Author's note: I am relying on the summary of the novelization compiled by TheSirThomasSharpe on tumblr for a good chunk of the backstory for the Sharpe family. I do not have access to the novelization beyond the Google Books excerpts and, owing to the quality of writing, I'm not sure I'd want to spend money on it. But this particular tumblr user does a very good job and I am grateful for their work- it has been immensely helpful in both planning and writing this fic. I wil be happy to provide the link in a PM upon request.
Alan is sleeping comfortably when Edith wakes early in the grey light of morning. They are staying with the preacher's brother in one of the few houses with a guest room in the village. He sleeps on the bed, and she has a straw mattress on the floor. This was her insistence. She would not leave him, but could not accept that her injured friend would sleep on the floor, no matter how warm the room or comfortable the straw.
His bandages still seep blood, but only a little and only when he moves. She insisted on watching as the village nurse tied them and there are fresh linens boiled only the night before hanging on a drying rack in front of the fire. After he wakes, she will change them and boil the ones he is currently wearing with the hope that the doctor will arrive before too long.
There is a bathrobe left for her near the bathtub and a simple day dress waiting for her in the guest room. The nightshift she is wearing barely keeps her warm, and she soaks long in the bath before returning to the guest room to keep watch on her friend. She has no idea how both of them are alive. She does not want to return to the house, but there are things she must retrieve. Her handwritten manuscript, for one, that is tucked in the writing desk, and her clothes. She chuckles to herself- the book comes first, not the clothing. Clothing, she reasons, can always be borrowed, or purchased, but her writing is something only she can create. That it is her handwritten copy is even more dear to her. This is the copy her father read. The copy he saw such promise in. She regrets that his pen is somewhere in the house, likely never to be returned to her. The blood, she thinks, can always be washed from it until it is as new. It bought her a few moments, enough to get a real weapon, no matter how small, and enough to run with the devil at her heels.
Alan rouses as she is wrapping her ankle and she sits on the edge of his bed, gently placing a hand on his chest to keep him still. He winces, then sighs, relaxing back into the pillows.
"Good morning, Edith."
"Don't talk. You know it only hurts."
"Yes, but talking seems like the only thing I can do."
"This is true."
"I made it in time."
"Yes, you did. Now rest. We will have plenty of time to talk of yesterday when we are better rested."
Alan shakes his head, "I don't want to wait. If this were to become infected, I could quickly become delirious with fever and then we would have missed our chance."
"That isn't going to happen. They said the doctor should be here later today."
"You know, though, that we doctors make terrible patients. He might give up just to be rid of me." He smiles, a little joke that isn't really funny, but it is the best he can do at the moment.
"I'm sure he'll take your advice well- your patients always do."
"Most of them, yes. It's more the questions I'm likely to drive him mad with."
"I'll remind you if you get too inquisitive."
"Of course you will, Edith. We have always looked out for one another, haven't we?"
"Usually you for me, but yes."
"Since we were children."
Edith nods, "Yes, for that many years. Now hold still. I have to change your bandages. And it will hurt." She retrieves water from the bathroom and a towel to place under his side. She is careful, her author's mind picturing every move the nurse had made while cleaning and wrapping the wound. It didn't seem complicated, but the hardest part, Edith knows, will be seeing the gaping hole in his side. She steels herself. After all, just yesterday she bashed in a woman's skull with a shovel. She can bandage a wound without being ill.
He tries not to flinch, not to wince, as she moves him and pulls the bandages from around his torso, but it is nearly impossible. But she is, at least, moderately skilled in her movements and he thinks she would make a very good doctor's assistant. Or even a doctor, herself, should she decide to challenge the medical world and take up the scalpel. He lets his mind wander into imaginations of Edith in medical school, confronting old professors and demanding to sit her examinations when they try to tell her it is not a woman's place. It delights him and he smiles through his pain.
Edith notices, "What are you thinking about? I doubt many men grin so when they are being treated for a stab wound. Or are you grimacing and merely trying to hide it with something more pleasant?"
"I'm dreaming of your future career in medicine."
"I have a future career in medicine?"
"Given your care now, I consider it a distinct possibility." She is amused, but she does not reply, continuing with her work. "I still want to talk about what happened yesterday."
"I don't. You figured out many pieces of their puzzle, but there is more to the Sharpe's than you know. And that is not something I wish to speak of."
"May I ask one thing?"
"I give no guarantee of an answer."
"How did you find out about his other wives?"
"Enola showed me."
"Enola?"
"The woman before me. Her ghost. She was still there, ready to warn me and to show me what she could. I hope they find her body. She deserves a good burial. They all do. But she showed me where to find things, and she pointed out their secrets. So I feel more greatly indebted to her."
"Were there other ghosts in the house?"
