Page 2 of The Seaside Homecoming
The elderly retainer retreated. Claire helped the woman lift her head enough to sip water. Despite the care she took, liquid dribbled from the corner of her aunt’s thin, wrinkled lips.
“Clumsy girl. I did not ask for a bath,” she grumbled, although her tone lacked bite.
Claire quickly retrieved a linen napkin and wiped the water away.
The butler returned a few minutes later, a folded note now occupying the silver tray. “If Miss Summers will not receive him, he asks that she do him the honor of reading this.”
Another scowl crossed her aunt’s lined face. “Give that to me.” Her hand flashed forward with surprising speed.
It was not the first time Aunt Mercer had insisted upon reading a letter addressed to Claire. In this case, Claire felt more curious than resentful, since she truly had no idea what message the stranger might wish to impart.
Aunt Mercer unfolded it and read silently, the line between her sparse brows deepening.
“What is it?” Claire asked. “What does he say?”
“Nothing to speak of. It seems this Scotsman met your sisters in Sidmouth and wished to pass along their greetings. As we have made it abundantly clear they are not to contact you...” She shook her head in disgust and began refolding the note.
A greeting from her sisters? Emily’s doing, she guessed. Claire’s stomach rumbled, hungry for news of her family. Loneliness gnawed at her, body and soul.
“Might I read it for myself?” Claire asked. “Or at least thank the man for taking the trouble of delivering it?”
“No, you may not.” Agnes Mercer extended the letter toward the hovering butler. “Dispose of this.”
He hesitated. “Shall I put it in the drawer with the others?”
Others?The word jangled in Claire’s mind. She knew of only one. Had there been more?
“This one’s not worth saving. Burn it.”
Aunt Mercer had allowed her to read and respond to one letter, and she’d dictated every word of Claire’s reply to discourage Emily from writing. Had her sister written again anyway?
With a regretful glance in Claire’s direction, the butler dutifully took the message from his mistress, crossed the room, and tossed it into the fireplace. The flames leapt up to consume it.
Claire sank into a nearby chair and watched the paper blacken and wither. Gone in a moment, like her former life and hope for the future.
Sarah Summers stepped onto Sea View’s veranda to shake out her broom, then paused to breathe in the fresh air of a beautiful Devonshire morning. She glanced toward the grey-blue sea to the south, and then to the west, where a sea of yellow daffodils was beginning to fade on the hillside, soon to be replaced by red poppies, orange lilies, and perhaps even purple-crowned thistles, which grew wild there.
Thistles were the symbol of Scotland, and Sarah could never think of them without remembering Callum Henshall. The handsome Scottish widower and his adolescent stepdaughter had been their first guests last spring. She still could hardly believe she had been bold enough to write to him. She had never done something so forward before.
It had been Emily’s idea, of course. A fortnight ago the three of them—Emily, Viola, and a reluctant Sarah—had gathered for a private meeting while Georgiana was at the charity school visiting Cora, her favorite of the children there. The topic of the meeting? What to do about Claire. They had not included Georgiana because she had never been told the real reason their eldest sister had gone to Scotland. And they had not included Mamma, because she was still determined to obey her husband’s edict. Papa had disowned Claire and forbidden Mamma from harboring her or even speaking her name. And she had chosen to honor that request even after his death.
“We must do something,” Viola asserted.
“Why now,” Sarah asked, “after all this time?”
“Because we have tried to contact her several times and have received no reply save the one I showed you last year. Remember?” Emily asked. “The brief reply to the first letter I sent, basically telling me to respect Papa’s wishes and not to write again?”
Sarah did recall the only letter they’d received from Claire in the nearly two years she had been absent. When Sarah had read it for herself, she’d had to agree with Emily that it did not sound as though Claire had written the cold, impersonal letter. Yet Sarah had recognized her handwriting.
“And she signed itClarice,” Emily reminded them. “I used to call her that sometimes, sarcastically, when she ordered us around like a parent rather than a sister. ‘Yes, Clarice. Right away, Clarice.’”
Viola said, “I remember that.”
“I think it’s a hidden message,” Emily went on. “I think Aunt Mercer told her what to write and Claire was letting us know in a subtle way. Agnes Mercer is Papa’s aunt, after all, and she is apparently determined to enforce his final edict, just like Mamma.”
Sarah nodded thoughtfully as she considered that possibility.
“I wrote to her again anyway,” Emily added, “to invite her to my wedding. No reply.”
