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Chapter 11
After a few hours of riding, Isabel found herself roaming the woods by the side of a stream. She tied her horse to a tree and walked along the bank.
At the Gage estate, she often sat by a stream and watched the water or even swam. Running water usually had a calming effect on her. Except, this time, it didn’t work. She settled on a large boulder, wrapped her arms around her knees, and placed her forehead over them.
Why was everything so difficult? Why did these people loathe her? She hadn’t done them any harm. She just wanted to be a good mistress, and she’d seemed to fail in her every attempt.
She raised her head to the sky. “Oh, Mama, you always made it seem so easy. Why can’t I do the same?”
The sun shined brightly in the sky, the clouds passed over her head, and the wind had carried her voice away, but there was no answer.
She sat like that, staring at the sky, tears running down her face, as she heard a scream.
Isabel looked around but didn’t see a soul.
Another scream.
Isabel walked closer to the water and looked upstream. A small dark object moved downstream, carried away by the strong current. And there was a person, perhaps a woman, moving along the bank, shouting something at the bundle.
She had probably dropped something and could not get it because the current was too fast. Well, Isabel was in a perfect position to catch whatever it was.
Isabel hiked up her skirts and waded into the water. The water proved to be rather deep, almost to her waist, and the strong current had her swaying as she carefully walked, stepping on the slippery stones.
As the bundle neared her, Isabel realized in horror that it wasn’t an object, it was a little boy! She didn’t have time to react further as the bundle almost passed her. Isabel reached out her arms and caught the boy against her chest. She slipped and toppled over.
Isabel pushed out her arms, trying to hold the child over the water.
The strong current carried them both away, Isabel’s skirts weighing her down. But she managed to push off the bottom with her feet and propel herself toward the shore. Luckily, she was an experienced swimmer. She thanked the lucky stars for growing up with brothers.
A few moments later, she came sputtering to the bank, a small child cradled to her chest. As soon as they reached the firm ground, the child coughed and started crying. Isabel’s heart squeezed. Poor babe must have been so frightened.
“Jimmie!” A woman—now Isabel could clearly see it was a woman—ran toward them, took the child from Isabel’s arms, and hugged him tightly. Then she pulled away from him and addressed him sternly, “I told you not to go in the water!”
As she held the boy a slight distance away from her body, Isabel could see that the woman was in the advanced stages of carrying another babe in her belly. The poor woman must have been terrified and unable to keep up with her drowning child as her rounded stomach weighed her down.
The woman embraced her child once more and then finally addressed Isabel. “Thank you. Oh, I can’t thank you enough for saving my babe!”
Isabel shook her head. “Please, no need to thank me. I am just glad I happened to be here at the right time.”
The woman eyed her curiously, obviously noticing her cultured accent. “You are the new lady.”
Isabel scrubbed her wet hair away from her face. “I might not look like one at the moment, however,” she replied with a chuckle.
She bunched her skirts in an attempt to wring some water out of the heavy gown.
“Come! You both need to dry, or you will catch your death.”
“Mama, I can walk!” the boy cried, his previous mishap forgotten.
“I know you can, but you are not going to. Not until we are as far away from this stream as we can be.”
Isabel turned toward the woman. “Do you want me to help you carry him?”
The woman looked at her queerly but then shook her head. “Thank you, my lady. But I am used to carrying children around. He is not my only babe.”
“Please, call me Isabel.” Isabel still wasn’t used to being calledmy lady.More than that, today, she did not feel entitled to wear the moniker.
The woman threw another of her odd looks. “But I can’t.”
