25 December

It snowed again this past week and filled the house with a biting freeze that we are unable to dispel. Even the maid, with all of her scowling and grumbling affection for the doctor, couldn't hold back her complaints about his refusal to allow a fire in the house. The only ones who weren't affected by the weather were Atticus and his father! Surrounded by the boiling waters of endless soups and screaming kettles of tea, they were well-warmed indeed. I would have volunteered for more than a few kitchen duties, had I not been confined to the bed by absolutely everyone. How am I to make my escape and find the rector of the doctor's initial sighting if I am tied to my pillows!

Even Dr. Radcliffe's insistence that I remain safely under my sheets is not without an appropriate cause for concern, though. With the cold and the drafts that wrestle endlessly through this terrible house, I am once again taken with illness. If I had been living with my parents still, this wouldn't worry them - my sicknesses take their turns with the seasons, and come Christmas, I am nearly always crippled and confined to the sick bed. It is no more a threat to my survival than the pain my womb gives me when it strikes (a malady thankfully delayed by the freezing conditions and my overall poor appetite). Still, neither Evie nor the doctor will be persuaded to leave me alone and forgo their hennish attentions. I suppose in this regard, they are well-suited for one another. Neither is willing to give up!

If only I could convince the doctor to light one small fire.

With Atticus distracted by his duties, my ability for socialisation was severely lacking. Evie herself had a thousand things to scurry around and do when she wasn't replacing the cloth over my brow, one of which was writing. I don't know who she scribbled to, but nearly every time I saw her, she was pulling a quill and a sheet of paper from her bosom (much the same way she'd had when we discovered the letters in my attic). Each flash of her pale chest came with the scratching of something on the parchment, the crinkling of her stuffing it out of sight again. I would not have been surprised if she had revealed a chest stained with ink.

Desperate not to catch myself thinking about Evie's chest, I asked her this morning what she was writing so much of. She set down my tea on the little dresser by the bed and sat herself down next to me. "Letters, Ms. Peterson." Smiling in spite of the pressure in my sinuses, I realised she had not called me that since we lived in Dorset (what a curious a thing to say! It does not feel as though we live here, regardless of how long we may rest in the beds and eat in the kitchens under this roof). "I've been attempting to isolate a day when Lord DeCourt may come and collect you."

"Oh!" I attempted to clap but only succeeded in starting a coughing fit and tangling my hands in the sheets. Once I had calmed down, Evie gently pulled me free.

"Yes, Oh. He'll be coming by later today, so don't die on me just yet. Another social visit, if you will. I wager we'll have you out of here by the new year, but you'd better come back, or you'll have me to answer to." She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead, and how grateful was I to have my fever as an excuse for the heat that flooded from me! "I've already packed all of your things for you, or as much as I could get away with, so you'll really only need to recover before we can whisk you away."

How I wished to leave sooner, but there was no sense in my roaming around the country if I couldn't even clap my hands without an attack. Still, the closeness of my journey nearly overwhelmed me and I was grateful to be bedridden. I feared for what would happen if I was left to my own devices. What manner of trouble would I be in if I roamed around the house in nervous desperation? To busy myself, I focused on writing. There wasn't much else to do while I waited. Between my need to scribble the reminders of what I needed to talk to the rector about and the snippets of story ideas I suffered through when I couldn't sleep, one could say I was well busied. In the past two or three days, I have been able to write a handful of chapters, but they really only reflected my current moods and frustrations.

There is an aspect of my fiction that I feel is lacking, unfulfilled. I haven't made much time for it in the last month or so, distracted as I've been with preparing for my departure. I have so many questions! Chief among them, I must constantly remind myself, is what the doctor is doing here. With as many people living in this miserable little city as there are, and on this miserable little street, surely someone has noticed the comings and goings of the doctor, his appearance and his impressions. If the letters in my attic are to be believed, then this Igor Radcliffe has records of another wife, or bride-to-be. Such unions are hardly undocumented - someone must know who the doctor had previously married. If I can prove a prior marriage, then perhaps I can free Evie of her bonds and quit this house!

As it stands, I have no real say in the matter. A foreign woman with no relations for three thousand miles is no woman at all has never had a say in anything. My conditions only exacerbate my complete dependence on the doctor.

Perhaps it is for myself far more than my friend that I desire to bring this doctor to the light.

This morning proved a more hopeful day for my health, a Christmas gift from above. The snow had died down to an acceptable degree, and the cold reduced to something more or less tolerable. I made my way into the kitchen to beg for a warm drink when Evie burst through the front door with an armful of paper and candles. She was red-nosed and smiling, much to the delight of Atticus, who had come out to investigate the noise.

"Let me help you," he sighed, swatting Evie's arms to reach the boxes that teetered at the top. They were good at hiding the affection they felt for one another, but it was so easy to see it in the way he pressed her briefly, the tenderness with which she deposited the box in his accepting hands.

