Page 64 of A Night of Secret Surrender
Shutting the portal, she made certain Loring slumbered, piling up pillows all around him to see him safe. Then, tidying her hair in the mirror and straightening her clothes, she followed the servant downstairs, her heart beating at twice its normal speed.
This time her grandmother was sitting fully dressed at a table in an alcove to one side of a yellow drawing room. She was dressed in an austere navy gown, her hair tightly bound, and she looked so much more like the woman Celeste remembered.
‘Please come and join me for a cup of tea. I have a new shipment just in from India. The East India Company imports it and one has to put one’s name down months in advance to procure even a small container.’
‘Thank you.’ Her grandmother’s voice sounded feeble and weak, just a ghost of the tone Celeste remembered. She waited as the maid standing behind her moved to pour the tea. The porcelain pot was painted with a variety of exotic-looking birds, their feathers brightly coloured and finely drawn.
‘The leaves are ridiculously overpriced, of course, and with the government’s penchant of raising the taxes on tea to be able to afford England’s expensive wars there is no telling how much higher the asking price will go. In fact, I buy it mostly because Alexander is so very fond of it, but I lock the caddy now so that the staff do not pilfer the leaves, which is rather upsetting.’
As her grandmother rambled on, Celeste found herself bemused. All these words meant nothing. They were fillers in the air with no meaning in them at all save for wasting time. She shuffled her feet beneath the table, a coldness all around her. Autumn in Sussex. Already the leaves were falling and the first winds had grown cold. Soon it would be winter.
When the older woman dismissed her maid and the door shut behind her Celeste tensed.
Alone now. Just the two of them. The steam from the china cup plumed in the air, the smell of foreign lands on its edge.
‘Why have you returned? Why now, after all these years, have you come back?’
The gloves were off and the fight rose in Celeste’s throat, only to be squashed down with a true effort. She had no other option, no safety net. The next moments were important.
‘I have nowhere else to go.’
‘Your mother told me exactly that when she arrived home from France and we all know how that turned out. Badly. A dissolution of the mind. I doubt I can weather another loss of the same ilk.’
‘I have a child.’ Four words that sat in the air like firecrackers, exploding with consequence and weightiness.
‘And the father?’
Celeste shook her head. She could not place Summer’s name in the ring of fire.
Her grandmother stood, fingers whitened where they held on to the table.
‘How old is it?’
‘He is nearly five months. His name is Loring.’
The opaque glance of her grandmother was sharp and she looked each and every one of her seventy-two years.
‘He? He is a boy and he is here?’
‘Upstairs. Asleep.’ Celeste found she could not quite make a full sentence; her mouth was so very dry.
‘I see.’
Her grandmother signalled her servant and then without another word she was gone.
* * *
Celeste was summoned to her grandmother’s room again the next morning, though this time she was asked to bring the child.
Snatching Loring up from where he lay, she changed his swaddling cloth and tidied his face and hair. It never hurt to put on your best face, she thought, as she saw the woman who had come to fetch her watching them.
Her grandmother was in bed today which was surprising, a deep blue shawl draped about her shoulders. When the girl left her in the room and shut the door, the older woman began to speak.
‘I am tired today, Celeste, a fatigue that is coming more and more often upon me of late.’
‘Then I am sorry for it. I hope you start to feel better soon.’
‘Could I see him?’ Her eyes were on Loring, tucked up against Celeste’s chest and still half-asleep.
