Page 35 of Fragile Wicked Things

Seventeen

M ost of what little money I had in my purse was spent on a train ticket to New Orleans.

I made my way through the aisles, car after car, searching for a window seat that wasn't near a sweaty man, or a crying baby, or a woman who looked like she would bother me with incessant talk about the weather.

Finding a window seat that would do at the back of a car, I slid over to it, sat down and closed my eyes, resting my head against the wall behind me.

I was going home, where I should never have left.

Thornfield felt near; I could smell the scent of the cherry blossoms, hear the distant sound of an occasional carriage on the road, felt the coolness from the shade under the great oak trees.

My child would grow up in the same home I did, play on the makeshift swing Edward had fastened for me when I was a child, dig in the dirt next to the barn like I did.

My stomach growled. Hunger pains were a daily part of my life at the time, but as my belly grew, they became unbearable.

How foolish of me to not have brought food for the train ride, but with my mind not in the right frame, I was unprepared for the journey.

The crinkling of paper made me open my eyes.

A woman across from me had taken out bread for her two small children.

The boy sunk his teeth into it, yanking at the hard crust. That morning I had some dry bread for breakfast and a little milk, and then nothing after that.

Now it grew dark out, past the supper hour and my stomach growled again, so loud that I thought the family would hear. No one heard my hunger.

After the long, fatiguing journey, the train pulled into Union Passenger Terminal and a warmth came over me, my hunger forgotten for a brief moment, replaced with the knowledge that I was where I belonged.

That burst of energy soon vanished and drearily I walked across the platform, and wound my way down a set of steps through the station that led to the street where I found a carriage nearby.

With insufficient funds to pay for the journey to Thornfield, I offered the driver what I had and agreed that he would take me part of the way.

Although he was reluctant at first, arguing that he didn't wish to leave a woman in my condition out on the roads at that time of night, he acquiesced and took the money from my hands.

When we reached the farthest point my money allowed, he was chivalrous no more, set me down and drove off.

The road was dark. I used the moon's light to guide me, walking with one foot on the dirt road and another on the grass, straddling it so I knew if I veered off course.

My strength was nearly spent, but I would not surrender.

After all, I had to consider not myself but my unborn child.

The fight to continue was my hardship, and I determined it would not be theirs.

I skirted fields and hedges, sometimes veering from the road when it became too difficult to differentiate between the thoroughfare and the mossy ground that wet my shoes.

Homeless wanderer was what I was when I left Charleston, but I would be homeless no longer once I arrived at Thornfield, comforted in Edward's embrace.

Would he have me still? Me who had wounded and abandoned him?

I grew hateful in my own eyes—what would I see of myself when I looked into his dark ones.

I began to weep and a weakness came over me, inward at first, then extended to my limbs until they seized me and I fell.

Delirium had taken over as I was certain I would die on this solitary road.

I could not move forward. Fear overpowered me.

Not the fear of the night or of being deserted on a sparse road, but of being rejected by Edward with nowhere to turn.

Forcing myself to stand, I took refuge under a hedge; the silence stilled me and gave me a moment for reflection.

My fears were unfounded, stemming from the months of abuse at the hands of my husband—the physical, the belittling, the rage.

As long as Edward lived, he would have me and care for my child.

I must not linger there in the dark to die as one defeated and so I set out again.

By the curve in the road, I knew I was miles away from Thornfield, but was the curve the one near the Church or the apple orchard?

In the dark, I could not know for certain, and it was possible I was even farther away than I had thought.

With each step, my strength failed me. The cold air penetrated my thin dress, and a rumbling in the distance grew nearer.

A storm was brewing. I had to get to Thornfield.

Thwack! A lightning bolt hit at a nearby field, and I jumped to look in that direction.

My pace quickened. I rubbed my belly to comfort my baby, then the rain came down, hard, spiking me with its endless needles, turning the ground to mud.

My footing unbalanced, I fell over, hitting my head on the ground and laying still for a time as the night wind swept the rain across me.

My body shook as I wept in utter anguish.

For nearly a year, the gods conspired against me, breaking me down to nothing.

Now as a grand finale, it had brought me to a state of inanition.

The pelting ceased, and the rain sprinkled as if to cleanse me: a rebirth.

I rolled to my side, pushed myself onto my feet and carried forward.

A pain shot up my left leg from where I had twisted my ankle, but I would not die there in the mud like an animal and trudged through the wetness until I stepped onto a laneway that led to a stone and wrought iron gate with the word "Thornfield. " I had made it. I was home.

My limp slowed me down and although each step pained me, I marched on for I could see a light ahead.

Was it the fire burning in the drawing room?

Was Edward reading his poetry? Thornfield stood still in the distance when I heard my name carried on the wind.

"Catherine," it whispered to me, then more urgent. "Catherine. Catherine. Catherine."

Edward. He called my name and ran towards me down the drive, moving at such speed.

His arms wrapped around me, and his lips kissed my forehead, cheek, and neck until I collapsed in his arms. He fell to the ground with me, on his knees, holding me and kissing me still.

He swept the wet hair from my forehead, and a suddenness seized him.

"Is it you—is it, Catherine? You have come back to me then?"

"I have."

Edward swooped me up in his arms as he had that first night he rescued me. He carried me into our home, tracked mud into the foyer and drawing room, and placed me on a chair in front of the fire.

"You're shivering," he said.

Edward unbuttoned the top of my dress, stripped my arms of the sleeves and pulled it down until I sat there in my wet undergarments.

He unbuttoned that next, hesitated and then continued at a slower pace while I took the clips out of my wet hair, letting it fall and drip down the rest of me.

When he had finished with the buttons, Edward held his hand to my face and kissed me.

I helped him get me out of the rest of my wet clothes, and he saw my belly.

It wasn't as though he didn't know, but I suppose being confronted with it elicited a different reaction.

Edward looked at me in all my nakedness, stood and walked out of the room.

I huddled, having just realized that, like the Emperor, I was naked.

I had displeased him, brought my belly to him, as though defiant and insensitive to his particular state.

My worst fear had been realized, and I cried a desperate cry.

"What is it?" Edward had returned and placed a heavy blanket around me.

"I thought you left me."

"Never," he said. "You must be hungry. Let me get you something."

After I ate, Edward spent the rest of the night sitting by my chair, stoking the fire, inquiring if I needed anything.

We spoke little, me from weakness and, as for Edward, I suppose he feared angering me and making me go away again.

That night, he did not ask about James, as though he never existed, as though he wasn't my husband or the father of my child.

When the sun crept into our room, its stream of light edging closer to us, Edward carried me upstairs into his bed in a room cloaked in darkness.

Unraveling the blanket from me, he stared at my belly, kissed it, held it between his hands, and placed his ear to it, listening.

In the dark, he promised he would be a good father and mumbled that he was being given a second chance.

Later, much later, I understood it was his family he spoke about, the one he had before he turned.

Edward climbed into the bed with me, ran his fingers along my nakedness and searched out every part of my body, from my shoulder to my breast, my belly to my legs, and he stopped.

"What's this?" he asked, examining me further.

"There's a mark." I winced when he touched it.

"Did he strike you?" Edward looked at me, searching my eyes for an answer, and when I held my hand up to him, he noticed another welt around my wrist. He held my wound in his hands and kissed it. "Did he?" he said.

I hushed him. "He's gone," I whispered. "Don't talk any more of those days." I dashed away the tears from my eyes. Memories of James were torture to me and, so that Edward would know I was fine, I kissed him on the forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks.

We made love for the first time.

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