brandbury hall; part 5

Jeremy

I couldn’t sleep that night. I had too much on my mind. Charlotte, Miss Brown, and the fact that I saw Miss Brown practically drown herself in an attempt to save Charlotte. I couldn’t make sense of this. It didn’t match anything I knew of her. It didn’t match her snooty behaviour, her quiet and proud disposition, her delicate nature, and her selfishly childlike needs. Besides, what were the two of them doing out there? What events brought about such a disastrous end? With so many questions left unanswered, I did as I had done so many nights before: I took a stroll.
     I often did this whenever I had a problem I couldn’t solve or a nightmare or because my head was too full of thoughts to sleep. More recently, including this night, it had been the latter. Thought after thought haunted and taunted me to the point where sleep was futile, forcing me to stay up into the wee hours of the morning. I would often end up in the stable or down in the servants quarters, folding laundry for the sleeping women to find in the morning. This night found me in front of Miss Brown’s room, staring at the doorknob, wondering if I should open it or leave. My hand extended, touched it, and dropped. I sighed. Am I such a coward? I promptly opened the door and walked through.
     The room was silent. She was no longer muttering her comforting words. She was asleep and peaceful. The fireplace still burned, but it was on its way to dying. I stoked it for a moment or two, added an extra log, and stood to watch it burn. The sound of the fire crackled, ending the silence. I hoped it wasn’t enough to wake her.
     I moved from my spot by the fire to beside her bed. She had been stripped of her wet things to be bundled in new, warm sheets. She looked far warmer and comfortable than she had earlier this afternoon. Then, the blood had gone from her cheeks and her lips were a sickly shade of blue. Now, her cheeks and lips glowed red with life. She looked very beautiful in this peaceful slumber.
     I turned from her and sighed angrily. I was so confused and torn by my feelings toward this woman. She was a stuck up, English lady from royal class who had all the manners in the world but no feeling heart in her. Yet she had saved the life of a young servant girl and practically sacrificed herself to do so. The two facts didn’t add up. It frustrated me so. She can’t have both traits. One’s got to go. And I’m determined to figure out which one.
     I turned back around and planted my feet firmly. “Alright, Miss Brown,” I breathed. “Time to find out what makes you tick. Even if I must sit here all night.”
     She stirred and slowly awoke.
     I should not have spoken aloud.
     “What?” she murmured, still on the edge of sleep.
     I swore to myself and knelt by her bed in order to communicate with her. “Miss Brown?” I whispered louder. “Are you awake?”
     That was stupid of me. Clearly she is, imbecile.
     She moaned and attempted to push herself up. I stopped her quickly. “No, no, Miss Brown. Stay there. Don’t try to move. Rest,” I gently commanded. She relaxed into her pillow again. Her eyes hadn’t opened yet. “Tell me how you feel.”
     She sighed heavily. Obviously she was finding it difficult to wake. “Tired,” she moaned.
     A wave of disappointment washed through me. I couldn’t force anything out of her tonight. She had to heal. I had to be patient. “Then,” I submitted, “you should go back to sleep.” She sighed . . . relief? Or simply sighed? Probably the latter. I figured her to be asleep already. Nonetheless, I wished her, “Sleep well, Miss Brown,” and to my surprise, she softly thanked me.

