Page 32 of The Duke's Wicked Widow
Wincing, Ellie made a mental note to ask the coachman not to show the little girl any more bodily tricks.
“What are you doing?” Merida asked, pulling out of Ellie’s arms and twisting to look at the papers on the desk. “My nurse said you were writing your correspondence, and I wasn’t supposed to bother you, but this doesn’t look like letters. I told my nurse letter-writing wasboring.Do you think it’s boring?”
Since Merida had glanced up when she asked that question, Ellie considered it. “I…guess it is, a bit. But what are the alternatives?”
“You can govisitthe people you want to talk to.”
Society had all sorts of unwritten—and occasionally written—rules about what a mourning woman could do. When she could visit, how she should dress, what she should say, when she was allowed to emerge from her apparent cocoon.
Does losing one’s fatherandhusband in short succession mean the mourning rules are doubly enforced?
Truthfully, what shewantedwas to turn her back on Society as her sister had done. Escape to the country, somewhere no one knew her or cared. A year ago Ellie had been considered the Catch of the Season, despite her clear inadequacies, merely because of who her father was.
Now? Now she just wanted to make her own rules.
But she couldn’t tell Merida that. “What about the people who live far away? I had to send quite a few letters to people all over England, who wrote when your Papa died.”
The little girl had climbed up onto the opposite chair as Ellie spoke, and now propped her chin in her hands, her little rear end sticking up in the air. “What did they write?”
“They wanted to tell me how sad they were that he had died, because he was a good person.”
“I’m sad he died, too.”
Ellie nodded gently. “He was in so much pain, Merida. He loved you, but he is free of pain now.”
As the little girl’s eyes—so much like Rufus’s, so much like Fawkes’s—grew sad, Ellie felt another stab of guilt. Merida clearly mourned her father, so why didn’t Ellie? Why had Ellie only felt relief at Rufus’s death?
Because you knew him for such a short time before he grew ill. Merida had known him her entire life.
Yes, there was that. Ellie promised herself, yet again, that she’d always take care of the little girl. Not for Rufus’s sake, but because Merida was a wonderful person who deserved all the best life could give her.
“What did you write back?”
Ellie had been woolgathering. “Who?”
Merida used her feet, hooked through the chair’s arms, to pull in up against the desk. “The people you had to write all those stupid letters to.”
“Well, I thanked them for their kind words and assured them that your papa cared about them, as did I.”
“Do you?”
Ellie opened her mouth to sayYes of course, only to find herself admitting the truth. “I do not know most of them.”
“Ah.” Merida nodded knowingly, in only the way a child could. “So this is one of thoselittle lies can make people feel goodsituations.”
“You are quite smart, you know.”
The little girl sighed hugely and rolled, flopping over the desk, smooshing some of the papers. “Iknow. You tell me all the time. But I still think writing letters is silly. I would rather tell the person the little lie in their parlor while drinking tea and eating cake.”
“Well, yes.” Ellie hid her grin as she tried to extricate her work from the hurricane that was her stepdaughter. “But that is not always possible, if they live far away. There are not any alternatives.”
“Yes there are!” The little girl sat up suddenly. “What about those flags? I saw the men on the ships use them once when Papa took me to the river.” She jerked her arms out, one at her side, one right above her head. “They waved the flags around like this”—elbows straight, she jerked her arms in various configurations—“and Papa said that’s how they communicate when they are far away from people, and it’s calledsedda-pore.”
Ellie kept a straight face as she nodded. “Semaphore,” she corrected. “And yes, that would work well, if we both understood semaphore and could see one another.”
Merida flopped forward bonelessly once more, crushing the notebooks. “How about telegrams? Those are easier to write.Thanks for kind words stop I like you bunches stop love Ellie stop.”
Imagining sending such simple correspondence, Ellie froze in the act of stacking her notebooks, and allowed a giggle to slip free. “That would be much easier, would it not? But I would have to go to the telegraph station.”
