Dora had stayed for Agnes.
It was as though the very thought summoned her sister. There was a light tap on the door of her bedchamber, and it opened slowly to reveal the anxious face of Agnes and then her full form, wrapped in a dressing gown.
“Oh, you are awake,” she said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. “I thought you would be. What are you thinking about?”
Dora smiled and almost lied. They very rarely talked about the painful memories from the past. But she found herself telling the truth.
“Mama,” she said, and she blinked as she realized her eyes had filled with hot tears.
“Oh, Dora!” Agnes hurried toward her, hands outstretched. “Do you miss her terribly? Even after all this time? I have thought about her occasionally since Flavian went to call on her last year. But I can scarcely remember her, you know. I daresay I would pass her on the street without knowing her, even if she still looked as she did all those years ago. I have only a few flashes of memory of her. But it is different for you. You were seventeen. She had been with you all through your childhood and girlhood.”
“Yes,” Dora said, squeezing Agnes’s hands and then fumbling for her handkerchief.
“Does it make a difference to you, what she told Flavian last year?” Agnes asked.
“That she was innocent?” Dora said. “That she had done no more than flirt a little with that man before Papa said what he did? I can believe it. It was Papa who was the guilty one on that occasion, and I think I can understand why Mama fled. How would one face one’s friends and neighbors again after such a humiliation? Perhaps I can even understand her leaving Papa. How could she forgive what he had done, even supposing that he asked for forgiveness? But she left us, Agnes. She left you. You were little more than a baby. She might have returned but did not. She might have written but did not. She used that horrible evening to do what she must have dreamed of doing for a long time. She ran away with that man. She married him. She put her own gratification before us—before you. No, what she told Flavian does not really make a difference.”
“She would have been miserable if she had stayed,” Agnes said. “Poor Mama.”
“People often are miserable,” Dora said. “They make the best of it. They make a meaningful life despite it. They make happiness despite it. Prolonged misery is often at least partially self-inflicted.”
Agnes had pulled up a chair and sat beside her sister, one hand resting unconsciously over the slight swelling of her unborn child.
“You made happiness out of misery, Dora,” she said softly. “You made me happy. Did you know that? And did you know that I adored you and still do? I am sorry . . . I am so sorry that you were obliged to give up your youth for me—or that you chose to give it up.”
Dora turned her head and reached out one hand to grasp her sister’s.
“There is no greater pleasure, Agnes,” she said, “than making a child feel secure and happy when it is in one’s power to do so. I know I was no substitute for Mama, but I loved you dearly. It was no sacrifice. Believe me it was not.”
Agnes smiled, and there were tears in her eyes now too.
“I think,” she said, “that after Flavian I love George more than any other man I know. They all do, you know—the Survivors, that is. They all adore him. He saved all their lives in more ways than just offering his home as a hospital. And he did it all with a quiet, steadfast sort of kindness and love. Flavian says he had a gift for making each of them feel that he—or she in Imogen’s case—had all his attention. He gave so much of himself that it is amazing he has anything left. But that is the mystery of love, is it not? The more one gives, the more one has. I am so happy that he is to have you, Dora. He deserves you. Not many men would. And you most certainly deserve him. Are you happy? You have not just . . . settled? Do you love him?”
“I am happy.” Dora smiled. “I might have been felled with a feather, you know, when he appeared without any warning in my sitting room a month ago. I was actually cross when I heard his knock on the door. I had had a busy day and I was weary. And then he stepped into the room and asked if I would be obliging enough to marry him.”
They both laughed and squeezed each other’s hand.
“I am happy,” Dora said again. “He is kindness itself.”
“Just kindness?” Agnes asked. “Do you love him, Dora?”
“We have agreed,” Dora said, “that we are too old for that nonsense.”
Agnes shrieked and jumped to her feet.
“Shall I fetch a Bath chair to convey you to the wedding?” she asked. “Shall I have one sent to Stanbrook House to convey George?”
Dora swung her legs off the window seat, and they both dissolved into laughter again.
“I am fond of him,” Dora conceded. “There. Are you satisfied? And I do believe he is fond of me.”
“I am bowled over by the romance of it,” Agnes said, one hand over her heart. “But I do not believe you for a moment. At least, I do not believe it is just fondness you feel for each other. I was watching him while you played the pianoforte a couple of evenings ago, you know. He was positively beaming. And it was not just with pride. And I saw the way you looked at him after you had finished playing, before you were swamped with the attentions of the guests. Oh, Dora, this is your wedding day. I am so happy I could burst.”
“Please don’t,” Dora said.