by Abby Ayles
Gilchrist paced his office, picturing Lady Abigail and Heshing laughing as they talked about his lost mind. It was worse than any garish stare or pitiful look he might have gotten in the past. The thought of Lady Abigail laughing and continuing to collude with Lord Heshing was more than he could take.
Lady Abigail was wracked with torment as the four ladies took the carriage ride to the Foundling Hospital. It had taken some time to calm Lady Louisa down. The duchess had tried to insist that they cancel the trip for the day, but Lady Louisa wouldn’t have it.
It was a toll on her delicate frame to have so much emotion flow out at once. Despite this, she was determined to see this project through for the sake of the children.
“I am sure there is nothing else that can brighten my dark mood other than the smiling faces of the little girls,” she had announced when the time came for them to take the carriage.
Now they were inside and traveling down the streets of London. It was far too quiet, giving Lady Abigail plenty of time to consider her own feelings toward Lord Gilchrist's leaving.
She was sure it was all her doing. Gilchrist had only chosen to go after their argument. It was her fault that he would be shutting himself far away and hurting so many whom he loved and cared for.
The weight of guilt was like a stone on her chest, making it hard to breathe. Though she had determined not to cause a rift in her family, it seemed she had done so anyway.
When the ladies walked up the steps to the hospital, they were once again greeted by the headmaster.
“Where is Lord Gilchrist?” the headmaster said when Lady Abigail alone moved to go with him.
“He was indisposed and unable to come today. He sends his deepest apologies. I would be happy to give the boys a small lesson on mending, however.”
Lady Abigail did her best to sound upbeat and pleased, though she felt neither. She was also painfully aware that the headmaster had no like for women and little respect for ladies. She shifted the full basket of mittens in her hand, the one that the headmaster apparently hadn’t manners enough to take, as she waited for him to lead the way to the boys’ school.
“I feel that without your escort, it wouldn’t be appropriate to attend to the boys,” the headmaster said, looking down his nose at her.
Lady Abigail knew how he felt about her. She couldn’t help the thought that slipped past her at that moment. If Lord Gilchrist had been there, the headmaster would never have been allowed such rude treatment of her.
“What about the gloves? The boys will need them this winter, at the very least,” she said, motioning to the basket in her hand.
“I will take those now,” the headmaster said, removing the basket from Lady Abigail’s arms.
His manners were not gracious. Lady Abigail couldn’t help but wonder how he expected to get the necessary donations for the children with such an attitude. Without so much as a thank you, the headmaster turned on his heels and disappeared down the hall.
Lady Abigail hesitated for a moment, not sure what she should do next. She could still see the other ladies and hear the soft rustle of their skirts as they moved down the opposite hall. She turned and hurried quickly to catch up with them.
“Abigail, is everything all right?” Lady Fortuna asked when Lady Abigail joined her at the rear of the group.
“Yes, the boys’ school headmaster said they had unfortunately made other plans for the day. I thought I might join you ladies instead. If that is alright, of course.”
“Yes,” Lady Fortuna said with a soft smile on her lips.
“I only wish I had something to give to the girls. The headmaster took the gloves,” Lady Abigail said, looking down at her empty hands.
“We will find a use for you, I promise,” Lady Fortuna said from her side.
Lady Abigail forgot, or at least placed aside, her worries as she spent the afternoon with the children. With no dresses to fit like the other ladies, Lady Abigail made it her task to entertain the younger children while they waited their turn.
First, she read them a story, then taught them how to play a simple card game. Finally, as the afternoon wound down, Lady Abigail was enthralled in a world of imagination as the girls danced and twirled with little rag dolls.
Lady Abigail was so lost in games with the children that she forgot where she was for a time. She had so missed playing with her little nieces and nephew, it was a joy to bring a light to small children’s eyes again.
It was at this moment she realized how much she missed home. She looked over at the duchess who was very round with child now. It would be only a few more weeks before she would add another babe to the family.
The thought of a new life entering the world filled Lady Abigail with an urgency to resolve the disagreements going on between her and Gilchrist. Lady Abigail was determined that she would resolve the rifts before the newest member joined her family. She would set everything back to how it once had been before their trip to London for the season.
As they walked back to the carriage at the end of the visit, Lady Abigail stayed at the duchess’s side.
“I haven’t been a very good sister,” Lady Abigail said. “I have been so worried about my own life that I didn’t even consider how you might be holding up. You must be so troubled, and that can’t help your condition.”
“Oh, I am a sturdy old thing,” Isabella said, swinging her arm into Lady Abigail’s. “I am sorry to see Louisa so troubled,” the duchess continued with a crestfallen brow, “but short of being there for her, there is not much more I can do.”
Lady Abigail put a gentle hand on the duchess’s swollen belly.
“The time is getting near now. Perhaps we should return home too,” Lady Abigail responded.
“Yes,” the duchess said with a deep sigh. “I spoke to Christian about that just today. I think it will probably be only a few more weeks before I really must go. If you wish to stay, I am sure your aunt would be happy to chaperone you.”
“I think I might be ready to return home with you,” Lady Abigail said honestly.
