Nothing on Earth & Nothing in Heaven

by Susan Fanetti

  But he was rested and calm nonetheless, and the night had not begun as if it would be restful. Alone with Nora entirely, trusted with her, for the first time, he’d felt the full impact of his responsibility—his culpability—for her and what had happened to her. She said she didn’t blame him, but she should. Things had moved too quickly that night in Dover, he’d been already too full of conflict for what they’d done, what he’d allowed to happen, and he’d simply reacted. If he’d stopped to think, he might have found a way to defuse Chris’s anger, at least long enough to find a way to bring Nora with him.

  But he remembered her words of that night, her demand to have her own will respected, and her assertion just this night past that she wouldn’t have been ready to run away then. She didn’t blame him because she didn’t think it was his fault.

  Maybe it wasn’t. But it felt like his fault. He couldn’t shake the guilt. Now that she was with him again, and the horror of her past year was carved into her very flesh, the guilt hung on him like a lead weight on his soul. Every time he looked at her, he saw what he’d abandoned her to.

  The worst was knowing that people who truly loved her had let this happen. He’d abandoned her, thinking he was saving her. Chris had sent him away to protect her. Lord Tarrin, her father, had meant to help her. Even as William was appalled at her father’s actions, he understood how and why he’d thought he was acting in Nora’s interest—up to the limit, of course, of rejecting the truth of her disappearance. They’d all been trying to care for her, and their arrogant, ignorant ideas of ‘care’ had done this to her.

  Now he was here with her, alone, and she honestly needed to be cared for. She was weak and battered, unsteady in mind and body. Just to look on her made him want to wrap her in cotton batting, hold her close, and protect her from the world. He ached for each bruise, each scrape, each dark hollow where rosy health belonged. And he was scared to death that he might do her more harm while he tried to help her.

  That was the thought that had kept him from his narrow bed last night.

  The wind picked up again, shaking the limbs of the winter trees against the windows, and the glow through the curtains dimmed and softened. Clouds were rushing in, he thought, swaddling the sun. Maybe this would be another day of rain. English winter seemed to mean a lot of rain and dreary chill.

  Nora moaned quietly and tensed when a branch scraped the glass, and William tightened his hold of her until she relaxed again.

  Nell, the maid, would arrive soon to begin breakfast, but he was in no hurry to rise. Nell had assumed that Nora was his ill wife, and no one had disabused her of her thinking. She wouldn’t be shocked to learn they’d spent the night together. And she was very well paid to keep the secrets of this cottage, in any case.

  He meant to lie exactly where he was until Nora woke and no longer needed the comfort of his body. She wanted him to be with her while she found her own way, and he meant to be and do whatever she told him she needed.

  Even if she someday told him she needed him to go.

  Dr. St. John tucked her stethoscope and other tools into her medical bag. “You’ve come quite far in only three weeks, Nora.” They’d set aside her title, so that she retained her anonymity in Bath. “Your heartbeat is stronger and steady, your bruises have faded, your color overall is better, and you’ve put on some weight. Without a scale, we can’t be sure how much, but I’d say as much as ten pounds. Are you taking food easily?”

  At William’s side on the sofa, Nora nodded. “I am now, yes. Nothing too much, but my sense of taste is coming back, and my stomach stays settled.”

  “Excellent. Keep on as you are—small portions of simple food, just a bit of spice or seasoning for flavor. Plenty of dairy and bread. When we have fresh vegetables again, you can add those. It will take some time—it’s not only the starvation but also the damage that was done when they fed you that you must recover from. But you’re doing very well, dear.”

  “Thank you.”

  The doctor pulled a small chair close to the sofa and took Nora’s hand. “How are other things going?” With her free hand, she tapped her own temple.

  Nora turned to William, but he only smiled. He wouldn’t answer for her. She cleared her throat and faced the doctor again. “Nights are hard. Especially when the wind blows. The trees near the house, the branches scrape, and it sounds … I don’t like it.”

  “Is it keeping you awake? If you think you’re not getting enough rest, I can prescribe a light—

  “No! No drugs!”

  Dr. St. John smiled. “I understand. What I would prescribe would be very light, but I understand. Perhaps some warm milk before bed.” She glanced at William with a wry smirk. “Can you work a stove, William?”

  Ironically, he could work a rustic camp stove, or an old fashioned wood stove, but it would take him some time to figure out the more elaborate gas-powered model in the cottage kitchen. He, too, had lived a life where other people did such things for him. “I can learn.”

  “So can I,” Nora said, and William grinned to hear the irritation in her voice. She was getting her verve back, and the vivid gleam in her beautiful eyes.

  “Good, excellent,” the doctor said. “And otherwise, your mind is good, your thinking clear?”

  Nora was quite open about her healing, and her struggles. She didn’t hide behind pride and denial. William admired that—she didn’t seem to see her weakness as she recovered as a defect or even a true lack of strength.

  “Sometimes, the world slips a bit,” she said now. “I don’t know how better to explain it. There’s just a moment, a few seconds at most, when I suddenly don’t believe I am where I am. It’s almost like that feeling, I’ve heard it called déjà vu—do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “It’s not quite that, but like it. It’s how I felt all the time at first, but now it only happens once in a while. A few times a day. For that moment, I’m quite afraid, but then it passes, and I’m here and safe.”

