Wellington Cross (Wellington Cross Series) (9 page)

We went back out into the hall again at the same time that Ethan
came out of the dining room with a bundle of pink ruffles in his arms. 
She looked like an angel.  She had light brown curls all over her head,
and she looked at me with big amber eyes just like her daddy’s.  When she
saw me, she put her little fingers in her mouth, looked at me hard, and then
reached her arms towards me.

Clarissa took a quick intake of breath.  “She wants to go
to you, Madeline.  She hasn’t taken well to Elizabeth at all,” she
said.  That made me feel good.

Ethan said, “Lillie, this is your mama.”  He handed her
over to me.  She was still looking at me.  Once I took her in my
arms, she put her hands on my face, feeling it, looking me over real good, and
then she smiled.  I smiled back.  My heart was overflowing with love
for her.  I couldn’t remember her yet, and of course I’d never seen her at
this age before, but I felt a close connection to her.  She laid her head
against my chest, and tears filled my eyes.  My baby girl.  I patted
her on the back and hugged her close. 

Ethan was beside himself.  His face turned red as he held
back tears as he watched us.  I smiled at him, and he walked over and
hugged us both.  Lillie turned her head so she could look at both of us,
and she made happy cooing noises. 

Clarissa was weeping and smiling at the same time.  She
kissed Lillie Rose on the head, wiped her eyes, and told us we could go in the
sitting room if we’d like.  She left us to go upstairs to get a room ready
for me.  I carried Lillie into the sitting room and sat her down on my lap
with me on the sofa, which was adjacent to the fireplace.  Ethan sat
across from us on one of two chairs that faced the sofa on the other side of
the fireplace. 

“I can’t believe how easily she has taken to you,” Ethan
said.  “As mother said, she has not taken to Elizabeth and is very fussy
around her.  We thought it was perhaps because Elizabeth was nervous
around her.”

“She’s so beautiful, Ethan.”  Lillie still had her head
against my chest, and she was holding a strand of my hair in her fist. 

“Just like her mother,” Ethan said. 

I looked at him and smiled, blushing.  “She has her daddy’s
eyes.”

“And her mama’s hair and little button nose.” 

I looked back down at Lillie.  “Hey, Lillie.  I’m your
mama.  I’m so sorry I haven’t been here for you.”  She looked up at
me while I spoke, and then she smiled at me again.  I started weeping
silently and hugged her close.  I had so many emotions going through me
and felt shaky.  “I wish I could remember you,” I said to her, looking
down at the hardwood floor, my head resting against the top of hers, tears
dripping onto her hair.  “I’m going to try my best, I promise.”

I raised my head back up and looked over at Ethan, who had a
hint of a tear in his eye, which he quickly wiped away with his hand. 
“I’m so happy to see this,” he said, his voice deep with emotion.  “You
don’t know how happy.  We’ve both missed you so much.”

I swallowed hard.  That was sweet of him to say.  If I
could’ve remembered them, I knew I would have missed them, too.  “How old
is she?” I asked.

“She’s a year and one month.  Her birthday was in May.”

I calculated in my mind how old she was when I had my accident
and lost my memory.  “So she was only one month old when I had the
accident?”

“Yes.  She was very fussy, has been quite fussy the whole
time you’ve been gone.  Mother and I thought she might do well to have
another female – uh, Elizabeth – around her, but that has not been the
case.  That’s why it’s so wonderful to see her take to you like
that.  She seems happy and content.”

I smiled again.  “Has she been healthy?”

“Yes.  She had a cough over the winter, but she got better
by spring.  She eats well.”

“Does she walk?  Talk?”  My mind was racing, trying to
learn everything about her.  I didn’t remember what it was like to be
around a baby, and there had certainly not been any staying with the
Washingtons.

“No, she doesn’t walk yet, but she can crawl, and she talks very
little, mostly just babbling.”

I looked down at her.  She had fallen asleep in my
arms.  She looked so sweet.  I couldn’t believe how right it felt to
be here in this house with this baby in my arms and with this handsome man who had
been my husband.  I still couldn’t believe my childhood playmate was my
husband.  I wished I could remember growing up with him.  I tried to
picture my life here with him…and with her.