The duchess raised a brown brow in question. Lady Abigail was always looking forward to the social time of the season. She was never one to want to leave before all the balls and parties were over.
“I miss home, Mother, the children,” Lady Abigail explained. “Plus, I fear staying any longer might just cause more trouble.”
“I miss them too,” the duchess agreed. “You don’t have to worry about causing trouble, though. There is nothing you have done or said that could be construed as such. You spoke from your heart. Your brother and I both respect you for that.”
“Yes, well I seem to have caused plenty of trouble with a certain lord,” Lady Abigail said under her breath.
“If there is one thing I have learned from my own years of uncertainty,” the duchess said with a profound amount of wisdom, “it’s that things always find a way to work out. You will get your chance to tell Colton all you want, I am sure of it.”
Lady Abigail smiled. Isabella knew her well enough to understand the particular lord was Gilchrist. Lady Abigail couldn’t help but feel relieved, knowing that the duchess was in sync with her thoughts. With Isabella’s help, she would find a way to make everything right before they had to return to their own country seat.
Chapter 22
As Lady Abigail expected, the Duchess of Wintercrest did arrange a way for Lady Abigail to confront Lord Gilchrist. Unlike before, when he had stayed hidden in his office, he had no choice but to join the guests when a dinner party was again thrown at his house in his own honor.
The duchess had used his trip to America as a reason to have one last dinner party before he left. There would be no way that Lord Gilchrist could escape a party held in his honor. It was Lady Abigail’s chance to confront him and hopefully mend the bond between them.
Lady Abigail dreaded the thought of Lord Gilchrist traveling far across the sea and all the while holding in his mind the thought that she was nothing
more than a silly little girl who had no faith in his judgment.
As Lady Abigail dressed, she took a painstaking amount of time to make sure she looked just right. She had never cared to impress a gentleman with her looks, knowing her natural way was sufficient for her needs. But seeing Lord Gilchrist for the first time in so many weeks made her heart stir with nerves.
She smoothed the folds of her blue velvet dress that contrasted perfectly with the rich, red ringlets she had asked her maid to place in a waterfall effect. She had even taken the time to have a matching blue velvet ribbon woven through her hair along with some pearls.
“Oh, you look lovely,” the duchess cooed upon entering Lady Abigail's room. “That dress does wonders for your complexion.”
“You don’t think it brings out my freckles too much?” Lady Abigail asked, covering the rusty-colored specks along her nose. “Mother always said that dark colors only make one’s blemishes pop out more.”
“You look enchanting in it,” the duchess said with eyes full of truth. “Colton couldn’t ignore you, even if he wanted to.”
Lady Abigail was about to respond, but just then, the duchess grabbed the folds of her dress under her swollen belly. Lady Abigail rushed to her side and sat the duchess down in a chair while she took some steadying breaths.
“Nothing to worry about,” Isabella said, but she still gratefully accepted the small glass of wine that Lady Abigail poured for her.
“Just this little one reminding me the end is near,” the duchess said after a sip. Her tone was very ominous.
Lady Abigail knelt at her sister-in-law's feet. She should have cared how it might wrinkle her gown, but she had no thought for it at the moment.
“Are you scared?” Lady Abigail said, placing a soft hand on the duchess’s belly. She giggled when a kick replied.
“No, not really. It was much scarier the first time around. I didn’t know what to expect then,” the duchess replied, though she was far off in the memory of her twins.
“I would think this would be worse, though, now that you know what is coming?”
“Actually,” the duchess replied with a dreamy look in her eyes, “I think I am more excited because I know what is going to happen. At the end of all the discomfort, I will have a beautiful little angel in my arms.”
Lady Abigail was so mesmerized by the duchess’s words and the impending life that she forgot for a moment what she had planned for the night. Just as the dream began, however, it disappeared, and Lady Abigail was again wakened to her mission.
The dinner party was only the most intimate friends. When Lady Abigail first arrived at Lord Gilchrist’s house, he was not in sight, but it was not long before she found him. He was sipping an amber liquid from his glass by the warm hearth, while talking with a portly man with a thick mustache.
Lady Abigail later learned that the man was the Mr. Henderson who facilitated the work for Lord Gilchrist’s property in the Americas. He seemed a kind-hearted, jovial man. Lady Abigail, however, had one mission that night and she wouldn’t let her mind lose focus of it.
She had to wait, however, until the end of the meal. Lord Gilchrist was seated at one far end of the table, while she was at the other. He seemed to look over the whole crowd with his eyes passing right over her.
No matter how hard Lady Abigail tried to catch his attention for a moment, Gilchrist was adamantly against it.
Lord Gilchrist would suffer this last night with Lady Abigail. He was reluctant to accept Isabella’s idea of yet another dinner party. The last one had turned out so horribly. Why she thought another one would be better was beyond him.
He had to hold onto the hearth when Lady Abigail walked into the room. He was sure he had never seen someone look so stunning as she did that night in her rich, royal blue gown and hair alight in the fire’s glow.
Though he could sense she was desperate to get his attention, he couldn’t bear it. He would have this night pass as quickly as possible, so he could be on his way and out of her life permanently. Only then was he sure he could release the tension her presence created in him.