"Lady Sharpe. But she was less than helpful. Just dead in the bathtub with a cleaver in her head."
"Oh. That's terrible."
"That it is. Imagine my shock at seeing such a thing."
"I shouldn't have let you go, Edith."
She clucks her tongue, "Alan, Alan, Alan... When have you ever been able to tell me what to do? I fell for Thomas. He had his charms... and I think he did love me. If not then, he did by the end. And it is over now. America awaits. Allerdale Hall can rot in the clay."
"I'm not fetching you his heart."
She is puzzled for a moment, and then her face brightens and she laughs, "You remember!"
"Yes- how could I not? You were so excited when you told me Mary pressed Percy's heart in a book. And then when you told Eunice and Mother you wanted to die a widow..."
"No, you don't have to bring me Thomas' heart. I don't want to be that much like Mary Shelley." She shakes her head and giggles, "I can't believe you remember that little comment. It was just an aside to shut them up."
"Well you certainly are no Jane Austin. She would not have had your strength."
"You exaggerate my fortitude."
"You faced down death, Edith. And a woman with a meat cleaver and a bloodlust. All in the face of horrible revelation and with an ankle that you shouldn't have even been able to walk on. But you did. And you fought back. You have well earned every admiration of your strength that I have."
She blushes, "Oh hush and let me finish your bandages."
"Promise to tell me what happened? How you found out about the wives? What other secrets Allerdale Hall holds? Everything? When you are ready." She is about to brush this request aside when she notices how serious he is and he takes her wrist, "Please, trust me with this?"
She nods, "In time. But not today. Today I have work to do. I have to hand your care to a doctor. And I have to sketch a map of the house and make a list of things I left there that the men need to bring back. And if I do not do this well, they could leave something important behind, like my novel."
"Oh, well we certainly wouldn't want that, Mrs. Shelley. We must make sure that novel is found."
"So let me finish these bandages so I can make my map."
"Yes, doctor."
"Oh you hush."
He smirks, "How often have I followed that instruction?"
"Never. You like talking far too much."
"Only to you. With my colleagues I am reserved, with my patients, professional, and with my family, I can't get a word in edgewise. And with the subjects Mother and Eunice favour, I'm not sure I want to."
"I'm flattered to be the object of your attention, dear friend." He smiles as she retrieves the fresh bandages and he helps her to tighten them across the wound the best he can. She has always been a quick learner. When done, she pats his arm and then rises. "I haven't had breakfast and, unlike you, I don't have any possibly punctured organs. So I am going to leave you with a book to take a little something to eat. No tea, though. I don't think I'll ever again drink tea."
"A detail I will learn later?"
"Yes."
"How is your ankle?"
"Better. Enough that, bound, I can hobble on it. After yesterday, I am fairly sure that pain no longer really matters." She hands him one of the few books their host was able to find for her the night before, "It's nothing greatly academic, mind you, but it will at least busy your mind for the few minutes I am gone."
After breakfast, she sits on her mattress and draws. Alan is forbidden from interrupting, but he can't help himself as she diagrams where everything is on every level. She wants nothing to do with the house, but she wants what of it can be sealed to be properly closed off none-the-less. It is, after all, her inheritance as Lady Sharpe. She lists what of hers ought to be where, includes a detailed description of the pen and where to find it, and notes that she thinks Enola and other women may be buried in the clay in the cellar. She does not mention a ghost. She makes a few other notes and sets the pages aside so she can occupy Alan.
The doctor arrives and the search party leaves for Allerdale Hall. Edith tries to keep busy, asking him what she can do to assist. He is not what she expected- she thought they would be served by a young man, a doctor inexperienced and assigned to the villages distant from the city centres to gain experience treating common maladies. But beside the bed sits an older man with white hair and an open, comforting personality. He accepts Edith's offer of help and enlists her to hand him his tools as he inspects the wound and stitches it closed.
"They tell me you were stabbed."
"Yes."
"Up at Allerdale Hall. The Sharpes finally went funny."
"I think they've been a bit off for years, Doctor. But things went horribly wrong when Edith married Sir Thomas."
"Ah. There were rumours about him. Her, too. Everybody thought she'd killed their mother. Maybe even father, too. They've been holed up in that house for too long. Go away every few years, come back, somebody says he got married. Nobody ever sees a wife. People make up stories on their own."
"If you're expecting us to tell you all the family secrets, it isn't going to happen."
"No, not at all, my friend. Just making light conversation."
Edith speaks, "Did you live in the village?"
"No, but Sir Sharpe used to send for me to treat his wife. It was clear she was frail because of him. Couldn't tell him that, though. So I did what little I could and said a prayer for her when he died. Another for the children. Neither of their parents were gentle or kind people. Doesn't surprise me that Thomas and Lucille would end up off."