And to my surprise again, I was woken early the next morning by request to visit Miss Brown before breakfast. Quickly, I readied and sprinted to the second story and softly rapped on her bedroom door. I thought I heard a reply from inside, so I let myself in.
     “Miss Brown,” I addressed her, bowing humbly and lowly. “You asked for me?” When I rose, I saw that her bed curtains were parted so as to see her propped upright in bed. She wore modest bed clothes, unlike that of which she wore the night before. But I’ll never tell her that. She still looked very tired, but along with drowsiness sat an expression of embarrassed confusion. She looked as if to say something but couldn’t quite find the words to say. Had she remembered my visit from the night before? Was she embarrassed? Was she angry?
     She fought internally with herself for a few more seconds then managed to come out with a “Yes,” and motioned to the chair positioned where I had stood last night next to her.
     I sat and patiently waited.
     A couple times she inhaled to speak then decided differently. She would occasionally get so close as to make a sound, but then used the noise as a voiced sighed. She was really having difficulty with this.
     Eventually, I grew tired of this charade and interjected, “You might as well just say it.”
     She looked me square in the eyes and blurted out, “Did you come here last night, or was I dreaming?”
     I chuckled at her mortified state, and also at my wonderful intuition. I nodded my head in acquiesce.
     The breath she was holding flew out of her mouth. “Thank goodness,” she breathed.
     “Thank goodness for what?” I disputed. “I invaded your living space. I would have thought you’d hope it was a dream.”
     She shook her head vigorously. “If it was a dream, and you thought me mad that would have been much worse.”
     I didn’t see how, but I shrugged and accepted it as she continued, “I asked for you because I wanted to know if you wanted something.” Her expression was one of expectation. Expecting what, I didn’t know. She carried on: “You came here last night and asked me how I was feeling. In the middle of the night. Now, either you were terribly bored, or you came here for something. I want to know what you wanted,” she repeated firmer.
     I sighed heavily. It felt awkward talking to her. We hadn’t said much of anything to each other over the past month. I was acting ridiculous. Be a man.
     “I came to ask you why you jumped in after Charlotte.”
     My admittance was not what she was expecting. She lost my eye contact, in order to think, then met it again with her answer: “She’s my friend.”
     Payback. I say what she doesn’t expect; she says what I don’t expect. Fair.
     “Your friend? What were you doing outside near a half-frozen pond?” I challenged.
     I’d offended her. She refuted, “We were playing in the snow, if you must know. That morning she bounced all the way to breakfast about how she did her chores extra early so that she would have time to play outside with me.” She eyes were burning with anger, and to my amusement, she sarcastically remarked, “Do you have any other questions, investigator?”
     “Just one more: you don’t like me very much, do you?”
     “HA! Well, there’s something you’ve got right. Ever since I’ve been here, you’ve been nothing but rude to me, and I’m sorry if I was rude to you that you’re acting this way. I know I stalked away from you, and I’ve asked God’s forgiveness for that. He’s forgiven me, and you should too! You ignore me, you abuse your employees, and—“
     I started to stand in fury “Hold your tongue!”
     “And you are nothing more than a spoiled rich child that can’t do anything for himself!”
     “STOP!”
     I’d knocked over my chair and my fists were clenched with the anger that coursed under my skin. How dare that little brat!
     “How DARE you accuse me of abusing the servants here! Maybe that’s common in your country—“
     “Oh, yes. My country. The little American brat is now going to tell me about my country—“
     “—but I have NEVER lifted an angry fist at a single one! In jest, yes, but—“
     “Yes, I’m sure you thought it was in jest, but I’m also sure those poor stable hands—“
     “Stable hands?”
     “Yes. Madame told me that you often roughhoused with them. Just because they don’t do their job to your satisfaction does not give you permission to—“
     I lost control and broke into rolling laughter. Roughhousing! She thought roughhousing meant that I abused them!
     Needless to say, she didn’t like my reaction.
     “MISTER BRAND! I refuse to see you mock the lives of these hard working—“
     “We’re . . . friends!” I managed between breaths. “Sean and the boys and I . . . we mess around . . . like brothers . . . I’d never . . .”
     Her face went blank. She found this very hard to comprehend after all her assumptions. “Friends?”
     “Yes,” I said, relaxing. My ribs ached from laughing so hard. “Like you and Charlotte? Sean and I. We’re best friends. Along with all the other men down there. That’s why I’m out there all the time. I’m not playing the boss and telling them what is what. I’m helping. Madame often thinks we play more than work (which unfortunately, on the right day, can be true). But I care for my mare, Temperance, and help with the other chores that need to be done in the stables. I do the same with the laundry and the garden, on occasion.”
     She was so very shocked that she had nothing to say, but I was finding that I finally understood our dilemma.
     “I think what must have happened,” I spoke as I thought, “was that . . . each of us drew an image of the other, and we made the other the ‘antagonist,’ so to speak. It’s true, though, that I didn’t want to have the wrong influence on you and make you think you had to do extra chores and work like I did, so I told you that I was overlooking the work, not helping. I never knew you weren’t the pompous palace brat that hated everyone underneath her because I never got to know you. I never gave you a chance to warm up to the place.” I was realizing it as I gave my speech. “I believe this is entirely my fault.” I knelt where I stood, my face to the floor. “Forgive me, Miss Brown.”
     She might have hesitated or contemplated, but she soon placed a soft, delicate, and weak hand under my lowered chin to see my humbled face. “You’re forgiven,” she finally pronounced. “But I am also at fault here. I judged you far before I should have. I’ll pray to God to forgive me. Will you, Mister Brand?” Her expression was concerned and apologetic.
     I smiled. “Of course, miss. Now that we have this misunderstanding behind us, I believe it is time for you to start calling me Jeremy,” I suggested.
     A sheepish smile came to her face. “Very well. Then I suppose you can call me Arianna.”
     “Ahh . . .” I exclaimed. “Ah-rianna. That is so much easier to say than Air-ree-an-na.”
     She giggled and grimaced as my America enunciation. “Yes. It is, isn’t it?”
     “Well. Would you like breakfast brought to you, Arianna?”
     “Oh, only if it is not too much trouble. Thank you.”
     “Very well.” I stood once more, much calmer this time, and headed for the door.
     “Oh! Mister—“ I turned to her. Her mouth was clamped shut at her mistake. “Jeremy,” she tested, “Please do tell me how things are coming along with Charlotte when you get the chance, will you?”
     I bowed for the third time that day and promised, “As you wish.”

