Thanks to all who have read, reviewed, etc. It's been a journey to finish this! But now it's time to get back to characters of my own making. Again, thanks!
~ Epilogue ~
A little over one year after Fanny Watson birthed a three and a half kilogram boy that the new parents named Cornelius William, Hannah Thornton noticed a swelling under her chin. At first, she accounted it to her teeth, which had only grown worse with age. In the next month, however, it pressed so that her breathing became laboured and her voice sounded perpetually hoarse. When Margaret insisted that her mother-in-law seek treatment, Hannah agreed far too readily for Margaret's comfort. Dr. White arrived on the scene with a shotgun full of remedies. He bled, purged, blistered, applied mercury and, in the end, failed to affect the growing tumor in any way. It was to be her death sentence.
John reacted as though kicked in the gut. It was Margaret who rallied as Hannah weakened, hiring on a nursemaid, but then insisting on completing most of the care herself. She convinced John to hand over more authority to Williams and to spend these last days of his mother's life by her side.
"You must not leave him again," Hannah rasped one morning, when Margaret alone kept watch at her bedside, "he cannot live with neither you nor I."
"I never will," Margaret promised, taking her mother-in-law's cold hand and holding it for a moment until it warmed. Then, tucking it under the covers, Margaret met Hannah's dark eyes and spilled forth her secret, "I carry his child."
At this, Hannah lifted herself off her pillow, a movement that she had not managed in over a week. "And you have told no one?" she fumed, "You risk your life."
"The doctor knows," Margaret assured her, "but –"
"John must not know," Hannah stated with sudden understanding, sinking back onto the pillow but gripping Margaret's arm like a vice. "He would obsess over your health as well as my own. He would place all his hope in my living to see the child."
"Perhaps you will," Margaret posited, but one look at her frail mother-in-law exposed the falsehood of that statement. "Or perhaps the child will not," she continued, her voice soft, as if to keep the babe in her womb from hearing.
"Can you carry that burden alone?" Hannah demanded.
"Aye," Margaret responded, her voice still soft, but certain and her brown eyes flashing. "I am not who I was then and I will carry that weight, if needed, to spare my husband."
Worn from the exchange, Hannah released Margaret's arm, nodded in acceptance, and moments later fell asleep.
That night, John returned from the mill, where he now spent barely one full day a week, and immediately traveled the stairs to visit his mother. Entering the room, he found himself still unexplainably shocked at Hannah's appearance. Her hollow cheeks, sallow skin, and the large growth on her throat transformed her into someone unknown. And yet, when her dark eyes opened, as they did now, and greeted him with silent love, he knew her.
"John," she croaked.
"Mother," he answered, taking the chair beside the bed and leaning down to kiss her pale cheek.
She patted his hand, "When I am gone –"
"Do not speak so," John interrupted, removing his hand from hers and running it through his black hair in agitation. Margaret entered the room with a knock, carrying a tray of supper. He latched on to his wife's eyes as though she would keep him from drowning in this unforgiving sea of reality.
"When I am gone," Hannah began again, "You are to give Fanny first pick of my belongings, as she is my daughter. I have no worries for Margaret's inheritance. Fanny will leave most everything to Margaret, as my daughter has not, as of yet, relinquished her love of colored baubles and foolish patterns, of which I have none."
"Of course," Margaret answered, as her husband could not speak. He had risen from the chair and paced over to the window to hide his unshed tears.
"Agnes must be kept on," Hannah continued, although she panted at the exertion of spending so much breath, "or found a position of equal prominence with a woman much kinder than myself."
"Mother!" John spun from the window, his voice sharp and hurt. He could not bear to hear her speak ill of herself. Not this woman who had worked herself to the bone and denied herself all comfort following her husband's cowardly end in order to return her children to their rightful place in society. Not this woman who had brought Margaret back to him, when she might as easily have spoken ill of her son's choice and returned to her place in the spotlight of his days.
"Oh, John," Hannah soothed, "I am sorry." And she was, for wounding him now and in the past through her words and actions towards the woman he loved. "I am tired now," she declared, "let me rest."
John shut the door gently behind him and turned to find his wife waiting. Margaret led him down the hall to their bedroom, sitting on the bed and patting her lap. John kicked off his boots and lay with his head in Margaret's lap. There, with her stroking his hair, John released the flood of tears that had threatened to erupt all day. "My mother, my mother," he murmured.
"I know," Margaret soothed, and he found some small comfort in the fact that she did.
Two days later, Hannah left the world behind with a quiet sigh. Margaret, sitting and darning beside her mother-in-law, did not even realize the significance of the sound until no breath followed. She folded the woman's arms over her chest and brushed back an errant string of still-dark hair.
"I should have been there," John cried, when Margaret found him in the library, seeking reprieve among the volumes.
