“Iwonder what they’re doin’ right now,” Emilie murmured, trying and failing for the third time that day to focus entirely on the task at hand. “Are they down by the sea, learnin’ about fish? Do they even miss me at all?”
Her heart lurched at the thought, visions of the twins sitting down by where she’d spent so many afternoons with them tugging at her heartstrings.
She didn’t even want to imagine what Archer was doing in that moment; she didn’t think that she could bear it.
“Are ye over here talkin’ to yerself?”
Laura’s voice startled her, and Emilie let out a squeak. The knife she had been holding while she chopped potatoes clattered to the counter as she jumped back.
Emilie had been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard the young woman approach. Her hand fluttered over her heart, a shaky laugh falling from her as she tried to settle herself.
“I dinnae hear ye,” Emilie explained, turning back around to the vegetables she had been chopping.
She grabbed the knife once her hands had steadied, beginning her duties all over again. Laura reached forward, taking her own knife out of the block it had been stored in, and joining Emilie’s side.
“Ye’re nae doin’ too well bein’ back,” Laura said.
It wasn’t a question, but Emilie felt like she needed to respond as if it were one. She had been back at the abbey for two entire days.
The day before, she’d been in a daze. Everything that had happened seemed to be happening in a fog, leaving Emilie feeling numb. Today, however, was an entirely different story.
Now, Emilie felt everything. Her emotions had been heightened, and every moment was consumed with thoughts of what was happening at Castle McGregor.
“It was just different there,” she murmured.
Emilie’s hand shook a bit as she resumed her cutting, and she pulled in deep, steadying breaths as she tried to focus.
“How so?” Laura asked.
The question hung in the air as Emilie couldn’t answer right away. She didn’t know if she could answer it at all.
Because how did she explain it to Laura? How did she explain the children? How did she explain Louis’s sweetness and Aurora’s fierceness, and how perfect a match they were to each other?
How did she explain the sea and the sky meeting just beyond the cliffs, and how the view so often took her breath away?
And most of all, how did she explain Archer?
“Ye havenae really talked about it since being back,” Laura continued, her tone soft and almost placating. “And it’s all right, if ye daenae want to. But it might help.”
Emilie turned to look at her friend. Her friend, who was often so fierce, so protective, and full of fire, was looking at her with a level of softness and openness that Emilie had never seen. And it cracked right through the protective wall she had built around herself the past few days.
“I fought against it at first,” Emilie explained.
Her voice was hoarse as she began to speak, working to keep her voice low so that the other girls would not overhear.
“I wanted an annulment immediately,” she continued. “And I came up with a plan to annoy him. Me husband, Archer, he dinnae suffer fools lightly, and he was so strict about his bairns bein’ educated. So, I kent if anythin’ was goin’ to get him to annul the marriage, it was him thinkin’ I was a dolt.”
Laura looked at her, a sly smile tugging up her lips.
“So ye pretended to be daft,” she asked, humor lacing her tone.
Emilie laughed a bit despite the heaviness in her soul, nodding her head.
“I think I annoyed even meself,” she admitted. “Did ye ken I told him I tried to teach the chickens to whistle? And that I couldnae understand why me dahlias wouldnae grow?”
Laura snorted, shaking her head. “I’m certain that drove him mad.”
The smile didn’t fade from Emilie’s face, not entirely. But some of the momentary lightness that she’d felt did fade a little.