Isabelle and Alexander by Rebecca Anderson (new books to read TXT) 📗

me at your leisure. You no longer have to close your eyes or wait for me to leave the room. You can simply turn your head and pretend I’m not here.” She stopped his chair directly in a window-shaped beam of light. “You’re practically a free man again.”

On a good day, that would have made Alexander laugh. This was not that day.

Reading his reaction, she reduced her playful tone and said, “I’d like to invite Doctor Kelley to come see you. Not for professional reasons, although I am certain he’d not be able to resist poking about.”

She gave him a moment to agree. When he said nothing, she continued. “It has been some time,” she reminded him.

As he didn’t answer, she could only assume he remembered how long it had been. Perhaps a new angle, she thought. “I think it would do him good to see your improvement.”

She turned his chair and knelt so near that he had to face her. He could only ignore her now if he closed his eyes. She inclined her head so her face was mere inches from his. “Please. Please bring Doctor Kelley back to see you.”

He met her eye and held her gaze. She felt a flush creeping up her neck, but she did not look away. She knelt before him, waiting for acknowledgment.

Finally he spoke. “If you want to invite him, I’ll not stop you.”

“How perfectly gracious of you,” she muttered, moving to sit at the parlor table. She opened her hinged wooden box and began to write.

He said nothing for the duration of her letter-writing. When he continued to say nothing, she wrote to Edwin and to her mother as well. After folding and sealing the papers, she came back to his chair.

“Would you like me to move your chair?” she asked.

“What I’d like is to move it myself,” he bit out. “But I cannot.”

“All right, then. Shall we do Doctor Kelley’s exercises?”

“No.”

His curt response shook her resolve to carry on with equanimity. She took a bracing breath.

“But the exercises are strengthening your body so you can move yourself,” she said.

“Do not attempt to cajole me. I am not a child!” he roared.

She stood with hands on hips. “I know well that you are not a child,” she said, her voice growing with each word. “A child would be more tractable.”

Surprise covered his face, as well it might; she had never spoken like this to him.

“Every day we carry out our assignments, you come closer to regaining your mobility.” Pleased at the steadiness of her voice, she went on. “We owe our best attempts to your healing. And we owe this effort to Doctor Kelley, after all he has done for us.”

Though she kept her voice steady, her heart beat harder with each word she spoke. If his circulation was reacting in a similar way, this interlude would be a vast improvement over his brooding silence: a new kind of exercise.

“Perhaps you will feel more inclined to exercise with Nurse Margaret.”

He looked slightly abashed, and she felt the momentary joy of winning a dispute.

“If there is nothing else I can help you with, then,” she said.

He said, “There is nothing,” but his voice held no anger. Perhaps even a note of penitence.

“Indeed not.” She moved toward the door, grateful for her ability to walk away from him. “I’ll be off.”

“Fine.”

Isabelle wished for a door she could slam behind her. Ever since speaking with Mrs. Kenworthy that day, she’d tried to remember that Alexander’s anger was merely one facet of his experience. She could choose to respond in kind or choose a different reaction. But there were days, like this one, when she wished she could engage in full combat.

Knowing that a change in venue was needed, she put on a coat and took herself to the mill. Upon entering, she waited inside the door of the spinning room for someone to notice she was there.

The men and women working at the machines, lifting, stretching, guiding, and containing the fibers in their various spindles and spools looked like dancers in a ballet. Their every motion, taken together, created a flow of motion where nothing went amiss.

Isabelle could only begin to imagine the result if something did go amiss.

After a few minutes, Isabelle watched two young women duck out of their places in front of a machine and two others take their places. Seamlessly, the new workers raised their arms to balance a winding bobbin or measure tension of yarn. Isabelle watched the two who had stepped away. They walked to a corner of the huge room and disappeared through a door.

It wasn’t the door Mr. Connor had taken her through either to the stairs or to Alexander’s office, but Isabelle felt bold and followed the two.

Hauling open the heavy door, Isabelle entered a room with hooks along the wall, several holding uniforms or overcoats. Along another wall, large barrels held water with dippers for the workers to take a drink.

One of the young women noticed her. “You new, love?” she asked, her voice carrying the same lilt as Mr. Kenworthy’s. “Get your uniform here,” she said, gesturing to the coats hanging on the hooks. “Most any will fit you, but make sure it’s good and snug along your arms. Don’t want anything dangling,” she said, turning away and taking the water dipper from her friend.

“What’s your floor?” the other girl asked.

“Pardon?”

“Warping? Spinning? Wefting?” The two young women shared a look that seemed to reflect they found Isabelle daft.

She knew these women ought not spend so much of their break trying to discern her needs. She clarified. “I beg your pardon, but I am here to see Mr. Connor.”

The taller girl grinned. “Mr. Connor’s nice to see, I’ll grant you, but if you were lucky, you’d have come back in summer, when Mr. Osgood himself walked the floor.” She looked at her friend, and they both sighed. “Now there was a man to come see. His eyes, like a perfect sky reflected in