"I don't need any help," she grumbled, frosted cheeks touched with red.

"Of course you do," he said fondly. Once he'd secured some of her burden, he staggered into the dining room and tossed the pile onto the table. "Sorry, m'lady." He flashed me a toothy grin. What a good mood he was in today!

Carefully righting the mess, Evie began to mutter under her breath something akin to positive appearances being a waste of time in this house. If she hadn't done the mumbling with a blush that went down to her neck, I would have believed her.

"What have you got in the boxes?"

"Presents from the neighbours."

"Neighbours!" Atticus stood straight, eyebrows threatening to disappear into his hair. "Who do we know that would give us Christmas presents?" His question earned him a tap on the nose.

"Nobody claimed these were Christmas presents. Not that you'd get any, you urchin. You were rude as could be to the purchaser of these gifts!" Evie rolled her eyes and explained, much to the relief of myself and Atticus. Who did we know of that Atticus had met, much less been his usual self to? "Lord DeCourt, oh ye of slowed senses!"

"Evelyn," I asked, smiling up at her from my seat and wondering why I was still without tea, "when would Atticus have met the Lord?" My question prompted Evie to relocate her flicks to Atticus' ears, who was stammering out feeble pleas for mercy under the barrage of Evie's cold fingers.

Relenting at last, she threw herself down beside me and leaned back, looking very much like her old self. Had she been walking around in the snow to regain her sense of freedom? I wouldn't have doubted her decision to walk to the Lord's home just for the fun of it! "When he came by for the house call, my love. Our precious kitchen rat was an awful thing to him, until you were kind enough to give the Lord a tour!" As though this cleared everything up, she gave Atticus her biggest smile and begged of him a cup of tea. "Make it a kettle," she called out, once he'd hastened to oblige her wishes.

"You have no room to look so smug, Ms. Thomas! Why on Earth has our newfound friend sent you over with this mess? What if Dr. Radcliffe stumbles upon this mess?"

"You worry too much!"

"Doubtful; I have every cause to worry, if I'm going to get you out of here." I lowered my voice and leaned towards her. "You mustn't act so..."

"So what, Ms. Peterson? I have every right to smile."

"Yes, but... What exactly are you smiling about?"

Evie moved to kiss me on the cheek before standing and pacing around the table. She must not have been able to feel my heartbeat through my thin skin! Atticus surely felt it, even from across the room - his eyes widened at the sight of her kiss, only to be shortly followed by a blush darker than his hair. When he set the steaming kettle down, he elbowed me in the shoulder, though he still smiled. I could have sworn I heard him say lucky bitch.

"I am smiling because life is going to change for the better, soon. I am smiling because it is Christmas and I am surrounded by beautiful people, because it is not as cold as it was yesterday, because I have dreamt of the cliffs at home! Winn, there are a hundred things to smile about today."

She tipped a saucer of sugar into her cup and blew on it. "Why aren't you smiling?" This question created stuttering messes of myself and Atticus, who decided to distract himself with the presents.

"What's in here, then?"

"Clothes, pens and paper for Winn, a handful of other things to help us in the coming months."

"Anything in there for your husband? I'd rather not a lack of presents be the reason he decides to kill us all at last." Stealing my cup from my hand, he took in a great mouthful of tea before unabashedly setting the cup between my fingers.

"Several knives from abroad."

"Knives!" We both jumped up and gawked at Evie.

She raised an eyebrow and took another sip. "What of it? He won't be back in time to get his gifts, and I shall ensure he isn't in a murderous mood. Get that look off your face, boy, I didn't mean it like that."

"It sounded like it," sulked Atticus. "Still, if I wake up with one of those precious daggers in my stomach, I'll have words with you, woman!"

They continued on like this for some time, each making a vague threat that really betrayed some affectionate thing they would do, until the maid came in to scowl at everyone for making too much noise. Once they finally shut up (I really couldn't help but smile, even if their romantic affection wasn't directed towards myself and would never be. There was no small comfort in knowing they both cared about me. Evie had even kissed me! I knew I would hold this over Atticus' head until the day I died, and wasn't that something to smile about?), we all moved the gifts upstairs to the spare room. Once the whole pile was sorted out, the wrapping tossed in the corner, and the presents sent to their respectful owners, we stared at the mess of clothes and books and smiled. Somebody cared about us all, it seemed!

With such a good friend at our side, I knew that escape was only a matter of days away. Evie's prediction for the new year was looking more and more true; would I last the week?

Feeling appropriately humbled and pleased, Atticus pulled on a pair of gloves and a coat and paraded around the room, sparking laughter from Evie and more than a sneeze or two from me. Only when my giggles turned into coughs did he stop, though I felt healthier than I had in years.

Feeling foolishly optimistic,

Winn