After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(78)
Dash it all!
A little punctuation humor to lighten the moment. Ha ha.
Camilla stared at the page. Oh, dear. The first thing she had learned about her youngest sister in almost a decade was that she had a dreadful sense of humor.
We have been looking for you. Judith misses you dreadfully. She wants nothing more than for you to come join us.
Camilla felt her vision blurring. No, she couldn’t cry—it mustn’t mean what it said, it couldn’t.
The next paragraph was taken over by a different handwriting—the letters darker and less blocky.
Benedict here. That sentence seems to imply that Theresa and I are indifferent. We are not indifferent. I have little memory of you, but I have heard stories. You would be a ripping great addition to the family, thank you.
Theresa had apparently wrestled the paper back to add: You did grow up with Judith and, quite frankly, we need someone to commiserate with us.
She is an absolute tyrant and I do not doubt you were right to stay away for so long.
The handwriting for the next line changed once again.
Theresa has no call to refer to anyone as a tyrant. The only hope the world has is that she is a girl and girls are very rarely allowed to take over everything. Judith is not a tyrant.
She is by far the least tyrannical of the two sisters I am acquainted with.
The letter resumed in Theresa’s handwriting.
Since I must be honest: Judith is a perfectly good sister who would be improved only by being a little less perfect, but also, she favors Benedict over me and I refuse to turn a blind eye to injustice. You have been gone so long that she will no doubt favor you above us both, which will finally put us younger ones on equal footing.
Camilla felt overwhelmed in the best way possible.
Benedict took over again.
Please do not listen to Theresa. She will give you an ill opinion of us all, and you should only have one of her.
Back to Theresa’s writing again: We have become distracted from our mission, and I refuse to get distracted for longer than five minutes. It is Judith’s birthday very, very soon, and we had hoped you might be willing to come for a visit.
Our direction is…
Camilla read this all in absolute bafflement. The last she’d seen Benedict, he’d been a child. When he was a toddler, she had used to carry him around the house and call him her sweet boy.
Theresa had been bossy even at six, but Camilla knew very little of her. She’d gone to China with their father while she was practically an infant, and most of what Camilla remembered was her absence, and then her return.
She had used to throw tantrums back then—loud, angry ones, ones that wouldn’t stop until Anthony wrapped her up in his arms and held her so tightly she couldn’t move. Theresa had liked that.
Of course, Theresa had grown out of the tantrums—children often did. It should have been impossible to imagine the friendly, familial bickering that the two engaged in, but…
She remembered it.
Not from Theresa and Benedict; they’d been too young to bicker properly. But Judith and Anthony had done it, and reading it now… Her heart ached.
She read the letter again.
She had no idea what Theresa and Benedict sounded like; the childish voices she could dimly recall no longer fit these two people who used words like ‘tyrannical’ and ‘injustice.’ But between the taunts, there was something there that made her yearn.
It hurt, to imagine being so comfortable in another person’s presence that you could call them a tyrant to their face and not fear being tossed out. It hurt, and it felt good, and…
Camilla had been sent all over England. She had tried to make herself into half of what she could be just so she’d have the barest chance of acceptance. And all the while, they’d stayed together. They loved each other, just as Judith had said they would.
Camilla had given up this for gowns. She’d given up this.
She read the letter a third time. Judith misses you dreadfully. How? How could Judith miss her? How could it be that anyone remembered her enough to miss her? And if she missed her, why hadn’t she written?
Camilla had spent her entire life hoping that one person would care for her. It was too much to discover that someone already did.
She burst into tears. Her whole heart hurt in the best possible way. She didn’t have room in her soul to understand how this could have happened, but it was here.
“Oh, God,” Captain Grayson said. “You’re crying.” He said it the way another man might have said, “Oh, God, I’m being eaten by wolves.”
“I’m sorry.” Camilla sniffled and tried to hold back her tears. “I hate crying, and I cry so easily. I haven’t seen my sisters in years. I thought they didn’t want me. I could barely even let myself think of their existence. This is…”
A gift, she wanted to say. But if she said those words, she’d start sobbing in earnest. “It’s been a while since I saw my siblings. I have no idea what they’re doing. You can’t imagine.”
The captain sighed. “I can imagine discovering that my brother was married because two hellions showed up in my office waving a duplicate from the General Register Office.”
Camilla sniffled. “Very well. You win the competition. Have a biscuit.”
“You’re right. That was an unnecessary comment. You’re here in our family home; I should endeavor to be polite. Have a handkerchief.” He removed a square of beige linen from his pocket and held it out.