"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."
"What of the sailor who delivered it?" Thomas asked. "The second officer. What was his name?"
"Sharp, I think," said Henry, his brow furrowing as he frowned slightly. "Tobias Sharp. No doubt he arrived not long after we had left - it must have taken a few weeks for the letter to follow us here."
"Do you suppose he will wait, or find another position and take ship?"
"That may be determined by how hard pressed he is for money, but he has served with Captain Fletcher for some years. It may be that instead he would try to make his way back to the Pelican. Again," Henry sighed, "there is no way of knowing from here."
"We should send two letters, then," William interjected. "One to the solicitor and one to Mr. Sharp, if he may be found. To increase our chances of learning something."
Lydia spoke up then, unwilling to retire to her bed and miss anything, although fatigue dragged at the edges of her mind. "How long will it be before we know?"
Henry closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. "The fastest way will be by sea. With favorable winds the letters may arrive in less than a week. Then at least another week to receive a response - assuming that anyone sends one."
Clara gasped, suddenly bolting upright in her chair. "Two weeks? Two weeks! That is unendurable!"
"Clara, you must prepare yourself for the possibility that this will come to nothing. In the meantime," he continued inexorably, quashing her attempts at further objections with as much notice as an elephant might give a fly, "we must go on as we are. Work must be done. Father must be tended to. And, as we cannot know what will happen in the future, we must prepare for the likelihood that we will spend the winter here. I, for one," and here, he smiled at his siblings, although it did little to lighten the seriousness in his eyes, "would prefer not to starve before spring."
At that moment, Anna descended the stairs, carrying the now-empty cup and its saucer to the basin in the kitchen. "He is sleeping now," she responded to the flurry of concerned inquiries. "That is all I can tell you at present."
"Very well," said Henry. "I shall begin composing the inquiries at once. Tomorrow we shall see if anyone in Glasbottle is willing to convey them to the nearest seaport. If not, one of us may need to undertake the journey ourselves."
"I shall go," William volunteered immediately. "Henry, you are needed here, and Thomas is meant to begin work at the forge soon. It must be me."
Thomas looked disappointed but said nothing as Henry nodded in agreement. "Perhaps no one need go," he reminded them, "but we shall soon discover if that is the case. Does anyone have anything else to say tonight?"
Clara looked very much like she would like to say something, but subsided nearly the instant she opened her mouth, as though she had been on the receiving end of a kick under the table. Which, judging from the pure innocence practically radiating from Thomas's face, she may well have been.
"Very well," Henry said, the calmness of his voice at odds with his sad, tired eyes, "we will speak again tomorrow." With that, he went up the stairs, presumably to begin writing the all-important letters.
In the small silence that followed, Lydia felt her weariness roll over her with renewed force, and though her mind wanted to keep turning in circles there was nothing to be gained by it - especially before she had some sleep. "I'm for bed," she said quietly, rising from her chair with deliberate movements to avoid a stumble.
"I believe I shall come with you," Anna said. "There's no sense losing any sleep over this." Her gaze drifted to Clara, who had already risen and begun pacing restlessly by the hearth. No doubt she would only seek her own repose after many hours of agitation, if at all.
The two sisters went upstairs and readied themselves for bed without speaking again, and sleep tempted Lydia as soon as she settled herself underneath her blanket. She fought it, struggling to keep her eyes from closing as she sought some sort of indefinable reassurance from her older sister. "Anna," she said, "do you think Father's fortunes will really be restored?"
For a moment, only silence answered her, and she wondered how Anna could possibly have fallen asleep any faster than she.
"They may, or they may not," Anna responded, her voice low, "but what Clara does not understand is that even if they are, nothing will be the same. We could return to town, buy another house as grand as the one we lost, all of our friends would welcome us back, and it would still not mend what has happened. We are different now, Lydia. We have been cold and tired and hungry in a way that none of them would understand. Worse, we have seen how shallow their smiles are. Can we ever really trust them again? At least," and incredibly, her voice caught as though the implacable Anna hovered close to tears, "at least the simple folk of Glasbottle are kind, honestly kind."
Lydia did not know what to say: her mind was too fogged to form a coherent sentence, much less add something useful to the conversation.
Anna rolled over in the darkness, turning her back to her sister. "Go to sleep, Lydia."
And she did.