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“If you plan to snitch to my parents, Ellen Copley, you can tell them I am very happy—and proud—with my choic
e!” She shook her head slowly, her voice shaking. “I never took you for a snob.”
With that, Jed and Louisa walked out of the churchyard together, and Ellen was left standing there, blinking back tears of rage and misery.
The injustice of it burned in her soul—she, the lass from Springburn, a snob! And yet the words she’d so harshly spoken were the words of a snob, and patently untrue. She’d spoken them from malice and hurt and fear. And she’d never, ever wanted Jed to hear them.
Yet he had, and there could be no taking them back. There could be no going back, Ellen quickly realized, for both Jed and Louisa avoided her, and she spent as much time as she could alone and aching in her room. For the first time she looked forward to leaving the island with a quiet, miserable desperation.
For the sake of the family and the anticipated celebration, Ellen pulled herself together to participate in the opening of presents, the grand goose dinner, and the parlor games and sleigh rides that no Christmas would be without.
Yet her distracted air, the pall of misery that hung around her like a gray cloak, did not escape Rose.
“Are you quite well, Ellen?” she asked quietly one evening when the two of them were seated alone by the fire.
Ellen looked up from the novel she’d been trying to read; she’d barely turned a page. “Oh, yes, Aunt Rose. It’s been a lovely holiday.”
“Has it?” Rose pursed her lips in a knowing way, but left it at that. Ellen was suddenly aware of Louisa’s absence in the cozy parlor; Jed had taken her for a sledge ride. Lucas had invited Ellen, but she’d pleaded a headache.
“It’s never too late to mend things,” Rose said quietly, and Ellen looked up in uncomfortable surprise. The last thing she wanted was for her falling out with Jed to be noticed, or did Rose just mean Louisa?
“I’m just tired, Aunt Rose,” she said firmly. “Nursing school has quite fatigued me. I’m sorry if I don’t seem myself.”
“No, child,” Rose replied with a weary smile. “Don’t be sorry.”
Now all the farewells had been said, and Ellen and Louisa, Lucas and Peter were climbing in the sledge to take them back to the train and Kingston.
Ellen pulled the traveling rug over her; the air was freezing and still. Louisa sat next to her and wordlessly Ellen handed her a bit of the rug. Jed, at least, had not come to say a touching farewell to his beloved.
“All ready?” Captain Jonah called cheerfully, and then he cracked his whip and the ponies began their methodical trotting, the sleigh skimming across the hardened crust of snow.
“You haven’t asked,” Louisa said into the silence, her voice low enough to reach only Ellen’s ears. “So I’ll tell you. I love Jed and I hope to marry him.”
Ellen stared out at the flat stretch of snowy lake, amazed at how she felt nothing at all at this revelation. “Has he asked you, then?”
“Not yet, but I think he will.” Louisa grabbed Ellen’s sleeve with one mittened hand. “Ellen, look at me! You’ve been as pale and lifeless as a ghost these past few days. What is wrong with you? Is it because of Jed?”
“Louisa, please!” Ellen glanced quickly at Lucas, who was engaged in a conversation about ice fishing with Peter and Captain Jonah. “You must stop these theatrics. I’m not in love with Jed and never have been. I was surprised, that’s all. You must admit you are somewhat of an unlikely pair.”
“Then why have you been so pale, so withdrawn?”
Ellen met Louisa’s gaze and saw the genuine anxiety in her friend’s eyes. She dredged up a smile from the depths of her soul and used the excuse she’d given Rose.
“The work at the hospital tries me. I’ve been tired and—” she took a breath, the icy air searing her lungs—“that’s all. Really, Louisa.”
Louisa did not look convinced, but Ellen thought she might be persuaded simply because it was easier to believe than the truth.
The truth. Even Ellen did not want to face the truth. She drew her cloak more tightly around her shoulders and closed her eyes against the stark beauty of the day—and the memory of two lovers that had seared itself on her soul.
The Nurses’ Home was buzzing with chatter and laughter as Ellen settled back into her room. Everyone had presents to show, stories to tell, and one junior nurse was not returning at all as she’d become engaged to a shopkeeper back in Hamilton.
“Just like that,” Amity said with a trace of longing in her voice. “Said he’d missed her so much, he couldn’t live without her. She’ll be married by the end of the month, lucky girl.”
Ellen couldn’t face the crowded parlor with its laughter and piano music and so she retired early upstairs, thinking once again that she would sketch. She’d tried to do a bit of drawing back on the island, and was determined to keep at it even with her rigorous duties at the hospital. Lucas had been right; drawing was a bit like breathing to her. She needed to do it.
Except she couldn’t. For once the sure strokes she loved to put on the page wouldn’t come. She felt nothing; there was nothing in her head or heart, no idea waiting to be given life with a charcoal and a blank page. She sat with the sketchbook unopened on her lap, a pencil clasped loosely between her fingers, staring into space, the bleak despair that had been skirting the edges of her mind and the corners of her heart now threatening to swamp her completely.
“Ellen?” Amity stood in the doorway, slightly flushed from the warm parlor, an uncertain look on her face. “You’ve hardly said a word since supper. Are you ill?”
