Maud wasn’t sure. There were so many things she wanted to accomplish before she got married.
“We could write ten-year letters to one another,” Maud said, changing the subject. “Miss Gordon told me about them. We write them, seal them, and then don’t open them until a decade has passed. It’s as though we are writing to our future selves.”
Laura kicked her heels in the air again, clapping her hands. “That would be fun!”
“Yes,” Maud said. “I had such plans when I came here.” Her mind flickered to the first journal, burned long ago now. She was glad she would never have to read that little girl’s diary again. But this would be different.
—
Laurel Hill was lovely, the perfect cure after months of servitude cooped up in a house with a woman who was always thinking the worst and locking up the food. Maud was relieved to be in a home with dear friends who cherished her as much as she them. It could be another forty years before she came west again, and by then she and Laura and Will would be too old and too mature to relax and have fun.
The three of them lay out blithely together in the meadow, until Andrew called on Laura, asking her—rather nervously—if she wished to go for a drive. She agreed and left Will and Maud alone.
“I think someone was making mischief last night on my window,” Will said. “Someone English? Perhaps Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth?”
“I have no idea what you mean, Mr. Pritchard,” she said with a British air.
“Do I get my ring back now?” he asked.
“Your ring?” Maud slipped it into his hand.
“I have a confession to make,” Will said, putting it back on his pinky. “I talked with Andrew last night and asked him to come and take Laura out so we could be alone.”
Maud pretended to be cross, but then laughed. “I’m sure Laura will be absolutely furious.”
“I don’t know,” Will said. “I believe my sister enjoys her time with Andrew more than she says.”
“She’ll get to see Andrew after I’m gone; I only have her for a few short weeks more.”
“She told me about the ten-year letters you are writing,” he said, leaning on his side.
“Yes. It should be interesting to read them.”
“I wondered.” He picked at a blade of prairie grass. “If perhaps we could do the same?”
“A ten-year letter?”
“I think it would be—as you said—fun. And who knows? Maybe you’ll be beside me when we open them together.”
She thought of those initials carved in the tree, the permanence of them.
“Yes,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Maud returned to Eglintoune Villa from Laurel Hill three days later. She was putting away some of her things when her Father knocked on her door.
Father rarely came into her bedroom. He always joked that Southview was Maud’s tower and he would never wish to disturb her. Father could never have disturbed her. She relished any moment they had together, there or otherwise.
How was it that in a year she could count their time alone together in just a few precious moments? Those three weeks she had been ill and a few private buggy rides were all they had had. It was that woman’s fault; Maud was sure of it. She would never forgive Mary Ann Montgomery for ruining her relationship with Father. Never.
Father sat down on the chair near the window, the curtain waving delicately behind him. He smiled, but Maud recognized the shadow behind the blue sparkle.
“I have heard from Grandpa Montgomery.” He handed her a letter. She took it, scanning without quite reading it. “You are to leave with Eddie Jardine at the end of August—”
“Eddie Jardine!” Maud had met him at church. The man was all arms and legs, stammering each time he tried to engage in basic formalities and then swiftly falling silent.
“Yes. I wish I could take you myself, but your stepmother needs me here.” No, Mrs. Montgomery certainly wouldn’t let him go for something as frivolous as seeing his daughter home.
“End of August. That’s only six weeks away!” After her beautiful time in Laurel Hill, Maud had almost allowed herself to forget she was leaving. But, as with most truths, there was no more hiding. “Is Eddie Jardine going all the way to the Island? I recall Mrs. McTaggart saying something about him going to school in Toronto.”
Father laughed. “Good thing we have my mother-in-law or one would never know what was going on in town.”
Maud feigned a small smile.
“Eddie’s going to school in Toronto, so you can go with him as far as the city. Then you’ll have to travel alone until Ottawa, where my father will meet you.”
A woman traveling alone was unheard of. People would think she was someone lower class, or worse. And it was dangerous. “You’re letting me travel alone?”
He sighed. “I don’t have a choice, Maud. But I know you’ll be careful and responsible.” She couldn’t believe it. It was scandalous.
But as with so often the case, she didn’t have a choice.
He then smiled that winning smile, the one Maud realized she had also learned to feign. “We thought you could try the other route and travel through Northern Ontario by Lake Superior this time around. It’s supposed to be quite breathtaking, and that way you’ll see another view of our great country. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”
Although it broke her heart, she responded with her own winning smile. “Yes, Father. Yes, it does.”
“Things will be better for you in Cavendish,” he said. “You belong there among the beauty. This is rough and tumble country.”
The curtain rose and fell behind Father’s head. “You’re right,” she said, hoping her tone didn’t betray the rawness scratching at her throat. “Cavendish has always been my home.”
It dawned on her that this might be the only time—the last time—she would have Father to herself. Was she to live with half-truths for the rest of her life? She needed to know. She hadn’t come so far and endured so much to return home without an answer to this one question. Maud went over to her chest, carefully lifting the quilt and the woolen clothes she had packed away for the summer, and picked up her mother’s Commonplace Book.
“Have you seen this before?” She brought it over and he reached out, slowly and gently taking it from her hand—as if he were holding Bruce.
The curtain suddenly blew round like a balloon.
“I had no idea you had this.” His eyes filled with tears, making Maud’s do the same. She hadn’t seen him cry since Mother’s funeral. “Who gave it to you? I…I thought it had been…lost.”
“Grandma gave it to me before I left.”
“It was how I met her, you see.” He turned the book over in the palm of his hand, as if it would wind them back in time. “We were at a Literary Society meeting in French River. She was visiting her sister—your Aunt Annie—and was having a few people sign it. Mostly enjoying showing off her poetry—”
The curtain sucked against the window.