Page 6 of Through Darkened Clouds

He knew something was amiss the moment he stepped into the grand drawing room.

Edith rushed across the room, a handkerchief clutched in her hand. “Oh, Henry! We have received such terrible news from Milton!”

“What is it? Is it Margaret?” His heart thudded in dread of hearing her caught in some Milton calamity. He was surprised at the power of his reaction, for he had told himself he would no longer take undue consideration of the girl who had rejected him.

“Oh, no. It is not Margaret. You see, Uncle was away at Oxford without her when he…” She buried her pretty face into her handkerchief, unable to say those final words again.

“He passed away in his sleep. Never woke up,” Sholto finished for his wife.

Henry took it as a matter of course. Mr. Hale had been an aging man, after all. His pulse relaxed, but his heart—or was it his mind?—quickened at the thought of what would happen to Margaret now. She would need the care of family…or a husband.

“It’s all so very inconvenient!” Edith wailed, her hand resting upon her protruding belly. “And some friend of Uncle’s has sent a letter insisting that Mama go to Milton right away—while I am in my last weeks of confinement!”

“This Mr. Bell is quite insistent,” Mrs. Shaw echoed from the couch, shaking her head in a dazed fashion at her helpless quandary.

“But I cannot spare Sholto!” Edith protested, grasping her husband’s arm.

“Don’t fret a moment more about it. I shall accompany your mother,” Henry gallantly offered, watching his sister-in-law’s pouting face melt into relief.

“If I may be of service, ma’am,” he continued, turning with a slight bow to the portly woman absently petting her lap dog.

Mrs. Shaw looked up at him in wonder. “Indeed, I’m most grateful to you! I’m sure this dreadful news has put me in a terrible bind and I’m all aflutter over how to manage it.”

“That’s a good fellow!” Captain Lennox declared, stepping forward to clap Henry on the back.

That evening, after Fanny had retired to her room—exhausted from a day of choosing the perfect fabrics for her wedding dress—Mr. Thornton set down the paper he had been attempting to read.

Hannah Thornton glanced warily at her son. Still bent over her sewing, she had furtively watched him all evening. Ever since he had told her of the girl’s tragic loss, she was alert to every signal of his behavior—every sign on his face.

“Margaret has fallen ill,” he said at last, as he caught his mother’s gaze with his own hesitating glance.

Mrs. Thornton let out a long breath. She had surmised that it was his concern for the girl that forced this somber mood. “Strong grief can do much to make one ill. I have seen it.”

“Mr. Bell sent for the doctor. She’s taken up with a fever,” he continued, his brow furrowed.

“She’s had quite a shock. She may need some time to recover.” Worry still etched lines on his forehead. “She’s a hearty girl, John.”

He looked up with a spark of hope in his eyes.

“She’ll be better tomorrow, mark my words. Won’t those London relations you spoke of come soon to take care of her?”

“Yes, they’ve been notified,” he confirmed, turning his face away to hide the heaviness that deadened his voice.

“I’m sure it will do her good to return to London. She never liked this place, you know.” Satisfied with her own conclusion, Mrs. Thornton took up her sewing again. She felt a certain buoyancy in the knowledge that Margaret would soon be far from Milton.

Mr. Thornton crossed the room to fetch his coat.

“Where are you going?” his mother demanded.

“Out for a walk…only a walk,” he assured her, catching the steady gleam of doubt in her eyes.

He felt a tug of tension release as he stepped into the frigid darkness. No longer under the watchful gaze of his mother, he let his shoulders drop with the weight of worried despair he felt. Walking would help temper his restlessness. If only there were a course of action he could take to alleviate her suffering! God help him, he could not bear this damnable feeling of uselessness.

His gaze swept upward to the heavens. The sooty sky, whose gray mass had blotted out the sun all day, was now black. It was the same oppressive sky that always hovered over this industrious town. He felt the weight of its dreary gloom now. How keenly she must have felt it when she had first moved here from the South. Was it only yesterday that he had woken to the bright world of her childhood home—that sunny spot of earth that had given birth to her?

She must indeed be eager to leave this place, where she had been trapped without the sunlit fields and grand forests of her home. It was only right that she should flee from this blackened town to more refined places—where beauty belonged.

Reaching the crest of a craggy hill, he stopped to look toward the canal and fields beyond the rows of stone and brick buildings that included her Milton home.