WITH HER THOUGHTS RUSHING INSIDE her head like a waterfall freshly sprung, Jessie hurried back to Wycombe, her feet sinking into the snow as every step was an effort. It was also that she couldn't feel her ankles— for the cold hate bitten deep into her bones. But it didn't matter at present. None of it mattered at present. Lady Aramina Embry was in the hands of someone else now, someone who could be, for all Jessie knew, more ambitious and cruel than the man she met on the Wycombe grounds just now. And Lord Oscar Seymour was out there in Portsmouth chasing the man's shadow which he had long abandoned abandoned. 

Jessie needed to set this right. She would go to Rosenfield Abbey in Bakewell with Lady Embry's aunt. Not doing so would endanger The Lady Beresford, and she couldn't risk that. Lady Embry's family was her responsibility now, playing pretend ran deeper like that. She would also set Oscar Seymour on the right coarse. The person he needed to search for urgently was someone else. Philip. He was the one holding Lady Embry now. But Jessie only had a name and nothing else. 

As she approached the estate, the cold rattling her chest as she struggled to breathe, a maid called out to her. 

"Lady Embry, you have a letter," The maid managed, looking slightly abashed when she realized she should've waited for the lady to at least catch her breath. The cream envelope in her hand wavered slightly. 

Jessie looked at her, confusion prickling at her more intensely than the cold. Who would write to her? 

Jessie took the letter from the maid's gloved hand and muttered a thanks. Then when the maid dismissed herself, Jessie turned the envelope, standing right there on the precipice of the threshold of the Wycombe sun room, with half herself still standing in the snow, she read her Lady Aramina Embry's name in clear cursive on the front. 

Jessie hesitated. Was this letter really for her? With trembling fingers still tethering on the fragments of anxiety let from her recent encounter, she opened the letter and was greeted with her own name. The letter was signed with Oscar Seymour's signature at the bottom. His words all a clear cursive as consistent with each letter as consistent can be. 

Her heart began pounding anew as her eyes darted from word to word, their effect sinking low in her. She finished he letter quickly, and her eyes hung longer on the gentleman's signature like perfumed kisses that never quite reach others but hang low in the air for hours, waiting to be rescued. 

Her hand slumped to her side, the open letter still clutched between her fingers. He had written to her. It was this fact, out of everything he had said in the letter that stood out the most to her. He didn't have to write to her, but he had. Her stomach lit from the inside, and suddenly the cold gripping at her was comfortable. Her icy lungs were somehow just a minor inconvenience. He was thinking of her, even amongst the anxiety of finding the missing heiress. Her heart leaped, and Thomas Cranmer wasn't scary anymore. The pain she had felt when she had cried behind that tree wasn't as painful anymore. Lady Acacia Beresford's words didn't matter anymore. 

Bringing herself out of her reverie, Jessie motioned to a footman standing nearby. "Please bring me some parchment and ink in the sitting room, I will write a letter."  

The footman nodded and hurried off, but Jessie still stood there, bringing the letter up to her face again and going through it again. 

"Gracious, child," The Lady Beresford's sudden declaration made Jessie jump as the letter almost flew out of her hand. She held a hand up to her chest to calm herself. 
"What are you doing, standing in the cold like that? Come inside or you will get hypothermia. Must everything anomalous happen at Wycombe?" 

"It's alright aunt, I'm quite myself I assure you," Jessie managed, and wondered when exactly had she gotten so good at lying. She stepped inside, dusting off her coat and the chunks of snow stuck to her shoes. 

At that moment, the footman Jessie had sent off on a mission returned, his gloved hands holding a wooden letter writing platform with a stack of parchment and an ink pot at the side, a feather quill sticking out. 

"The sitting room please," Jessie instructed him again, and with a nod he made his way to the sitting room and Jessie made to follow him. 

"Are you writing a letter?" The Lady Beresford inquired. 

