Margaret of the North by EJourney

details she
alluded to, Margaret ended the letter with a plea.
    Write me soon, please, Edith,
for, like you, I need reassurance that you are not unduly worried about me.
    Margaret wrote three more
letters, a detailed one to her brother much like that to Edith, a short one to
Mr. Bell who had written her only once, giving his address, and the last one to
Dixon instructing her to come to Milton with such clothes and other possessions
as Margaret specified.  She finished her letters way past midnight and was too
sleepy for all her usual bedtime rituals.  She had considered borrowing a
nightgown from Mrs. Thornton but by the end of the strained dinner, she decided
her chemise would have to do until Dixon arrived.  Exhausted and shivering in
her chemise, she crawled under the covers and barely had a few moments of
consciousness before she fell asleep, cradled within the warmth of the massive
bed.
     
     

III.
Rekindling
     
    The room was still quite dark
when Margaret awakened.  She could tell it was morning only from a sliver of
light peeking through a gap between the curtains on the one window across some
distance from her bed.  When she returned to the bedroom the past night, she
had not noticed that the curtains had been drawn.  Now, she recalled that the
room had been made rather cozy, with a crackling fire and lamps lighting only
the area around the bed, the darkness concealing much of the vast icy space. 
Her eyes darted around the room, searching for pale or bright colors that
reflected light.  But nearly everything was dark—furniture, walls, curtains,
even the comforter that covered the white sheets on the bed.  At night, the
darkness did not bother her and it probably helped her sleep but, in the
morning, she craved light for the clarity it brought—revealing the world in all
its beauty and its blight—and for the inspiration that renewed hopes and fresh
beginnings.  In both London and Helstone, she had always left her drapes open.
    She got up slowly and, in her
bare feet, skipped on the cold floor towards the window to open the curtains to
their full width.  The gray spring fog diffused the light that came into the
room and made it difficult to guess at the time.  Spring in Helstone greeted
her with luminous colors, bird song, and the heady perfume of roses growing
around their house.  During the first few weeks after she moved to Milton with
her parents, her thoughts on waking up in the dreariness of a Milton morning
were always of Helstone and how much she missed it.  But in time, she forced
herself to suppress those thoughts:  They came too often with sadness at the
passing of carefree halcyon days in the little village.  This morning, her
memories of Helstone did not come with sad regrets, only the detachment of
objective observation.  Somehow, it did not matter much anymore where she lived
as long as it was with John.
    She glanced at the clock on the
writing table—past nine o'clock—and hurried to dress.  She hated to be late for
breakfast but she had stayed up late into the night to finish letters that
needed to be posted right after breakfast.  She wondered what Mrs. Thornton
would say at her tardy appearance and she sighed.  How long was she going to
worry about what Mrs. Thornton thought of her or whether the older woman would
ever warm up to her?  Margaret shrugged her shoulders philosophically: She
would have enough time to worry about such things in the weeks to come.
    While she was dressing, Margaret
was interrupted by a knock.  She opened the door to Jane who carried a large
bouquet of red and yellow roses in one hand and a vase half-filled with water
cradled to her bosom.  "The master asked me to bring these to you, miss.  I
think he wanted to give them to you himself but he did not want to bother you
if you were still in bed."
    Margaret beamed a smile at Jane
and nearly snatched the flowers from the maid's hands, delighted at the
surprise she brought her.  Now, she had