Widow in White

Chapter Five: Joy Bloomed

Two weeks passed, and Neil was still staying with them. He was, as he had promised, civil to Laura, and she did her best, despite his avowal that they would never be friends, to be pleasant to him, but it was awkward between them. Richard seemed to feel it too; he was a little chilly towards Neil, gruff. Laura had hoped that they would make up, now that they were talking in person, but instead, they seemed to be settling into a cool, polite state of affairs.

Laura despaired what might come of it if she did have a baby. That was seeming more of a probability every day now. She was sick every morning, sometimes more than bile, which meant that at night she would slip out of Richard's bed and back to her own to hide it from him. And despite the sickness, she was gaining weight. But still she didn't dare tell Richard what she suspected — there was a chance yet that she was wrong.

One morning towards the end of May, when Laura was lying in bed waiting for the nausea to pass, her maid came up to tell her she had a visitor. As Laura read the name on the card, a feeling of trepidation sank over her.

Jonathan Percival.

"Tell him I'll be down in fifteen minutes," she said.

She spent that fifteen minutes rubbing rouge on her cheeks to hide her pallor and breathing slowly to try and settle her stomach. When she came down to the drawing room, it was empty but for him — thank God that Neil wasn't here today.

He stood up and held out his hand limply towards her. She shook it.

"How pleasant to see you again," she said, with some of Neil's polite civility. "How are you?"

"Not very well." Percival hovered by the fireplace wringing his hands. "How are you? You look very well."

She didn't feel it, but she took the compliment with a nod. "Thank you."

For a moment, there was silence in the room. Percival seemed to be trying to persuade himself to speak; his mouth opened several times before shutting again. At last, Laura could bear it no longer and spoke herself:

"If you've come here to ask for my help, Mr Percival, I think it's beyond that now — I tried before but—"

"I know." He went red. "Perhaps I should have listened. But that's not why I came here."

Then why had he come? Laura felt suddenly uneasy.

"I'm just not cut out for this — this town life, this business," Percival said, running his hand through his hair. "I never should have tried it. I always had this dream of living quietly in a small cottage in the country, with a bit of land... and a family."

Laura's unease became definite anxiety.

"Then you should have sold out when you inherited the factories," she said, knowing it was cruel. "Then you could have had all that. It would have been more than enough to get a small estate, and with what was leftover you could have padded your losses."

Hurt flashed across his face. He turned away from her to stare down into the empty grate of the fireplace. Laura watched his back, wondering if she was in danger or not — not that Percival could ever mean any harm, but very often weak people didn't.

"I'm thinking of going to the colonies," he said after a while, in a quiet voice. "My cousin has a sheep farm in New South Wales."

"Can you do that?" Laura asked. "I mean, aren't your investors — and your debts — going to want you to stay?"

"If I can get on a ship, I can do it. And it's not like I can pay them back if I stay here. I'm ruined either way."

Laura's anxiety subsided. If Percival went to Australia, she would never see him again. Perhaps he'd find what he wanted amongst the sheep. She smiled to herself at the thought of Percival marrying a shepherdess — well, he probably had more chance of happiness in that than anything else.