"Yes aunt," Jessie stripped off the heavy coat now somewhat damp with the cold, she handed it to a maid who had scurried close once she had seen Jessie taking it off. "A dear friend from London. It is nothing much just pleasantries and an inquiry after her mother who's taken sick." 

I'm becoming a natural at lying, Jessie blinked in a daze. 

"Oh, alright," The Lady Beresford brushed off, spinning on her heels to deport herself back into the west drawing room from whence she had come. "Just make sure you give the return address at Rosenfield. And pray make haste with it dear and keep it short, we are to leave in a few hours and I take it that women tending to indisposed mothers haven't quite much time to read letters." 

Jessie hummed an approval absently, and quickly found herself in the sitting room alone at a desk to pen down a letter to Oscar Seymour. Taking a deep breath, she began, the quill tip scratching softly against the thick parchment like a whisper. 

'Dear Oscar Seymour,

I am glad you have acquired aid of Lord Buxton for your endeavour, for I do believe he would be able to provide ample help. My Christmas eve was alright, I suppose, I didn't really have the heart for the holiday for obvious reasons. I have now had the pleasure of meeting The Lady Beresford, and I think I have managed to convince her with the ruse. She insists on taking me to Rosenfield Abbey in Bakewell, her home. We are setting out today and Lady Acacia Beresford is also to be joining us. The Lady Beresford was so adamant that I believed refusing her would cause suspicions to brew in her heart. I have much else of importance to tell you. I had a strange encounter when I strayed a bit from the Wycombe grounds today. Thomas Cranmer is in Southampton, and he believes me to be his niece. He asked me how I escaped, and insisted that I divulge if it was Philip's doing. It is my understanding that if Thomas Cranmer believes Lady Aramina Embry is not where she ought to be, than she was taken by this Philip. Please change your coarse and instead of looking for Cranmer, look for Philip and you will find Lady Embry. I don't have anything else on him except his name and that he worked for Cranmer before betraying him for his own purposes. As for Thomas Cranmer, I may have enticed him to follow us to Rosenfield, Bakewell. He is still much determined to acquire Lady Embry's riches, and I'm afraid his ambitions have only elevated. On a positive note, I think that Bakewell will be enough to keep Cranmer distracted while you locate the real Lady Embry and take her under your protection. I don't have a plan on what I intend to do once he encounters us in Bakewell, but I'm sure I will think of something. I hope though, that you find Lady Embry soon and it doesn't come to that. Also, please give my warm regards to Diana as well. 

Regards, 
Jessie Churchill.'

༺♥༻

"Good morning dear, how did you sleep?" The words floated into Lady Aramina Embry's conscience like honey. A shard of sun had kissed her face, and her eyes had fluttered open and as she had willed herself up, a warm face had greeted her with a bright smile and silk skin weary with age but youthful with pressing dimples. Aramina wondered if she'd ever truly seen such a welcoming face after her father's death. She wondered when the last time was when she'd been wished good morning. She'd forgotten for a moment there that such a greeting even existed. 

She smiled. "Good morning. I slept very well thank you." 

"Ah, that is a relief," Grandma Cass beamed, then she spun to lift off a dress she had hung on a chair arm in Philip's room. Aramina blushed slightly as the realization came to her. She'd slept in Philip's room. 
"Look what I managed to bring out for you." 

She held the dress proudly in front. It was a blue bird coloured thing of soft linen, the bodice was gathered ruffles cinched at the waist. The hem was trimmed with a flaring lining, and so were the short puff sleeves. The neckline was square, dainty. The entire dress, was dainty. It looked a thing from the past, but beautiful. Like something Hortense Eugénie Cécile Bonaparte would've worn as a young woman in France as she picked strawberries in the back gardens of her father's grand chateaus. Aramina had devoured much of literature on attires and fashions to make that conclusion. 

"It belonged to my daughter when she was your age," Grandma Cass paused, her soft grey eyes lost on the dress as though catching a whiff of the memories stuck onto the fabric like lint. 