"Do you not think she chose this, your absence, so as to spare you the memory?" Margaret asked, sure that she would have to remind him of this over the following days and months. She gripped his arms and stood close so that he could not but look at her.
John met his wife's deep brown eyes, reading in them the love and pain that she shared. "Thank God I have you," he burst, crushing her to him.
And he did; Margaret stood by him through all the preparations, the wake, and the funeral that followed. She shielded him from conversation with the many townspeople who came to offer their condolences. She insisted that he take a few days off and then that he return to work rather than mope about the house. She brought him lunch daily, letting him talk when he wanted and letting silence fall when he could not speak.
"I had forgotten how large this house is with only two," John murmured one night as they sat in the library, he at the end of the chaise with Margaret lounging beside, leaning against his shoulder and reading.
"It will not long be so," Margaret offered, seizing the opportunity that he presented.
"What?" John turned to look at his wife, dislodging her so that she sat up to avoid falling. "Are we expecting company?" He could not consider for a moment allowing another to fill his mother's chair.
She blushed, closing her book and forcing her eyes back to his. "In five months, I will bear your child," she glowed.
So astonished was John that he did not move or speak.
"Are you happy?" Margaret prompted.
"Overjoyed," he clarified, released by her words. He pulled her onto his lap and placed a hand on her stomach as gently as though it were glass. "Are you well?" he asked, concern washing over him.
"Yes," she assured.
"If only, my mother –" Here he stopped. His child would have no grandparents.
"She knew," Margaret assured him.
"Thank you," he sighed and let his head fall so that his forehead met hers, consumed with joy and sorrow all at once. Margaret felt it, too.
When the household received quiet word of Margaret's condition, Edward shadowed the mistress everywhere. He watched for signs of unsteadiness, for expressions of pain, and especially for footprints of blood. Every time the mistress walked the stairs, Edward watched with bated breath.
No such tragedy occurred. Margaret grew round and tired but radiated with joy. She insisted that there was no need for her husband's careful care but submitted to his conditions: that she take the carriage if she were to venture beyond the millyard without him even to visit the Boucher and Higgins family, that she rest each afternoon, and that she send for him if she felt any change at all in her condition.
A knock at his office door sent John Thornton jumping to his feet, as he had since Margaret's confinement began. Unlike all the previous times when his anxiousness had proved unfounded, this time it was Edward standing at the door.
"Please, sir," Edward said, ringing his hands, "it's the mistress."
"Go for the doctor," John barked. He lunged past the poor butler, down the stairs and across the yard. He almost vaulted up the stairs to their bedroom but thought better of it and instead ran to the library, where he found his wife lying on the yellow chaise.
"You should be in the bedroom," he frowned, but paused at the look on her face, "Is it – ?"
"I think it is time," she answered, her face flushed and her brown eyes wide with uncertainty. So John helped his young wife up the stairs to their bedroom and helped her settle there, dismissing Samantha's attempt to help with a wave.
When Dr. White arrived, he disagreed. "You are in labour, Mrs. Thornton," he stated, with a slight chuckle, "but it is still early stages. I will be on my rounds and return in several hours."
"You will not," John growled, stepping before the doorway, as if to bodily keep the man.
"John!" Margaret gasped, reddening at his rude behavior. "I am sure the doctor knows better than we how long this –" She broke off as a contraction gripped her.
"You see?" John protested, motioning to his wife, his face growing pale at the sight of her pain.
"I do see," the doctor explained. "I see that your wife has had but three pains, including this one. I assure you that I can be about my rounds and back before she progresses to the point of birthing."
Not quite mollified, John nevertheless allowed the man to find his way out. "How are you?" he asked Margaret, coming to sit beside her.
"I want my mother," she admitted.
"And I mine," he answered, picking up her hand, opening it, and placing a kiss on her palm, "but we have each other."
"Aye," Margaret answered, clinging to his hand.
Thus, when, hours later, the labour progressed and the good doctor returned, John refused to give up his place at his wife's side.
"A man does not remain in the room," Dr. White argued, keeping his voice gentle but firm, "it simply is not done."
Margaret cried out yet again as a contraction began.
"And yet, I am not leaving," John responded, his blue eyes flashing with anger, "Now care for my wife or I will find someone who will."
And so it was both mother and father who witnessed the first gasping breath, the piercing cry, and the doctor's announcement, "You have a daughter." Once Margaret and the child had been cleaned, examined, and found in good health, the doctor excused himself and the new family was alone.
Margaret tore her eyes away from the tiny, red-faced new life that she and her husband had created.
"Hannah Maria," John breathed, brushing a finger through the dark downy fuzz atop their child's head. Margaret saw in John's dear face the same emotions that she was sure her own displayed: joy, sorrow, fear, and amazement. It was all part of this wild, strange, miserable feeling that accompanies life and love.