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She would be ruined, but he would be free.
“He will come back,” she said firmly.
“You see, my girl, I chose the right husband for you decades ago.” Papa’s hands faltered. When he looked back up, his expression was sincere. “I am sorry about Sculthorpe. I never imagined… I was impatient, after my illness. You understand.”
“All I wanted was to choose my own husband.” She paused. “I had considered Hadrian Bell as an option. I tried to tell you.”
Papa cocked his head, considering. “That would have worked, actually. But you’ve done even better, and we agree on this one too.”
Arabella let it drop. It didn’t matter anymore. She scanned the letter about the potential new journal editor. Papa had wasted no time in replacing her.
“These illustrations are good,” he said, nodding at the peacock. “Quite talented, that Bell girl. Not bad for a woman. Not bad at all.”
“A woman can have as much talent as a man, Papa.”
“You were never one for drawing. Adequate, of course, but your lines were too straight. I say, take a look at these.”
His tone was suddenly jaunty. Bright-eyed, he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a thin folio, tied with a yellow ribbon. Arabella came to his side as he opened it, letting a dozen drawings spill out. They were done by a child, clumsy and out of proportion, but already they captured an impressive level of careful detail. The feathers on an owl. The veins in a leaf. The name on every page: Oliver.
Not one of these drawings was hers. But, as Papa had said, she never had been one for drawing.
She curled the corner of one page between her fingers. “You kept these, all these years.”
Papa traced the owl’s lumpy head. “This house will have children again. Your boys will love it here.”
Helplessly, Arabella found her brother’s portrait, looked away, to Pirate the falcon with his single, knowing eye.
“You don’t have to name the boy Oliver, of course. Name him whatever you please, but he’ll come here and learn everything there is to know.” Papa gathered up the drawings, neatly, reverently. Closed the folio on them. Tied that little yellow ribbon. “That’s how my interest grew, you know. When my book lessons were finished, my father used to take me around, teach me things. He found my fascination with birds amusing, given our name, but that was only ever a coincidence. I liked it when my father took me around, just as I did with you two. It’ll be wonderful to do that again.”
“With us two,” Arabella repeated.
Yes, Papa had always been there, when they were two. But when there was only one…
“I came to tell you about a nest I had found,” she said. “You scolded me for the dirt on my gown. I brought you a butterfly I had caught. You complained that my hair was a mess. I tried to learn about farming. You sent me away to help Mama plan the menu.”
Papa busied himself with replacing the folio. “Yes, I remember you barging in here, all of twelve, lecturing me about drainage or timber or something else you’d read in some outdated book. Telling me this would be your estate as you had no brothers and demanding I teach you.” He looked up, his knuckles on the desk. “It’ll be your son’s estate, not yours. That’s the natural order of things.”
Arabella caught herself crumpling the letter and dropped it as if scalded. She had to speak. Guy had taught her that. He had shown her it was safe to say what she felt, to ask and not demand.
“I only wanted to spend time with you again. As we used to. I wanted a home. I wanted…”
She had wanted her home to go back to how it had been before Oliver died. Fifteen years had passed, and still she wanted that.
“If you wanted a home, you should have married years ago. But no matter now. You’ll marry, have children, and your second boy will live here with us.”
“So I exist only to bear children, which you will take away.”
“Don’t turn it into a drama, girl. You know what I mean. This estate is your son’s birthright. Don’t deny him that. Don’t denymethat.”
Swallowing away the bitterness in her throat, Arabella let her eyes wander over the pages on his desk: the text and illustrations she had commissioned to make this book. A silly little guidebook! And those journals, bound and lined up in a neat matching row on Papa’s bookshelf. How enterprising she had fancied herself, at the age of sixteen. It had been during one of the ornithology conventions, not long after Guy’s departure. She had overheard Papa saying that his daughter should have been getting married, but her bridegroom had run away. But she had distracted him, all of them, with her brilliant idea of turning the conference papers into a regular journal.
What a waste of her time. What a waste of her talent! What else might she have been doing, all these years?
Their quarrel must have upset Queenie, for suddenly she flapped her wings and again cried, “What a day! What a day!”
Immediately Papa went to soothe her. Of course he did. He spent more time with that parrot than he did with his daughter. He spent more time with two dozen dead birds.
Do you even like birds?Guy had asked her. She had never thought to query it, because it had never been about the birds, or the journals, or the books, or even her inheritance. It had only ever been about getting her family back.
