Chapter Five – Of Being Alone
The first day, Rose fumed. By turns, she paced in her room and dashed down the stairs to the window that overlooked the garden. Every strange sound caught her attention and caused her heart to pound with both indignation at the Doctor's nerve and relief that he'd made it back safely. And every time it proved a false alarm, she turned away with agitation and hidden fear. That night, she slept soundly, certain that the Doctor would be downstairs when she woke.
Worn out from the full day of worrying, Rose did not open her eyes until the midday sun streamed through her window. At first she stretched and yawned, oblivious, then she sat upright with a jolt. He ought to be down there, chatting with the kitchen staff or discussing trivials with Mrs Morris, waiting impatiently for her to wake up. He'd say something stupid, designed to take the edge of her temper, but she wouldn't let him charm his way out of this one.
As she slid out of bed, Rose noticed a tray set up on the desk. It looked like the sort of breakfast that would keep, hidden under covered dishes. A vase with a pretty flower adorned the tray, along with a folded piece of paper. She couldn't help but smile. Trying to butter her up, was he? Afraid to face her in person, had he sent his apologies along with the rose-like flower?
She poked around the tray but didn't feel like eating any of the items on it. It would soon be lunchtime, anyway. The flower she sniffed, savouring the honey-sweet smell. The note she saved for last, taking it to the bed to read.
A stab of disappointment hit her when she did not recognize the handwriting. With quick fingers, she unfolded the thick creamy paper and scanned the lines of slanting cursive.
To the Lady Rose—
As I greatly enjoyed both conversation and dancing with you the other evening, I pray you will allow me the honour of visiting with you again. Might I be so bold as to request an afternoon of your company? Respectfully awaiting your answer,
Your obedient servant,
Christopher Morris
Rose sighed. She liked him well enough, but she certainly did not feel like company at the moment. Besides, they'd likely be off as soon as the Doctor returned with the enigma solved. Always moving on to the next adventure, the next mystery.
She dressed slowly, her feelings of anger dissolving into hurt. How could he have gone off without her? Without even telling her or saying goodbye? Didn't he know how much it would upset her? Or didn't he care?
With those thoughts on her mind, she went downstairs. Each step creaked beneath her feet. She wondered if her new shoes would be ready by now. And then she walked into the dining room and stopped short.
Christopher rose from the table and bowed. A lock of blonde hair fell forward onto his face, accenting his blue eyes.
Rose stammered in surprise. "But... I just got your note. How can you... why are you...?"
"Forgive me, m'lady. I thought perhaps you knew. I did not mean to startle you or cause distress." He folded his napkin and glanced to his mother.
Mrs Morris set aside her fork and went to Rose's side. "Dear child. Christopher lives here, didn't you know? His room is beyond yours, on the second level. But, of course, he's been so busy with rehearsals, it's no wonder you haven't bumped into each other before today."
"Oh. I'm sorry, I should've guessed." She sat down with flushed cheeks.
"No need to apologize, Lady Rose. You did not know, and I am not offended." He paused, sitting back down. "You need not see more of me than you wish. I shall make myself scarce during the remainder of your stay, if you desire."
"What? No, of course not. It's your home. I'm just visiting for a bit. Don't let me stop you from doing whatever it is you do."
Mrs Morris placed a plate before Rose, piled high with sliced meats and steaming potatoes. "Here you are, dear. Enjoy your lunch. We'll leave you in peace."
"No, please." She looked up. "You were eating. Don't let me chase you away with my bad mood."
With a nod, Mrs Morris sat back down. She exchanged a brief worried look with her son, and then quietly said, "He isn't back yet, I'm afraid."
Rose said nothing. The food smelled delicious, but it had no flavour in her mouth and settled into her stomach like cold metal.
-oo-O-oo-
The third day, she began to worry.
"What if something's happened to him? What if he's hurt?"
"Shall we make a search of the outer roads, then? He would not have been so foolish as to have tried to traverse the moor, would he?" Christopher frowned.
"If it's a bad idea, then you can bet that he's done it," Rose replied, though she doubted he'd gone anywhere close by in the TARDIS. "Have you got a map?"
