Page 35 of Beware A Wallflower's Wrath
What can fill up a room but take no space?
Looking on the opposite side, she found the answer.
Love.
The bell above the door tinkled. Annis walked to the railing and caught her breath. “Rabbie! Ye’ve come back to me.” She hurried toward the steps, meeting Rabbie halfway down. She flung her arms around him, and he caught the iron banister to keep them both from falling.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had such an enthusiastic welcome except, perhaps, from Mac,” he said with a chuckle. Then he kissed her with all the longing harbored in her own heart that long, long week.
Robert sat at the kitchen table with Annis and Finlay. His heart was almost full. The only blight upon this day was Anthony.
“He just needs time to come to terms with it all,” said Annis. “I canna imagine ye raised a boy to be so arrogant. He was in shock and said those things in anger.”
“I shouldn’t have let my temper get the best of me. But when he started spouting nonsense and sounded like my own father—and his grandfather—I…” He blew out an exasperated breath.
Annis covered his hand across the table. “Ye’re only human, Rabbie.”
“I feel as though my broken heart has healed being here with both of you, yet a corner of it has been torn away.”
“What if I wrote to him?” asked Finlay.
Robert wanted to hug the boy. “It wouldn’t help, but I appreciate the offer.”
“Fin has a good idea. What if we both sent Anthony a letter? Tell him about ourselves and how we look forward to meeting him someday, when the time is right for him?” Annis nodded as she spoke. “Let him ken our offer to join this family is always open. Then Rabbie will again offer to spend part of his time in London and part of here.”
“I won’t be separated from you again,” he said, panic rising in his chest.
“We are no’ married,” Annis said quietly, “and I ken now that ye will always return. If a compromise will eventually bring him round to us, do ye no’ think it would be worth the time apart?”
He sighed, seeing the wisdom of her words. Hope flared again. Could they all be a family? There was nothing on this earth he wanted more.
“I’m willing to try anything.”
The next week, Annis found a new riddle. She had scoured the shelves and there had been no more slips peeking from the books. When had he managed? She read the paper:
It is mine, but ONLY you can keep it. What is it?
She turned the slip over for the answer.
My heart
That night, she took the flour tin from the shelf to start some dough. Lifting the lid, she found another slip. Laughing as she blew the white dust from the words, she read:
You see a boat filled with people, yet there isn’t a single person on board. How is that possible?
On the other side was written:
All the people on the boat are married.
Hmm. Annis was beginning to sense a theme. If this continued, she’d have to come up with her own riddle to answer the anticipated question. Excitement tumbled in her belly as her mind whirled with possibilities.
“Ma, do ye think Anthony got our letters?” Fin waved two sheets of paper at her from the doorway.
“I’m sure he did. Ye wrote a lot of pages, so it may take him awhile to read it,” she teased.
Fin’s neck turned red. “Was it too much?”
“No’ if ye wrote it from yer heart. Put it on the counter downstairs.”