  She smiled at William. He returned it and brushed his fingertips over her soft cheek. “You are.”

  “That’s to be expected, dear,” the doctor replied. “Your mind was under a great deal of stress for several months, particularly in those last weeks.”

  Nora laughed. Though her voice had returned almost to its previous timbre, this sound was harsh. “I find it so bitterly ironic that people who thought I was mad nearly made me so.”

  The doctor sat back and brushed her woolen skirt smooth over her lap. “This isn’t a world for women like us, Nora. Not yet. It takes force and pain and strife to rend the fabric of the world wide enough to fit a new piece into the weave. We are that new piece, and we will make room.” She paused, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Your aunt asks after you often.”

  Nora’s back straightened with tense attention. “What do you tell her?”

  “I tell her nothing. You’re my patient, Nora. No one else has a right to know what we discuss, unless you wish it so.” She glanced William’s way as she added that last clause. “But I wonder if you might like to speak with her. She might help you order your thoughts about what happened.”

  “No,” Nora scoffed. “She sits in Kensington and serves tea whilst other women do the hard work and take all the risks. She’s not a fighter in the cause. I’m not a fighter in the cause. I went to a single protest, and I didn’t even understand what was happening, and then I was arrested. It all happened to me. I’m not a woman like you.”

  “That’s not true, dear. Even if your description of that day is perfectly factual, it’s not true. I don’t know you well, but I’ve heard many stories in the past few weeks. I’ve read your prison file and your hospital record. And I’ve treated you. You are a fighter, and you’ve sacrificed much for the cause, long before that day. You are a suffragette, Nora.”

  Nora broke into tears. When William moved to take her into his arms, the doctor caught his eye and shook her head. Understanding, he kept his plac
e and waited for Nora to need him.

  She didn’t. After a moment, her tears subsided with a sigh. She swiped them from her cheeks. Over the span of these weeks together, he had said all the same things, but Nora had brushed them all away, unconvinced. She’d needed to hear them from another woman. Someone who understood in a way he could not. Someone speaking not from a place of sympathy but of empathy.

  “Thank you,” she said to Dr. St. John, as if the doctor had bestowed a great compliment on her.

  And she had.

  I feel it might be time to press the point. You say she’s stronger now. Perhaps if I’m simply there, she’ll have no choice but to see me, and she’ll be well enough to cope. If I can only speak with her, I know I can make amends. Will, it comes to this. I miss her. My heart is so broken it hardly beats. It was my job to protect her, and

  “You’ve received a letter? Is it from your mother?”

  Nora had come to the door of the tiny library. She enjoyed the letters his mother sent, full of news about the transition to suffrage in California and the continuing fight for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as gossip about social goings-on in San Francisco. His father sent updates about the company—which was recovering from the retribution of wrathful associates for his mother’s political victory—and added a paternal line or two to the end of his mother’s newsy letters. Neither of his parents begrudged him this trip to England or the extended time he was spending here. Even his usually gruff father had a soft spot for true love.

  William folded Chris’s letter and tucked it away. “Not my mother, no. Your brother.”

  Nora made a face like the words had carried a bad smell. “Oh. Never mind, then. Do you think it’s warm enough to walk?”

  With another week, and more improvement, Dr. St. John had added fresh air and exercise to Nora’s recovery plan, as well as twice-weekly visits to a Roman bath. Nora had taken one medicinal bath and hadn’t liked it, but the walks excited her. She couldn’t go far, only a mile or so around before her feet ached and her breath strained, but she was happiest outdoors, and most like herself.

  She didn’t like being seen, however. Aside from limited concern about being recognized, she was self-conscious about her hair. It had grown out just enough to have softened and shown a bit of curl, and Nell had helped her trim it to even out the choppy edges, but she hated to show her hair in public. A cold day like today—they’d had a dusting of snow that morning, but the sun had come out around noon and cleared it away—would give her ample opportunity to stay covered.

  “I think if we bundle up, we’ll be fine,” he assured her.

  She grinned and clapped like a girl, and William laughed. She was coming back, finding her way.

  She needed more than simply a brisk walk in his company, though, to truly find it.

  Bath was an ancient city, and the architecture showed its thousands of years of history. In some areas, one might almost expect a Roman chariot to careen around a corner. Their little thatched cottage, perched on a hill outside the city, had seemed ancient to William until he’d seen those old streets up close.

  Their walks didn’t take them into Bath, but they did come to a small gap in the line of trees along the road, at just about the time Nora needed to rest before turning back, from which they could see much of the city below. Even from afar, it seemed older than old.

  America really was an infant country. When these edifices had been erected, the land of William’s birth had been a wild thing, unfathomable by people like them, and hardly a permanent structure anywhere across thousands and thousands of square miles—except in the Southwest, where the Pueblo tribes had built their cliff dwellings and adobe towns.