“Ethan, I don’t know how to be a wife or a mother.  I don’t
know how to take care of a baby.  I’m still getting over the shock that I
married my childhood friend.  I wish I could remember how to conduct
myself.”

“You’ll be fine, sweetheart.  You were a wonderful wife and
a doting mother.  You’ve done a lot of responsible things since you grew
up, a lot of things to be proud of…through the war, through childbirth. 
You’ll remember it all in time.  Don’t fret.  It will all come back
to you.  Mother and I can take care of Lillie for now.  You just concentrate
on getting your memory back.”  He stood up and walked over to me. 
“Shall I take her upstairs for a nap?  Then you could get settled in your
room and rest if you’d like.”

I reluctantly let him take Lillie out of my arms, and our arms
brushed against one another in the process.  I was suddenly aware of his
presence in a very physical way.  I looked at him and realized he must’ve
felt the same way.  He just stared at me for a moment and then adjusted
Lillie in his arms.  I had the sudden longing to be held by those arms
again, but not in a childish way.  Even though I couldn’t remember him as
an adult, I did remember his voice and had felt a longing for him.  I was
feeling that same longing now for him, an attraction I felt deep inside. 

I followed Ethan down the hall through the dining room and then
started climbing the staircase on our right, up to the next floor, just as
Clarissa was coming down.  She stopped at the landing and waited for
me. 

“Would you like to see your room?  Jake and Zeke have
brought down a trunk of some of your old clothes from yours and Ethan’s rooms
on the third floor.”  Mother and son exchanged a look when she said that,
and I wondered why.  I simply nodded and followed her to the next set of
stairs to the second floor.  I watched Ethan turn a corner at the top of
the staircase, look back at me, and then continue down the hallway away from
us. 

“Now don’t you worry about a thing, Madeline.  Everything
will turn out all right, you’ll see.  Why, Ethan just about grieved
himself to pieces when he couldn’t find you last year.  He was gone for
weeks searching for you, till he came home exhausted and emaciated.  Then
for weeks on end, he would just sit at that desk in his father’s study and pore
through papers and books, and then go out and work hard all day in the fields
without eating anything, trying to drive his mind away from what he was
feelin’.  His father tried to convince him that you must be deceased, but
he didn’t want to believe it.  Do you remember anything about Ethan at
all?  Or Lillie Rose?”

I shook my head.  “I only remember Ethan as a child.”

“That’s a good start.  Perhaps we can help you remember
more.  I know it’s a lot to take in,” she said, as we reached the second
floor.

The upstairs hall was a duplicate of the one downstairs, except the
top of the staircase was directly across the hall from a door.  There was
no door where the staircase met the upper hallway; it was open.  Clarissa
explained that the stairs on this floor came directly to the hallway instead of
a bedroom because it really didn’t matter if this floor was symmetrical since
only family came up here.  We crossed the hall and went into that room,
which overlooked the carriage drive.  Clarissa told me this would be my
room for now.  “This was Ethan’s old room when he was a child before he
turned 15 and moved over to the bachelor’s quarters next door.  Perhaps
you’ll have more childhood memories.  You played in here from time to
time.”  I looked around, trying to remember.

“Ethan and Elizabeth currently share bedchambers down and across
the hall.  Like I said before, yours and Ethan’s bedchambers after you
were married are up on the third floor.  It is actually the attic, which
was used by our house slaves, including one named Fanny, but since we don’t
have slaves anymore and Fanny was the only female house servant left, Ethan
talked her into moving above the kitchen house where Cora and the girls will be
living now.  He wanted to convert all the rooms on that floor into private
living areas for the two of you after you were married.  That way, he
wouldn’t have to build a new house, which of course he couldn’t afford to do
anyway.  He worked on those rooms as soon as he got back from the
war.  You know, he’s not gone up there since you left.  He moved down
to the second floor when he came back from looking for you.  He said it
was just too painful to be up there without you.  Those rooms have sat
empty for a year.”  That must have been the reason for their shared look
earlier.

“Tell me about Elizabeth,” I said, looking out one of the two
windows overlooking the carriage drive and tall oak trees. 