She examined the heavy atlas he brought her. The moor surrounded the small village on three sides, leaving only the northern border free, along with the road that led to the next village and eventually to London. After flipping through the large atlas, Rose found a map that showed England. She furrowed her brow at the sketch on the page. According to the map, all of the United Kingdom included only England and Scotland, and the whole island appeared to be bordered by the impassable bog, rather than an ocean. From their first walk to the village, she'd discovered that a kilometre was considerably less than an actual kilometre—about half, she estimated. She bit her lip while doing the calculations in her head, and then stared at the map.
The strange scale of this place left the combined length of England and Scotland at less than five hundred kilometres!
"How many people live in London, d'you think?"
Christopher shrugged lightly. "Perhaps as many as five hundred thousand, but I believe it is less than that. Why do you ask?"
"No reason," she answered, bewildered. One of the little bits of trivia she'd picked up from the Doctor was that at the beginning of the eighteen-hundreds, London had housed more than a million people.
-oo-O-oo-
Halfway through the fifth day, she locked herself in her room. Until the following sunrise, she lay on her bed staring up at the ceiling.
-oo-O-oo-
The twenty-second day, she agreed to take a walk through the gardens with Christopher. He amused her with little stories about the villagers, the sort of mistakes they'd made during rehearsals, and events from his childhood. He did not mention the Doctor, but skilfully kept her attention elsewhere.
That night, she stood outside and looked up at the stars. The two moons seemed strange, but she recognized more than a few of the stars. They brought to mind too many memories of being with the Doctor, however, so she scanned for the star she knew belonged to Earth. That one she focused on, even as she whispered over and over, "Doctor, where are you?"
-oo-O-oo-
"He seems like a man able to care for himself," Mrs Morris said, on the thirty-eighth day. "Perhaps he is merely detained in London. Though you would think he could send word, at least, to ease your mind."
Rose said nothing as she wound a skein of wool into a ball. Five and a half weeks. That's how long the Doctor had been away.
Mrs Morris bit her lip. "I hesitate even to ask, m'lady, but... is it possible... that he... well, that perhaps he thought you would be better off in our care, rather than tramping around the world with him?"
Rose glanced at her sharply. "Impossible," she murmured, and yet her mind filled with the accounts the Doctor had told her of previous companions. How many had he dropped off somewhere, convinced that it was time for them to settle down and live normal lives? Convinced they'd be better off away from him? Even his own granddaughter, Susan. He'd locked her out of the TARDIS, abandoned her on Earth, thinking she would be happier to live with the man she'd fallen in love with. And Sarah Jane, the sweet woman. He'd dropped her off in Aberdeen, hundreds of miles from her home in Croydon, without ever telling her that he would not be coming back for her.
"He promised," she reminded herself aloud. "He wouldn't leave me here. It's just that he hasn't a very good sense of time. He's probably on the side of the road somewhere, tinkering with the—the carriage and thinking it's only been a day or two since he's left."
She tried not to remember the day the Doctor had taken her home after their first adventure together, how he announced that it had been only twelve hours since she'd left, and how it had really been twelve months.
"He'll be here. He's just lost track of time, that's all."
She didn't notice the pitying look that Mrs Morris gave her.
-oo-O-oo-
On the forty-second day, she sat down with Mrs Morris and began to learn needlework. Her stitches were tight and uneven, the pattern a ragged mess, but Mrs Morris kindly showed her how to unpick the threads. Every stab of the needle into the fabric gave her a jolt of satisfaction.
-oo-O-oo-
On the sixty-eighth day, she accepted a minor role in the Season's performance of their sacred Book. She spoke no lines and had no real actions other than to dance at the parties and stroll along the main street of the village whilst the main characters acted out their parts, but like the needlework, it gave her something to do.
Every evening, Mrs Morris read aloud from the Book. By now, Rose knew that she had heard the story before, though she could not place it. Since she had only read two or three books published on alien worlds, she knew it had to mean the Book came from Earth, originally.
She missed the novel she'd been reading before they'd landed—crashed—here, since she'd been three-fourths of the way through it and the heroine had nearly figured out which of three brothers had been sending her anonymous love letters. It occurred to her that she might never know whether it was Brautok, Snu, or Arsiin who secretly loved Annaza.
-oo-O-oo-
On the ninety-third day, she displayed a piece of embroidered cloth to Mrs Morris. The rows were almost straight and the flowers actually resembled flowers, even if none seen on this world. The little rectangular boxes around the edges were merely decoration. Certainly they did not resemble the TARDIS.