Alan winces and the doctor gestures for Edith, "Hold his chest down. I'll do what I can for the pain, but this is going to hurt. I don't have the luxury of a city hospital supply room."
Edith has never heard a man cry out before as Alan does when the doctor pushes on his side and prods at the wound, looking for deeper problems. He dries his hands and shakes his head, satisfied that things will heal, before starting to stitch. There are tears in Alan's eyes and Edith lightly kisses his forehead and whispers that it will be over soon. It is. The doctor bandages him.
"Well, Dr McMichael, you're a lucky man. Not as lucky as if you hadn't been stabbed at all, but nothing about any of your injuries should kill you. Eat like you normally would. You'll hurt like the devil while it's healing, though, and you listen to this young lady when she tells you to rest."
"Thank you, Doctor."
"You thank your young lady here- I heard from the postmaster that she's the one who got you out of that house." He packs his bag and tips his hat to Edith, "Good day to you, miss. Take care of him." And to Alan, "Remember, listen to her. She's your nurse now."
The doctor leaves and Alan takes a long, slow breath in, letting it out just as gradually, "That hurt."
"I saw."
"Not as bad as being stabbed, mind you."
"I could have guessed that. What do you want to eat?"
"Eggs. Toast. Something dripping in grease. And coffee."
"Anything sweet?"
"Would it be inappropriate to say 'only you' in response to your question?"
"Likely, but it isn't as though anyone else is here to hear it."
"Bring me whatever you wish, dear Doctor Cushing, and I will submit to my medic's prescription."
Thomas watches, unseen, as they men from the villlage pack things from the house, nudging them in the direction of Edith's novel, helping them to find the things he hears them mention. Until they mount the stairs to the attic and one of them says something about his workshop. He runs (is that what ghosts do? -he wonders as he glides through the floor) to the door and slams it shut, locking it from the inside. But the lock has never held well, not since Lucille bashed the door in trying to find him after a particularly brutal beating, and with a little jiggling of the handle, the men are in his little sanctuary.
"What did she say she wanted from up here?"
"These ones- careful, now, she says they're fragile. We don't want her getting mad that we broke something."
"Girl's been through a lot. I heard they'd been killing women for years. She's the first one anybody met."
"I feel bad for 'em."
"The women?"
"Yeah, but the Sharpe's, too. My dad worked for the mine years ago. Said the old man was brutal. Watched him beat a man in this very house, and drag his daughter screaming from the library when he found her hiding. Some terrible things happened here long before the young ones brought those women around."
"Well best of luck to this one, then, for surviving it and not letting it haunt her. She needs a happily ever after from here out."
They check the list and begin to collect items from around the workshop. Thomas panics, but he does not want to be seen. But then another pair of men arrive with Enola's trunk and a sheet from Edith's bed that they begin tearing into strips, carefully wrapping the requested items. They nest them in the trunk, lined with a quilt, and tuck padding where the pieces touch to assure that none of them break.
"Do you know why she wants 'em?"
"No, she just handed me the list. Said to be careful, they were brilliantly made and she'd never find someone to fix them."
"All these spare pieces- you think we should take 'em if we have the space? Seems a shame to let the weather claim 'em. Could help her out if she needs to have one of 'em repaired."
"Yeah, let's. I'll find a box."
"Or we could just take this drawer thing- seems like the way they were supposed to be organized."
"Well you figure it out. We'll keep wrapping."
They take his spare pieces, a few half-finished mechanisms, and his tools, all tucked in his watchmaker's drawers and a wooden tool box. When they return to the village, they wrap them tightly in fabric and paper and the postmaster sends them to Buffalo. They tell Edith they retrieved everything she asked and did what she instructed to the letter- her clothes stay, everything else goes to the McMichael house.
Thomas and Lucille's bodies are brought to the church, and the doctor confirms their causes of death. He calls for Edith. As the Widow Sharpe, she has the right to make any requests for burial. She makes one. That Thomas and Lucille be buried in opposite corners of the churchyard so he can rest peacefully. While the request seems strange, they honour it. She also chooses a place for his other wives to be buried once they are found and tells them she will wire them money from America for headstones. The priest insists she does not need to, that the Sharpes, at least, do not deserve them. But Edith insists.
They stay in the little village for a month as Alan heals. By that time, an ocean voyage is far too treacherous owing to the ice on the Atlantic, and while the steamers are advertising ships that will not sink and better ways to spot icebergs, neither Alan nor Edith feel as though risking death on the sea is wise. They have both seen enough of death. They winter in London with friends of his mother's and, at the first sign of spring and the melt of the grey winter, they return to Buffalo, ready to forget all about England. Edith, for one, is sure she never wants to return.
Thomas hopes she never does. Watching she and Alan, he sees the spark of something- something he thinks was always there, but never so apparant. And he knows this is where she is supposed to be.