Arianna

I watched Jeremy leave my room with a lighter heart than when he arrived. What a mess I’d gotten myself in. I promised to always be perfectly clear and honest with a person from the start so the opportunity of misconstrued ideas to come about would come and go much quicker and hopefully less painful. In this case, we had both been at fault. How very immature of us, making assumptions and believing rumours and judging each determined on first impressions. Very immature indeed. My heart, recently so troubled and heavy with burden, now felt too light, dangerously so, as if it could float into the sky and never return. Such an overwhelming peace came over me that, had I been standing, I would have liked to take the nearest seat.
     Breakfast came much sooner than I’d expected. Not by the hands I’d expected either. No sooner had he left than he came strolling back into my room (at my admittance). Jeremy, tray in hand, sat my meal in front of me, righted his seat, and kept me company as I ate. I admitted that I didn’t have much of an appetite, but as we chatted, Jeremy stole bites here and there of my unfinished breakfast until my play was empty.
     When I questioned him on his immediate return, he simply answered, “I thought of more questions.”
     He asked me if the rumours he’d heard were true, that I was so spoiled that I refused to live in my aunt and uncle’s house in England, that I demanded to be relocated to a household of more wealth and lavishness that satisfied my expensive desires.
     I rejected this twisted truth with disgust and offered my own: that my aunt and uncle thought it best for me to leave the country in hopes that I would settle down. “I was unaware that I would be residing in a household of such fortuitous gain,” I explained. “I was told that Madame was a friend of my grandfather’s who owned a business and some land, not half the state of New York and a mansion.”
     He chuckled without humour. “It would surprise you how much of this,” he gestured around us, implying the house, land, and business, “she actually owns anymore.”
     “Oh?” My interest had been piqued.
     “Mmm. So was it your hope to find a husband or your aunt and uncle’s?”
     I didn’t even notice the topic change; he was so deft.
     “No. It was—is—not my idea at all. They just wanted a proper excuse in order to motivate me to . . .” I was searching for a phrase that didn’t give too much away. I did not want to end this conversation in discussion about my family. I did not want Jeremy pitying me. But Jeremy, sensing my internal struggle, changed the topic once more.
     “So if that was your aunt and uncle’s excuse, what was yours?”
     “What?” I dumbly asked.
     “Why did you leave? If you had no intentions of marrying or . . . something else, what was your reasoning for leaving your own country to venture a new one?”
     My old composure fell into place, the one that had taken over during the months when Lucas and I were the only people inhabiting our worlds: my eyelids drooped in exhaustion, my shoulders sagged forward, my breathing became slow and heavy as if each breath was a burden to take. I stared, unseeing, at the man in front of me. I hardly knew him and I didn’t trust him, yet for the first time since Lucas passed, I shared my reason for living with another human being: “I want to live my life.”
     After a torturing moment, Jeremy spoke, “Charlotte is doing fine. Granted, she hasn’t woken yet, but she was in the water longer and also doesn’t have a strange man tormenting her dreams at night.” A chuckle escaped his lips and he glanced at me in my misery. “But she’ll awake soon enough, and I imagine by that time, you should be up and about enough to pay your neighbour a visit.”
     Jeremy had an impeccable sense of intuition, for her kept moving the subject at exactly the moment I most needed it. It appeared as if he knew everything already and was sparing me the difficult parts. How considerate of him.
     The term he had said piqued my interest though. “Neighbour?” I thought I felt the ice of my torturous misery begin to melt.
     “Yes,” he confirmed. “She’s just next door. I thought you would like her to be close.”
     Deeply touched, I laid a hand on my heart and uttered a sincere, “Thank you, Jeremy.”
     He smiled, probably more from my awakened and more humanly state than from my thanks. He replied, “The very least I could do, miss. I apologize that I couldn’t do more.” He began to rise, replacing his chair to the desk from whence it had been taken. As he returned to my bedside to take my breakfast tray, he excused himself, “I should let you rest. I’ll interrogate you some other time when you’re healthier.”
     “Will you come back?” Since I’d had his company, I’d found it did as much good to my soul as sleeping did to my body.
     Obviously taken aback by my too frantic query, he assured me, “If you desire it, of course. And when I come, I’ll bring an update on Charlotte.”
     I felt myself grow drowsy. Before I shut my eyes, I muttered, “I would like that.”
     “Very well,” I heard him say. After a moment, I heard the soft thump of the door swinging shut.