  As they stood at the clearing and studied the vista, William hazarded a topic he knew Nora wanted to avoid. He knew better than to bring up her father, who still had no idea that she’d been found. William imagined that Chris, who stayed in contact with their father, and kept this profound secret, was crumbling under the combined weight of guilty obligation to both sister and father. And Chris sincerely understood his culpability and wanted to make things right. William thought Nora was unfair to refuse his attempt.

  “Chris wants to see you.”

  She sighed and pulled her gloved hand from his. “You know how I feel.”

  “I do, and I won’t press you. But in the letter that came today, he sounds like he might show up uninvited. I think you should be prepared for that.”

  She huffed her scorn and stomped closer to the edge of the hill. William followed. “Why must it be what he wants? Why does he feel it’s his right to force upon me something he knows I don’t want? Well, I’ll not see him. I want nothing from him, or any of them.”

  He caught Nora’s hand again, and turned her to him. “You know that I’ll stand with you, whatever you decide. But Chris is why I’m here. He wrote me and asked me to come back. He was integral to finding you and getting you out of that place. He knows he was wrong.”

  “And that changes nothing about what happened, does it? A year, William. More than that. We lost more than a year—and I lost more than us. I lost everything because he took it upon himself to ‘protect’ me. My love, my freedom, my health, my mind, everything. He sent you away. I think asking you to come back is the very least he could do, and not nearly enough.”

  “All right. I won’t bring it up again.”

  “Thank you. Might we walk a bit farther today?”

  “Are you sure?” Usually, she was flagging by this point and at her limit by the time they made it back from here.

  She sucked her teeth at him. “I am sure enough to suggest it, am I not?”

  Still not convinced she had the physical strength to extend their stroll, he couldn’t help but chuckle. “You’re right. Let’s go on.” He’d carry her back if she couldn’t make it on her own. If she wanted him to.

  They walked along in companionable silence for quite a bit longer—he guessed nearly another half mile—until they arrived at a tiny old pub with a well-aged wooden sign hanging above the door. The Yellow Hare.

  “Do you have money with you?” she asked, gazing up at the sign waving lightly in a chilly breeze.

  “I do. Do you want to go in?”

  “Yes, please!”

  “Have you ever been in a pub, Nora?”

  “No! Isn’t it exciting? And I could use a rest before we start back.”

  She wore simple clothes—a dark blue wool skirt, sturdy button boots, a ruffle-collar striped blouse, and a heavy wool coat, with leather gloves, a knit scarf around her head and neck, and a simple, flat-crowned hat. Her aunt had assembled a small, unassuming wardrobe for her as part of the preparations of her rescue. It was important that she not appear to their neighbors here like the daughter of an earl.

  Even dressed humbly, she was the picture of a proper young lady of the common class—someone who, if she worked at all, was a teacher or a nurse, or a librarian. Maybe a secretary. A pub like this wasn’t the kind of place she’d be expected in.

  “You’ll draw notice, Nora.”

  Her pretty lips, healed now except for a few fading marks, twisted into a moue of irritated thoughtfulness. “Not much, I daresay. Just a woman out for a pint with her man. How unusual could that be?”

  “Fairly unusual.” He opened the door. “But after you, darling.”

  Nora’s head swiveled to and fro as they went through the small, low-ceilinged pub—an establishment hardly unique among probably thousands across the British Isles. The clientele was entirely male and wholeheartedly of the labor class. Denim and flannel, canvas and corduroy, flat caps, heavy mustaches, and cheap tobacco. Every squinty eye followed Nora as they walked through.

  Hoping to find one of the small rooms places like this sometimes had, where a woman could sit and not be of such interest—he thought they were called ‘snugs’—and finding nothing like it, William led her to a table at the far corner. They sat facing each other. He made sure to take the seat that
showed him the whole room.

  Bath was known for its luxurious hotels and inns, where the wealthy stayed when they came to partake of the baths, but this old place outside the city was a workman’s pub. He wasn’t sure he should have conceded to bringing her in, but as Nora defined her boundaries, she took any push back, any suggestion that she didn’t know enough, badly, and he was on tenterhooks, trying not to get in her way.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to fight for her honor. There were a lot of strong men in here, so late in the afternoon.

  As William was about to explain that he’d need to order at the bar and ask her what she wanted, she leaned in and said, “There are no women here at all! Are even common women allowed only tea or sherry, and to gather in drawing rooms?”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, that’s just silly. Men are ridiculous creatures, you know that. You run everything in the entire world, and yet still you need secret places to hide in, and laughable rules about what women can and can’t do, where they can and can’t be. You’re very fragile, aren’t you?”

  Though he didn’t disagree with her actual point, William found himself offended nonetheless. “I wonder how you think I should answer that. I, too, am a man, after all.”

  She performed a theatrical sigh and rolled her eyes. “Because obviously I was attacking you directly.” The sarcasm was so thickly acidic it practically hissed around the words.

  Oh yes, her verve was back—and free of restraint.

  He was perfectly happy to engage in a lively debate. “Should we count how many times you said the word ‘you’ in that claim?” He ticked them off on his fingers. “You run the world … you need secret places and laughable rules … you’re very fragile …”