"Very good, m'lady. You've quite improved! I do believe you could attempt something more ambitious, if you've the inclination."
"Why not? I've nothing else to do," she replied.
-oo-O-oo-
On the one hundred and first day, she met again with Christopher in the gardens. They often took such walks together, for she enjoyed his company and found that anything was better than sitting alone in her room, waiting for the Doctor.
This time, he handed her one of the flowers grown in the greenhouse.
Rose pulled her coat tighter around herself and accepted the flower with a smile. Winter had set in and most of the garden now lay dormant. Still, she liked to spend time outside. Her room upstairs so often seemed like a prison. One place, one time... sometimes she thought she would go mad.
"My lady," Christopher said, bowing.
Rose curtsied in reply and adjusted the hood of her coat. The freezing wind tried to catch hold of her hair, to pull it loose from the pins that held it in place. To her embarrassment, her roots had begun to show badly. She wore a hat or bonnet whenever possible, and the rest of the time, she bound her hair with wide ribbons that hid the dark roots. Eventually, the roots would grow out long enough that she could cut the blonde ends off. It had been years since she'd had brown hair.
She couldn't imagine looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger, but she felt like one anyway. No longer Rose Tyler: Defender of the Universe, Time Traveller, and Companion to the Doctor. Just plain, simple... well, not quite plain Rose Tyler, since these people considered her a lady. All right then, Dame Rose Tyler. Still, it wasn't what she wanted. It wasn't what she craved. Or whom she craved to be with.
Christopher sat beside her on the stone bench. For some time neither said anything. Then, he boldly covered her hand with his. "You're cold."
"Yeah. Bit nippy out here, innit?"
"Shall we go in?"
"No," she said quickly. "I'd rather not."
"Then, since we are staying put, there is something I would like to ask you, Lady Rose."
"What's that, then?"
He cleared his throat. "You must know of my admiration for you, my lady. Your beauty, of course, but also your cleverness, your wit, your laugh..."
"Go on!" She laughed, shoving at him.
"I am in earnest, Lady Rose."
Rose looked at him. Surely he didn't mean... he couldn't be...
"Since there is no one present to speak for you, I would ask you yourself and pray that you are not offended. Would you consider...? That is, is there any possibility that...?"
She squeezed his hand. "Just say it. Whatever it is."
He blew out a breath. "Well then. Would you allow me the honour of courting you, Lady Rose? I know I am not your equal, but I think it likely that we would be well suited for each other."
"Court me?" She tried to remember exactly what that meant before answering, lest she get in over her head without meaning to.
"Yes. If you do not think it too forward of me to ask, that is."
"No, of course not. I'm not... I might be a Dame, but that doesn't make me any different from you. I grew up without a lot of money, without a lot of things. I'm nobody special." Though I thought maybe I was, for awhile, she added silently.
"Well then." He looked at her anxiously, his nose turning red from the cold and his eyes shining brightly in anticipation.
"This... courting. What does it involve, exactly?"
"Oh. Well, I suppose I would meet you in the afternoons for tea, and perhaps a walk around the gardens. I would be your escort to each dance, that is, the ones that aren't part of the Season. We might sit together in the evenings and get to know one another better."
"So... just the way things are now." She grinned.
He chuckled. "Well, I suppose we have been seeing rather a lot of each other. Can't be helped with you staying at my home. The difference would be, I suppose, that I would have a bit of a claim on you. A mutual claim, that is. It would be saying to the village that we're..."
"Together?" she asked softly.
"Together. In a limited sense, of course," he added.
Then he stood and put his hands in his pockets in a manner that tore at Rose's heart. She bit her lip until it bled.
"I have no right to expect that you would agree, my lady, but I had hoped... that is, it seemed as though you..."
"Yeah," she whispered.
"I... what did you say?"
She shook her head, pulling a strand of hair out of her face, then gave a small laugh. "I said, yes. I'd... like that."
The look on his face was one that she would remember for a long time. He pulled her up to his side and hugged her, then cupped her face with one hand. For a moment, she thought he would kiss her, but his lips just missed hers, landing on her cheek instead.
(To Be Continued...)
Author's Note: I've made a slight revision to this chapter to fix my mix-up of Croydon and Aberdeen. It now reflects accurately which city Sarah Jane lived in and which she was dropped off at. Sorry for any confusion!