As the meal finished and all retired to the drawing room for light entertainment, Lady Abigail was sure that this was her time to confront Lord Gilchrist. It was as the night was drawing to a close and she saw Gilchrist try to slyly make his escape from the room that Lady Abigail blocked his path.
With a sharp intake of breath, Lord Gilchrist found himself looking down on the lovely face that belonged to such a vexing angel. He had hoped to make his escape before anyone was the wiser, but it had not escaped Lady Abigail’s notice.
“Could we please speak for a moment,” Lady Abigail said before Lord Gilchrist managed to sidestep her.
“I can’t possibly imagine you or I have anything left to say to each other.”
“Please, just wait,” Lady Abigail pleaded, holding up her hands to stop him. “I cannot bear the thought of you leaving with these feelings between us. There must be a way to make amends.”
Lord Gilchrist faltered in his determination to avoid her at all cost.
“Lady Louisa also spoke of some, well, internal struggles you have. I would hate to think that I might have upset you and made things worse.”
“I promise my sanity is not based on your value of my character,” Lord Gilchrist shot back.
“I am trying to find a way to make this better,” Lady Abigail said, sensing Gilchrist’s irritation.
“Are you still choosing to take Heshing’s supposed character over my own witness?” Lord Gilchrist asked, cutting straight to the point of their difference.
Lady Abigail opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her situation with Heshing was a very complicated one. When she was alone with Heshing, the world seemed so simple and free to enjoy. When she was away from him, it seemed everything around her was pitted against them.
Perhaps it was for that reason only that she felt so connected to the man. Her mother had always teased her, as a child, for loving the wounded and hopeless. Once, when Lady Abigail was a child, she had found a chick that had fallen out of its nest.
Her mother had insisted she leave it be. Lady Abigail, always determined and stubborn, instead put the chick back in the nest. Again the next day, she found it on the ground. The Dowager Duchess had explained that because Lady Abigail had touched it, the mother had rejected her own babe.
Still, Lady Abigail wouldn’t give up on the little thing. She took it into the folds of her gown and brought it home with her. It was Lady Abigail’s greatest wish to nurse it to health. Her mother told her it was of no use as the chick would almost surely die.
Lady Abigail was one for impossible causes. She hoped that this need to help others who seemed to have no hope of their own was not the only reason she found herself holding on to her relationship with Heshing so tightly.
“It is only that…” Lady Abigail started. She could see the cool look in Gilchrist’s blue eyes. It was not what he wanted to hear. “Please, if you will just let me explain.”
“Then explain,” he said, waving a hand to two chairs in a small alcove at the side of the drawing room.
They both took their seats in silence. To any onlooker, it would seem like they were mending what was once broken between them. The storm inside Lady Abigail, however, told her that might not be a possibility.
“It is not that I don’t trust your judgment or your witness,” Lady Abigail started once they were seated. “I just feel that Heshing is seen in an unfair light. He is all alone with no family to support him.”
“Choosing to be alone doesn’t make one rude, irresponsible and reckless,” Lord Gilchrist retorted.
Lady Abigail couldn't help but smile at his words.
“Forgive me,” she said when he was taken aback by her look, “but I sometimes picture you like Heshing. All the stories that Isabella and your sister told me. I just see a lot of those same stories in him.”
“Well, I am not that man anymore,” Lord Gilchrist sai
d, stiffening in his chair.
He didn’t want to have this conversation, and he certainly didn’t want it to become about who he used to be compared to who he was now.
“Would you tell me?” Lady Abigail asked. When he didn’t understand her meaning, she tried again. “Would you tell me what happened to you? We used to tell each other anything. Even the things we said to no one else.”
Lord Gilchrist had shared with Lady Abigail what he could never form into words for another. He was surprised that she had done the same. She had seemed so at ease and her normal self with him. How much of herself did she keep hidden from the rest of the world?
Gilchrist thought the request over as he massaged his temples. It was a scene that played in his head over and over again. That alone should have made it easy enough to say. It was a picture forever in his memory but stuck behind an invisible wall.
He hoped bringing it out and sharing it might help relieve the burden, even slightly. If there was one person who he could share this intimate tale with in all his life, it was Lady Abigail. Though they had their differences, they also had a bond of secrecy.
“It was a fire. I was in a tent with a private. He had been injured badly and was seeing the surgeon. I promised to stay by his side. I don’t exactly remember how the fire started. It engulfed the tent fairly quickly. I was attempting to get the private out when there was an explosion.”
He rubbed his thigh without thinking.
“I am told that some of the chemicals used by the surgeon can be quite flammable. I assume that is what caused the blast. It threw me back and knocked me out. My left side was severely burned, as I’m sure you have noticed,” he added with a wry smile, “and several fragments are embedded in my leg. That’s why I have the cane.”
“And the private?” Lady Abigail asked softly.
“He was just one of the many I couldn’t save.”
Lord Gilchrist hung his head low. There had been many casualties through his choice to go into battle. He had tried not to dwell on all the men under his command who would not come home to their families, but to be in the same room as one and unable to save him had been too much.
