Chapter Text
“You did not give me the chance to do right by you, Miss Hale. You did not trust.”
- Recall
There were six of them about the big dining table in Marlborough House. The gentlemen—and Higgins and Williams—were rising from the table with a coughing and a stirring. Margaret Hale perforce rose as Hannah did, and gave a formal bow, humble in the face of Mr Watson’s displeasure. Hannah cared naught for it. She had faced down a riot, in her time. This new son of hers would learn the granite of her ways soon enough.
“This is on your head, mother,” Watson said, turning his hat in his hands. “Oh, Fanny sends her love, and asks will you come to dinner on Sunday?”
“I would like that, Hamish.” His Christian name was uneasy in her mouth, and likely in his ears too, but she let it pass.
Miss Hale was about to follow him out the door when Mrs Thornton put her own hand on Margaret’s and said: “No, bide a while. Miss Hale. I don’t like how pale you’ve been. Sit, if you please and take your dinner with me.” So the girl sat and stirred food on her plate while Mrs Thornton exerted herself to be civil. “Nursing’s hungry work, lass. If you don’t eat, you’ll put yourself in a state.” Hannah watched, grimly, as Margaret at last put a bare mouthful of mashed potato and gravy in her mouth. “I cannot think,” she said to break the silence, “what’s gotten into our John lately. All of a sudden he’s been in a right pother. I’m worried he’s bringing on a new brain fever.”
She rather thought that Margaret would have flushed, if the young woman had had enough blood in her to sustain it. “No,” she said quietly. “I’m sure he’s fine. It’s—he heard Dr Donaldson and me speaking, and I think it’s worrying him.” The girl set her fork down. “I’m so sorry, Mrs Thornton. I just didn’t think. I never thought he’d remember something like that. I don’t think Dr Donaldson did, either.”
Mrs Thornton looked sceptically over the table at her. “Some business with your father, I suppose? Or—?”
—or the business at Outwood Station, but that had never been further discussed between them.
Margaret frowned, scowling at her plate. “No, it isn’t that. It’s just that—it’s just that—I think I’m with child.”
“You?” For all her walking about with strange men in the night hours, Margaret Hale carried about her an air of virginity that was almost offensive in its purity. “You think? What cl— fairy tales has your mother been putting in your head? Surely she’s not told you that God simply places a babe in—” She made a sudden sharp vexatious sound. “Do you even know what it is to lie with a man?”
Miss Hale’s voice was very small. “I know.”
Hannah Thornton let out a great gust of breath. “Then what has my doctor been telling you? More fairy stories, I suppose.”
“No. He was kind. He said that things sometimes… ended on their own. Or that I could try to unblock my courses. I never thought about it that way before. I don’t think I ever thought about it at all.”
“That, my girl, I can see.”
***
When Dr Donaldson called that afternoon, he was grimly escorted upstairs not, as he usually was, to the master of the house, but to Mrs Thornton’s room in which resided a very subdued Margaret Hale.
“What is the matter precisely?” he asked with civility.
“The matter?!” Hannah always knew that she sounded sharp when she was feeling cross. She tried to amend her tones, although in the doctor’s case, the cause for vexation was great. She closed the door behind them. “Examine her! I’ll have no one worrying themselves sick about a make believe pregnancy. Is she or isn’t she?” And with that, she settled heavily into her chair to sit through the business as chaperone.
The doctor’s investigation was brisk and as impersonal as such an affair could possibly be. At the end of it, he took Mrs Thornton out into the hallway to converse with her in discreetly muffled tones. When she entered again, Miss Hale was still sitting on the bed in chemise and drawers, the palms of her hands pressed flat against scarlet cheeks.
“Yes, I know,” Mrs Thornton said, with as much softness as she could muster. She gathered up Margaret’s gown and offered it to her. “And worse to come. The babe comes out the way it got in,” she explained, “and naught to do but grit your teeth and let it happen.” She had never been good at sympathy. “I’ll not leave a girl in your condition alone in a place like Crampton. I’ll come by tomorrow with the carriage so you can bring your things to this house. You may stay here until you’ve sent for your lover.”
