Sanditon: A Sisterhood Forms

68

Bedford Place — London

The light flickered with each fresh crack of the fire. The heat upon her cheeks had faded a fraction as the flames lowered gradually in the grate, offering a reprieve with each emphatic pop. But there would be little chance of escaping into sleep.

"Mrs Parker, Ma'am..." There was a hesitancy in the voice of her housekeeper, and she at once could not blame her for it.

"Yes, Mrs Cole, what is it?"

It should be Linton there in the doorway. She looked round the study once more. And Sidney... he should have been there behind the desk, as he so often was at this time of night.

Where were they? And where, she thought, more ominously, still, was Georgiana?

She couldn't help but wonder. The very thought consumed her with the passing of every hour, as each sounding of the bell in their clock tower announced a fresh reminder that Georgiana may be in very grave danger, indeed...

"There is a lady at the door, Ma'am."

"At this hour?" Mary squinted up at the clock, "Why, it's half past four." The sun hadn't risen; and she felt the quiet, still, of the street outside.

"Indeed it is, Ma'am."

Silence fell about the room until another pop! brought her to. She had been up all night, it seemed. "A lady, you said?"

"Y-Yes, Ma'am."

Her heartbeat quickened.

"Then you must invite her in."

No words were spoken as Lady Susan entered the room. Mary merely sat, entranced by the fire, waiting for the sound of the retreating footsteps of her housekeeper.

"Dare I ask," she said, at last, her eyes moving down to her hands, "if there has been any word from them?"

"No news, just yet," said Susan, a rustle of skirts settling in the chair beside her and yet, the words did not do the same.

Mary swallowed the tightness forming in her throat, her eyes still upon her hands.

"And you expected to hear from them, by now?"

"I had hoped, dear," came her reply.

They sat in silence, then, Mary staring at the floor, her eye caught by the brightness of firelight invading the shadows, overtaking it, then receding again. The room felt very cold, suddenly.

"I find...," Susan said, "A sense of disquiet has quite taken over me."

Mary couldn't help the trembling that overtook her, sudden tears falling from her eyes. "I haven't slept," she said, then.

"Nor I," admitted Susan.

"I have the most dreadful feeling," she said, "Perhaps it's the mother in me, but..."

A silence fell. Even within the walls of the study, alone with a trusted friend, she could not admit what she dreaded most.

"Is this how it always is?" Susan asked.

Mary turned away from her friend, not quite knowing where to look until the fire caught her attention again, reeled her in, reminded her of its warmth. Susan needn't have said more. For her thoughts had turned as they so often did, back to the scent and sound of them, the feel of tiny hands in hers, the ache she felt now at the distance between her and the children, always present when she was away, "Yes," came her reply, "They never stray far from your mind."

"And the worrying..."

"Relentless," she said, wiping a tear from her cheek.

"I must admit," Lady Susan breathed, so still that not a single rustling of skirts could be detected from her direction. Mary looked over in time to see that she had closed her eyes, "that I've felt at a loss as to what to do."