Down Jasper Lane (Amherst Island Trilogy)

Louisa looked as if she wanted to say something spiteful, but she swallowed it down. “What is Hope going to do with herself, then?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. Help with the younger ones, I suppose.” Hope had three younger brothers who traipsed around in spotless sailor suits and shiny black shoes, their hair brushed and gleaming. Privately Ellen thought they looked a bit ridiculous.

Louisa sighed, the sound one of restlessness rather than acceptance. She glanced down at Ellen’s gifts lying on the coverlet and threaded the silk ribbon through her fingers. Her head still bowed, she said, “I know I was awful to you.”

“Do you?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Louisa said, smiling faintly, discomfiting Ellen even more. “I was so angry with you for speaking to me like you did, but I suppose I deserved it.”

“Yes, you did.” Ellen knew she was treading on dangerous ground, and Louisa’s temper—or tears—could burst any moment, but somehow she doubted they would. She sat hesitantly on the edge of the bed. “Have you been very ill?”

“I don’t know,” Louisa answered. “Mother was frightened for me, but then she always is.”

“I’m sorry if you have. It’s not an easy thing, to be an invalid, even if it is just for a while.”

Louisa glanced at her with bright, curious eyes. “Have you ever been so ill, Ellen?”

“No, but my mother was.” Ellen paused, remembering Mam. She seemed so distant now, a shadowy picture from another life. Even Da, gone now nearly two years, seemed lost in faint memories. Perhaps she was an orphan after all.

“Your mother?” Louisa repeated. “She... she died, didn’t she?”

“Yes, she did.” In her mind’s eye Ellen saw the bed set up by the coal stove in the kitchen, her mother’s pale, tired face on the pillow, yet still with a smile gracing her worn features.

He’s been good to me, Ellen. Don’t doubt it.

How had her mother possessed such faith in such bleak times? Ellen thought of her uncertain prayers to God, cast up to heaven the way a balloon floated towards the sky. Who knew what their fate was? How could you ever be sure?

“I’m not going to die,” Louisa said with the firmness of someone who had recently believed she might. “Not yet, anyway. I’m better every day. Father wants to send me somewhere warm for the summer, where I can rest and get stronger.”

“That should be lovely,” Ellen murmured. Outside the window she saw the gray sky clearing to fragile blue, and she longed suddenly to leave

this stuffy sickroom for the freedom of the fresh air. Just two more months until she took the train to Rouse’s Point, and then on to the island...

“I have just the place,” Louisa said into the silence, and Ellen saw a familiar expression of determination lighting her green eyes and setting her mouth in a stubborn line. Despite the maturity she’d just shown, Louisa was still at heart a spoiled child.

Ellen shifted on the edge of the bed, trying to hide her restlessness. “Oh, you’ve decided on a place? Where would that be?”

“Why, your island, of course.”

There was nearly a full minute of stunned silence while Ellen scrambled for something to say.

“You can’t!” she finally blurted, only to have Louisa’s expression darken dangerously.

“You don’t want me to go?”

Why would I, Ellen wanted to snap, considering how you’ve treated me? She took a deep breath, willing herself to stay calm. Louisa, she knew, was just the kind of person to insist on something simply because she knew no one, including herself, wanted it. She’d never imagined that Louisa would want to go to Amherst Island with her, not when she’d hated her for nearly a year. Yet perhaps she should have expected something like this, for Louisa could be so completely contrary.

“Of course, it would be pleasant to have you there,” Ellen said carefully, “but I’m thinking of you, Louisa. It’s certainly not warm—it’s most likely cooler than here, and it’s a rough sort of place as well. As I told you before, there are few shops and fewer entertainments. It’s really just a bunch of farmers. You’d find them all terribly stuffy and dull.”

Louisa’s lower lip jutted out, which Ellen took to be a bad sign. “How would you know what I find stuffy or dull?”

“You’ve told me yourself!” Ellen heard the edge of desperation, the bite of impatience in her own voice, and wished she could take the words back or at least soften them. Her resistance would surely only make Louisa more stubborn and difficult. “You told me you found Seaton dull, and Seaton is a—a metropolis compared to Stella, I promise you! You’d get there and be bored and irritable, and have wasted your whole summer.”

Louisa folded her arms. “You just don’t want me to go.”

“No, I don’t,” Ellen replied, “and I told you why.”

“It’s because you don’t like me,” Louisa answered, daring Ellen to deny it.