“I will write to my aunt,” Margaret said. She had dropped her hands on her lap, and was sitting very still, save for her fingers rubbing against each other.
“As you think best,” Hannah said. “I—I would appreciate it if you brought my John his tea before you go. He’ll be in a fret all evening if he doesn’t lay eyes on you.”
***
Margaret Hale was not packed with her things, in Crampton Crescent, at the hour appointed.
She was not in Crampton Crescent at all.
Mrs Thornton barged into the house, past the maid Dixon, who was ready with protests. The house was near ripped apart, with packing crates open and stuffed with wood wool and straw. Hannah peered into the little study cum dining room on the ground floor. Hale’s books had been crated up, with some sorry pieces of furniture looking nude and bereft. The carpet had been rolled up, and the room was filled with that dustiness that even the best kept houses acquired during removals.
“I’ve had no instructions,” Dixon said behind her.
Mrs Thornton poked through an open box filled with papers. “You’ve had the will sent to the probate court, I suppose?” There were unpaid bills in the pile.
“I’ve had no instructions,” Dixon repeated.
Hannah turned around and faced the maid squarely. Dixon was an old family retainer, trusty, from the way Margaret spoke of her, but still at heart a servant. She looked at the papers again. Miss Hale had shown herself a sensible girl when it came to accounts but—and here, Hannah regretted her own self-absorption—but Margaret had spent the last three months preoccupied with Marlborough House business. It was her John, clever, interested, busy John, who would have gone poking into the Hale’s affairs and corrected any fault.
She followed Dixon, who had left the room. In the kitchen, the little fat woman was washing dishes, banging them about her with a great crash.
“Where is your mistress?” Mrs Thornton asked.
“She did not care to say.” Beneath the wobbly chins, Adele Dixon looked to be setting herself for a fight. “She’s not running your errands, then? My Miss Hale has been busy enough with Thornton business over her own,” the maid added, dismissively. That was the trouble with old, loyal servants, Hannah thought. They took everything so personally. But Dixon was still talking: “of course, the Thorntons have made her their business. Well, your son did, obviously. It’s you that doesn’t know what’s due.”
Hannah froze, a sudden ghastly suspicion running through her mind. “You are impertinent,” she said, to buy herself time.
“Am I?” Dixon’s voice was tart and acid. “I’m also a laundress. I know how to keep my linen clean.”
“You dare–?”
But there was a voice behind her. “Dixon! You will not speak so to a guest in our house.”
Margaret Hale was standing in the hallway in a snuff coloured travelling habit. Her skin was the pale lily-green of a plant that had been kept too long inside. Her eyes were blazing with fury. Hannah looked past her—there was a carpet bag on the sideboard that had not been there before. She broke the silence with bustling. “Good, you have your things ready. I’ve the carriage standing to outside.” She turned to the maid. “Since you’ve asked for instructions, take these: pack up the furniture and the, the books, and send them by carrier to Marlborough Mills. It can be stored in the warehouse until this business is managed and a sub-let found. These papers I’ll take with me and hand to my man of business. You, Dixon, are to pack up your own things and follow to the mill when the house has been packed, where you will care for your mistress. Do you understand?”
Dixon was a bulldog after her own heart. “Perfectly,” she ground out.
***
In the carriage, Margaret Hale stared straight ahead. She would have been as still as a statue if it were not for the swaying of the vehicle.
Mrs Thornton schooled herself to calm. “Miss Hale,” she began. “I once spoke to you in the place of your mother. I spoke harshly, I know, but as truly as I could. You do not have your own mother to confide in, and I beg that you will be frank with me, so that I can do my best for you.”
There was silence. Margaret was staring into the middle distance, her wide mouth stoic and still.
“I cannot help you, if I do not know the facts,” Hannah tried again, but it was no good.
When Margaret Hale entered Marlborough House, it was with her head held high, carrying her own bag. She did not look back.