Aramina looked at her with questioning eyes, and when the old woman snapped out of her reverie and met them, she was not unhappy to oblige. 

"Philip's mother," The woman began, "She bore him when she was a little younger than you. Then two years later she managed to catch the sight of a rich and handsome yet superficial French politician. She eloped with him. Leaving Philip and his father behind." 

She paused, and sniffed. Aramina could tell that sorrow had already dissipated years ago, what was left was it's shadow— an easier thing to live with. 

"We heard nothing of her after that. Then when Philip was one and twenty, we get sent a trunk of items belonging to her, with the news that she had died in France." 

Aramina's heart did a jolt. Philip had gone through exactly what Aramina had. Perhaps her mother had died too, and the naval officer hadn't thought to bother his wife's estranged family with a trunk full of her earthly belongings. Perhaps he had fed them to the sea, or perhaps he hadn't. Just because her story matched with Philip's doesn't mean that it had to end the same way. Perhaps her mother was alive and well, with happiness that Aramina will never have a share of. 

"I'm sorry," Aramina managed, not knowing what else to say. Wasn't I'm sorry what she and her father had been told countless times by countless people in the wake of her mother's abandon? It hadn't helped, but were there words that could? 

"Well," Grandma Cass sighed, the smile returning to her face, "The story was years ago, and its been six more years since the trunk and her belongings were given to us. We try not to dwell on it too much. Though grief is natural." 

"But don't you—" Aramina wasn't sure what she intended to say, "Don't you harbour any resentment? Why would you want your daughter's belongings around when she abandoned you?" 

The old woman looked at her, an expression of recognition flashed across her aged face, and Aramina was sure she had given more of herself away than she intended too. But thankfully, the old woman didn't pry, didn't ask for stories Aramina couldn't weave as effortlessly as her. Didn't ask for timelines she couldn't bear to go over again, even in memories. 

"We forgave her," Grandma Cass started, taking a seat next to Aramina on the bed. She gathered the dress onto her lap, rubbing soft circles into the fabric with her thumb. "It was easy for me. It's easy mothers to forgive their daughters, and husbands to forgive their wives, but I understand its hard for children to forgive their parents. It was hard for Philip. I'm not sure if he even really made peace with it. He doesn't talk about it, you see. He never has. He sees me take out some of her things— just to look at sometimes— and he ignores it. Doesn't acknowledge it, doesn't say anything really." 

"Because he knows you both are on two different pages of the same book," Aramina spoke silently, "And he doesn't want to rewrite your part, he simply wants to exist alongside it." Her father talked like that. Talked as though life was a book and people's stories made paragraphs intersecting with everyone else's that they've known in life. 

The old woman glanced up from the dress, her eyes looking at Aramina with curious inspection. "That's a lovely way to put it." 

Lady Aramina Embry smiled, her eyes falling to the dress in the old woman's lap. "I got it from my father." 

"Then he sounds like quite a man." 

"He was," She spoke quietly, a smile on her face. He was. 

"I'm so sorry," Grandma Cass sighed, a hand touching Aramina's shoulder. "The good ones go too soon." 

"They do," Aramina looked up, a strange feeling of pride surging in her chest. Lord Montague Embry was one the of the bests. 

"Come now dear," The old woman got up, gathering up all her previous passion for life in her voice as she got up. "Freshen up and I'll take care of breakfast." 

"No," Aramina protested, "I'll help you." 

The woman smiled, an odd smile as though Aramina managed to have said exactly what was predicted. As though Aramina was somehow managing to fill out the exact picture of the kind of woman Grandma Cass thought she was, and that made the old woman beam like a firefly with an emotion Aramina realized was pride. Why would a stranger like her be proud of someone like Aramina? 

"Then you'll have to hurry up," Grandma Cass chimed, handing the dress over to Aramina. "Wear this. My daughter made some questionable choices in her life, but her taste in wardrobe was quite astonishing in the best way, if I do say so myself." She winked, and Aramina let a chuckle slip. 

