Chapter 19
For two more days following their meeting in the tower, Isabella had not seen Elliot anywhere. But she had not looked for him this time, knowing that he would send for her when he was ready.
Isabella had caught his strained, exhausted expression when he had finally turned back from the window to reveal the good side of his face once more. But it was enough for her to see how the retelling of it all had almost brought him to his knees; it had taken so great a toll on him.
And when he had reached out to take the doll from her, holding the lifeless thing for the first time in many years, Isabella could almost feel how overwhelmed he was.
When she had offered to walk back along the woodland pathway with him, she had not been at all surprised when he had declined. And she had not been hurt or offended either, knowing that she would have relished her privacy had she been in his place.
All in all, Isabella had begun to feel that an important corner had been turned. Elliot was in pain, she had no doubt of that, but perhaps Crawford had been right. Perhaps Elliot had needed to move along in the mode of his grieving.
And Isabella could not help thinking that if there was an end in sight to his fierce pain, that the two of them might really be able to concentrate their efforts on spending more time in each other’s company. Perhaps even truly find that familiarity which would make her as comfortable to look at Elliot as Crawford and Kitty were.
On the second night without any sign of him, Isabella felt reasonably content. The worry she had suffered that she would never see Elliot again, that she would see out her life miserably alone in Coldwell Hall with an unseen husband, had all but vanished. They had come to a better understanding out there in the tower, and she knew it.
Isabella had made it clear that she had been working without knowledge because he had never given her such knowledge. And he had provided it almost immediately.
Isabella had settled down very quickly that night, turning off her small gas lamp early as she felt sleep begin to take her.
In no time at all, she was sleeping peacefully. That was until she heard a noise on the other side of her chamber door. She knew she had certainly heard something, for it had ripped her from her slumber and forced her to sit upright in her bed almost immediately she had heard it.
Surely there was somebody outside the room. Almost frozen to the spot, Isabella stared out through the darkness, willing her eyes to see. Would the door handle move slowly as the person on the other side of the door sought to gain entry at last?
As Isabella began to grow more conscious of her senses and surroundings, she tried to rationalize her fear away. After all, who could it be apart from one of the servants, Kitty, Crawford Maguire, or her husband? Surely an intruder would have been discovered before getting so deep into the house. And how would such an intruder ever make his way into the grounds in the first place? The hawthorns and leylandii were, she knew for certain, utterly impenetrable from the outside. Being designed to be just that, the perimeter was carefully maintained, she knew.
And so, it must be Kitty. But why would Kitty hover outside? Surely, she would just quietly make her way in.
Common sense told her it could not be Crawford Maguire either. There would be no sense in him coming to her room at that hour, and she knew in her heart that he did not hold any inappropriately romantic inclinations towards her, his friend’s wife.
It had to be Elliot, there was no other explanation. But the idea suddenly made her feel unsettled. As hopeful as she had begun to feel for thoughts of her own future with Elliot, she was not yet ready for him to appear in her own quarters, day or night.
Hardly breathing, Isabella listened for any sound outside but could hear none. She had been sitting rigid and unmoving for many minutes and knew she could not remain that way all night.
In the end, she re-lit her oil lamp, wincing at the sound of the match as she struck it and it flared. The room seemed suddenly huge, with all shadows banished and all clear space returned to her.
Isabella looked all around the room, her eyes finally alighting on a white rectangle on the dark wooden floorboards by the door.
It was a note, surely.
Isabella got out of her bed as quietly as she could and made her way across the room on tiptoes. She swooped down to pick it up and hurried back to her bed, the feeling that someone was still on the other side of the door not having left her entirely. She climbed back into bed to read the note by the light of the oil lamp.
“My Dear Isabella,
Please forgive the dreadful tension of these last days and understand that I would not have visited such tension upon you purposefully. But regardless of that, I think there is still an apology to be made to you, and I shall make it now.
I had wanted to find a way to apologize and think that I have found a very fine way. When you awake, you will find my apology in the library waiting for you.
Thank you for your patience and your kindness in the tower. I shall never forget it.
Elliot.”
Isabella read the note over and over again. It was short and to the point, but she appreciated its sentiments nonetheless. And he had signed it simply Elliot, with no other term of endearment. But what, in all honesty, ought he to have done?
They were married, yes, but they were still only just starting to get to know one another. Isabella would not have known quite how to sign such a missive herself and had a sudden image of Elliot leaning over the thing for hours as he tried to decide how to end it.
With such musings out of the way, Isabella began to wonder what could be waiting for her in the library. She knew that an apology could not be literally waiting for her there in the darkness, silently whiling away the hours until she awoke. It must be a gift of some sort, or perhaps even Elliot himself, suddenly wanting to apologize to her in person.
In the end, Isabella’s curiosity threatened to overwhelm her, and she was suddenly up and out of her bed once more. She lit a candle, thinking it to cast a more discreet glow for the midnight wanderer, and turned her oil lamp down once again.
With a shawl around her shoulders, Isabella crept to the door, opened it, and listened. There was nothing.
She continued along the corridor to the great staircase and stopped to listen again. The house was in complete silence. For a moment, she wondered if she ought to creep silently through the corridor to the other end of Coldwell Hall, to the room she knew was Elliot’s own. But her nerve had deserted her before she had even decided to do it and, in the end, she began to silently descend the staircase.
In no time at all, Isabella was outside the library door. It was fully closed, which was most unusual.
In the daytime, the door always stood ajar, and at night, if Elliot was in there playing his violin, there was just enough of a gap through which to peer into the darkness within.
Isabella stood motionless and undecided for several minutes as she tried to strain her hearing for any tiny sound from within.
When she discerned no movement at all, she finally turned the handle and slowly pushed the door inward. She held the candle out before her for a moment as she stared into the room. Elliot was not sitting in his ordinary place by the fire, and the fire was not lit. The room was empty, surely.
Isabella made her way in further and realised that there was something in the library which had not been there before. With a gasp, she walked over to a large piano, its glossy wood glinting in the candlelight.
Was that it? Was the piano his apology? She looked all around it for another note; anything that would give some indication as to the new piano’s sudden appearance.
But there was nothing.
She looked all around for anything else that might have changed in the library and could see nothing. So, the piano must be Elliot’s apology.
With her curiosity almost assuaged, Isabella made her way silently back upstairs to her own room.