My Dearest Darling

Chapter 51

"I honestly do not know why you keep insisting that I cannot walk wherever you want to take me!" Cora protested as Robert manoeuvred the wheelchair she was sitting in through the hall and into the drawing room, just like he had done the past few months. Although lately, he had more often than not simply held her arm for stability as she walked increasingly longer distances all throughout the house on her own with as little help as possible — and he usually had an expression of pride and joy on his face when she did. They had been slowly working on her condition for the past few months, and Robert had taken even more care of her than before. Ever since he had come home from London to find Doctor Clarkson with her, he had rarely left her to her own devices. He had been most careful and, more often than not, Cora had felt like he was holding her back in her pursuit of recovery. However, she knew without even a shadow of a doubt that his care and attention stemmed from nothing but love, and so she let him have things his way, albeit begrudgingly. After all, she wanted the time with him the doctor mentioned just as badly as he wanted it with her; his pleading and begging seemed to have had a lasting impression on her — as did him beating himself up over it the three separate times she had to tell him that Baxter had to put the salve Doctor Clarkson left with her to use after he allowed her to push herself just a bit too far.

"I know you are getting stronger with each passing day, but it is too far for you to walk, still," Robert gave back quietly. And she could hear the soft smile in his voice.

Hearing this only further infuriated and confused Cora, who huffed in response, her eyebrows knitting together — almost as if she were a sulking child. The sound caused Robert to chuckle lowly, he simply could not take her seriously whenever she tried to voice her discontent that way. He never had and never would. It was only good that he could not look into her face and see her expression or he would not have been able to contain his amusement.

His insistence that she should sit down in the wheelchair and let him wheel her around the abbey when he had come to collect her after her afternoon nap had made her scoff in discontent. Eventually, however, she had given in and let him have things his way and now that they were outside she was even more confused than before. With the help of Albert, who had previously been instructed to follow them to the drawing room, the Earl had carefully lifted the wheelchair through the open glass doors onto the gravel path ahead. She had thought he was merely coming to take her to the library for their afternoon tea and made a detour or took a wrong turn by mistake when he entered the drawing room with her. But then when they had crossed the room, she quickly realised that his steps had far too much purpose in them for him to have mistaken the drawing room for the library. She had also not seen even a trace of her daughters or grandchildren in the abbey and she had not heard any of their voices either, which was very odd. They had all said they would be there for that day when she had asked them. And there had also been no trace of tea, or cake, or sandwiches anywhere, or anything like it for that matter. It was tea time, was it not?

Just for a second, as her husband pushed her along further and further away from the house, she closed her eyes and listened. She listened intently to the crunch of the gravel her husband's steps elicited as he pushed her forward towards the destination still unknown to her, and she listened to his slightly laboured breathing, too. She listened intently to the way the slight summer breeze rustled the leaves on the trees nearby, it almost sounded like a gentle whisper to her. A whisper in the branches that was reciprocated by the flapping of wings somewhere above, an occasional bird's cry suspending the tranquillity surrounding them. It all sounded heavenly to her ears. It was almost as if she were hearing these sounds for the first time all over again in her life. Cora had not been outside like this for months, she had never gone further than a few steps away from the doors leading her back into the sanctuary of her home. She had also refused to be wheeled around the estate by Robert; she had had no particular interest in being seen outside like this. Not even his argument of who could possibly see them who was not aware of her illness already seemed to have had any effect, and so she had stayed inside.