Then the old woman was off, shutting the door to Philip's room behind her. 

Lady Aramina Embry walked into the sitting room of the house, her bare feet still somewhat estranged from the feel of the rug below. How beautiful was comfort when you were only deprived of it for a while? The bluebird blue linen dress caressed her skin like a feather. She felt elated in it. It wasn't anything she was used to. It had history, and it belonged to someone that perhaps Aramina would never like, because that someone reminded her of her mother— someone she definitely would never like. But a dress wasn't a person. 

Aramina had dressed hurriedly, pinning her ginger locks up in a bun on the crown of her head, she had let her stray curls frame her face and had walked out. She made her way to the kitchen, where she found Grandma Cass searching between pots ad pans for something. The stove was lit, and a pot of what seemed like sweet smelling water was boiling in it. 

"Oh, you are quick dear, I was just—" The old woman started when she sensed her presence, then she spun around, her eyes widening slightly as she looked at her guest. 

"Goodness me," She let out, a shaky hand resting on her chest, "You are a very beautiful young woman." 

Aramina smiled, "Thank you." 

Grandma Cass approached, her hands touching the fabric of the dress on Aramina as her eyes skimmed over her entire presence. 

"This looks so alive on you, I never imagined—" She broke off. "I never imagined I'd ever see someone wear it. It looks like it was made for you." 

The old woman sniffed, tucking in a shadow of grief inside before she beamed again. "Now, what would you like to have for breakfast? We'll prepare it together. I'm boiling some honey water for you, a cup of it with breakfast does a load of good." 

An hour later— time that passed with lively chatter as Grandma Cass shared recipe tricks and complained why folding in an ingredient was called that way because according to her it made no sense, they managed to make onion egg omelettes, toasted honeyed bread, a kettle full of earl grey tea, Grandma Cass' family porridge, and strips of bacon that Aramina fried. It felt liberating to not have anyone question her presence in a kitchen. None of her high society acquaintances, friends, knew that she could cook if she wanted to. None of them knew she had started at the age of sixteen, learning and succeeding in making her father's favourite dishes when her mother had abandoned them. She believed he had needed the comfort, which he had confirmed, and she in turn needed the distraction. 

Aramina set up the food on the table in the sitting room. As she placed the few porcelain plates, she wondered if Philip would join them. He wasn't in the house, and she had wanted to ask Grandma Cass of his whereabouts, but somehow she felt as though it wasn't her place. She had seen the pillow on the sofa in the morning, and she had seen the crumpled duvet set aside. Which meant that he had returned last night, and had left early this morning. 

Was he avoiding her? It was Christmas day. Why wouldn't he want to be home with his Grandma today of all days? 

"Oh, Philip is going to be joining us as well dear," Grandmas Cass called from the kitchen. She must've assumed Aramina was contemplating whether to put out a third breakfast plate. Regardless, relief surged inside her. 
"He said he had something to take care of, and rushed out the first thing this morning. I can never tell what that young man is up to." 

As if on cue, a series of urgent raps on the door caught Aramina's attention. Despite herself she smiled. 

"And he's here," The old woman announced, "Be a dear and get the door will you?" 

"Of course," Aramina beamed and made her way to the door. Without realizing what she was doing and why, she paused and ran her hands quickly on the skirts of her dress, and touched her hair to make sure it was in place. The smile on her face was there of its own accord, and she didn't object to it. With a hand on the door handle, she unlocked and held it open. But when her eyes met the person she expected, the smile fell from her face like a stone sinking in the depths of the ocean. The light in her eyes somehow abandoned her, and the hope in her chest was snuffed out viciously like a candle by a beast's hand. 

There stood her rescuer, Philip, with blood gushing from the side of his lips, his left eye swollen shut and purple, he held the side of his torso and his fingers seeped blood from the gaps. He stood askew, his grey eyes bearing into her with an unreadable expression. 

"Philip," Aramina whispered. Her voice giving out, and her heart seemingly missing several beats that she couldn't keep track of.