The Tutor by Andrea Chapin Page B

“‘My dearest sister, Father’s haste has caused me much grief, but I find solace in his safety and assure you he will be home before the summer crops are sown. I will depart from these burnished hills forthwith and promise to be by your side by the first day of Advent. Kiss mother for me and pray read her this letter . . .’”
    Isabel leapt up, kissed her mother on the cheek and continued, “‘Prithee, tell the family I am eager to return. Your servant and brother, Edmund.’ He signs it Edmund, not Ned, he’s all grown-up now,” she said. “I knew he would come. How I’ve missed him. I’ve grown! He will never recognize me.”
    “He will recognize you, treasure. Your spirit remains the same. Even a blind man would recognize you.” Matilda kissed Isabel on the top of her head.
    Katharine had rarely seen Matilda display such warmth and assumed the news of Ned answered one of her prayers; indeed, she made the signof the cross as she walked toward Priscilla, who, frail and almost blind, was dozing in a chair by the window.
    “Mother,” she said loudly.
    Priscilla awoke. “Yes, yes, yes.”
    “Mother.” Matilda bent down and spoke to Priscilla as if she were a child. “Ned is coming home.”
    Priscilla smiled and promptly went back to sleep. Matilda left the room, Katharine imagined, to kneel in front of the altar in the hidden chapel.
    Isabel threw her arms around Katharine. “What gifts will he bring? I know you asked him for books, but I begged him for a prince.”
    “If he forgets, we’ll find one for you,” Katharine said.
    “For you, Kate, I begged him to bring home a prince for you.”
    “Your kindness overwhelms, but I’ve no need for princes.”
    “I need princes!” Ursula declared, plucking the letter from Isabel’s hand.
    “You have a prince,” said Isabel, snatching it back again.
    “Who?”
    “Richard,” said Isabel, speaking of her half-brother.
    “Richard is no prince. If my parents had not been so eager, if they had been patient—”
    “Let us not talk of gifts or princes,” Mary, Harold’s wife, said quickly, cutting Ursula off. “Let us pray to God for Ned’s safety and health, for he has a long journey home.”
    Mary favored dark colors to light, and coarse fabrics to smooth. She wore no ornamentation around her neck, and her hair was always pulled tightly into a plain cap. A simple gold band was all that adorned her fingers. Mary had wanted to become a nun, but her parents had considered the match with Harold too advantageous and refused her the veil.
    “Isabel,” Mary continued, “rather than imagining the Venetiantrinkets Ned will bring you, why don’t you sit down and put that beautiful handwriting to good use? Write a letter to your sister telling her of your brother’s plans. She will rejoice in the good tidings.”
    “Cousin Kate, come with me. You will write to Grace. You always sound so natural, where I sound silly and stiff.”
    “You flatter me to make your work shorter,” said Katharine. “I am weak and will do as I am bade. My fingers cramp with this stitching, though I doubt they will fare much better wrapped around a quill. Come, dear Isabel, come.”
    Isabel sprang from her chair and grabbed Katharine’s hands in a dance. “Ned, dear, gentle Ned, is coming home!”
    —
    She would not go down. He was sitting under a tree in the rose garden. She was in the library, at the window. The last time she had seen him, she had run from him, run out of the very room she was standing in now. It had been three days, and she had still not found Sidney’s sonnets. With Sir Edward gone, no one else at the hall would know what the pages were, or even care.
    She would not go down. He was working with his hands, with a penknife. Carving a piece of wood, perhaps. He was careful, precise, swift in his movements. She thought of his father, the glover in Warwickshire, a man in a leather smock with hides and skins as neighbors, a man who clocked the hours of