Clarissa hesitated before she began, and turned around to close
the door.  “Well, she showed up here one day, looking for work.  It
was not long after you and Fanny disappeared.  She said she came from City
Point, and that her parents, Joseph and Anne Tyler, had been killed in the war,
and she was left alone.  She claimed the Yankees did awful things to
her.  I don’t know; I guess they did.  Anyway, she ran away from her
home when the Yankees came in, and claims she hid in the well of an abandoned
farmhouse here in Charles City County.  Now, tell me how you can live in a
well?” she asked dramatically. 

“Anyway, after the war, she wandered here looking for work as a
house servant.  Since Fanny was gone and I had no house servant, I invited
her to stay and work for us.  Elizabeth moved into the room up above the
kitchen house, since Ethan didn’t want anyone to live up on the third floor
rooms, and that way he wouldn’t have to move into the bachelor’s
quarters.  She wasn’t the best housekeeper or cook, but she tried
hard.  Well, she took one look at Ethan and how handsome he is, and she
was smitten.  He was distracted at first, of course, out looking for you,
gone for a week at a time, and when he was here, he was busy in that study,
like I said before.  Once he gave up the search, he went into a deep
melancholy.  Elizabeth saw that as an excuse to be around him, bringing
him food and water, and doing all sorts of things to get his attention. 

“One day she slipped and fell, broke her ankle.  Ethan
found her lying on the ground crying because of the pain and because she was
worried about ruining dinner, which had spilled when she fell.  After
that, he slowly started coming out of his melancholy and started talking and
paying more attention to her.  He waited on her with that broken ankle,
helped her walk again, and went for rides with her on horseback.  Next
thing you know, Ethan says they are getting married.  He tried to convince
us it didn’t matter that she was poor, that she had lost everything, and he
felt pity on her.  He also wanted a woman – other than me, you know,
someone younger – as a companion to help take care of Lillie, thinking it might
be good for her.  They’ve only been married a month.”

She paused for a moment to let it all sink in; then she
continued.  “Elizabeth is a sweet girl, but Ethan doesn’t love her the way
he did you – still does.  He told me so before the wedding.  He
wondered where you were, if you were watching him from heaven if you were
deceased, and if you would hate him for marrying this new girl.  He told
me he wanted so much to have you back, that he would never love Elizabeth as
much as he loved you, that he still wasn’t happy per se, but he felt he was doing
the right thing by marrying her.  He said that since she helped him out of
his melancholy, he wanted to take care of her in return, protect her since
she’d been through a lot, and to give Lillie a surrogate mother.”

I felt a little resentment that Ethan tried to replace me. 
Would he have married just anyone, to get rid of his loneliness and provide
Lillie with a new mother?  Was that the right thing to do?  Perhaps
he was simply having a hard time getting over losing me, so soon after the war,
and needed companionship.  He was still probably haunted by the war. 
Still, I couldn’t and didn’t want to imagine him being…intimate with another
woman.  I felt jealous, even that my childhood friend had been with
another woman.  And that longing that I’d felt for him made my stomach
turn with thoughts of him perhaps longing for this other woman in the same way.

Clarissa turned to go out the door.  I stopped her. 
“I’m sorry I lost Fanny, your house servant.  I have no idea what happened
to her.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.  The good Lord will take care
of her or else she may be up there with him now.  And besides, you have
more than made up for it by bringing me three servants to replace her with,”
she said, laughing.

“Thank you for saying that.”

“Don’t you worry about a thing, now.  Just work on getting
your memory back.”  She patted me on the arm.  “My husband, Mr.
Wellington, and I are right down the hall on this side, if you need
anything.”  She looked down at a trunk on the floor.  “Here’s the
trunk Jake brought down here with your clothes.  There are only a few
items since clothing was scarce after the war, but at least you’ll have
something else to wear besides what you have on.  I suppose you lost
everything in the fire, didn’t you?”  I nodded.  Even the blue dress
Jefferson bought me, I realized.  I wouldn’t miss that, since he’d bought
it for me.  “Later on when you’re feeling up to it, we can go over to see
your brother, if he’s back from traveling.  He’ll be just thrilled to see
you again.”  She left me in the room alone with my thoughts.