which was just off the hallway.

"Such a greeting," he said, his voice as hard as iron as she closed the door behind them.

"I did not want you to disturb the Hales. Mrs hale is very ill now."

"Or rather, you do not want them to learn what kind of woman you really are."

"Excuse me?"

He pulled her essay file out of the basket and began to look through it.

"I don't understand it," he said. "This work is some of the finest I have ever seen. This essay, discussing the similarities between Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein was so insightful. And this one on the depiction of Mr Bennet is so well argued that I could hardly believe that it was the work of a woman."

Carrie laughed at the irony.

"Those essay's were written about arguably two of the best books in the history of the world. Both books were written by women and yet you question a woman's ability to analyse them?"