room. Some were seated, some stood and while she stared, the main door opened to admit another two, huge baskets hanging from their elbows.
It took fewer than five thumps of her heart against her ribs for the room to fall completely silent. Fewer than four more for them all to look in her direction.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, recovering quickly, but not quite quickly enough. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.” She sounded as if she lied, her voice wavered so.
The crowd parted at her words and Violet stepped forward. “Good morning, Sophia.” Her gaze took in Sophia’s filthy dress, the wood she still held in her arms and eventually returned to her face. “How is Blake faring this morning?”
“Blake?” she repeated dumbly.
“Matthew told me he had been injured, is he all right?”
She nodded. What were all of these women doing here? Surely they weren’t there to check on Blake’s welfare. Perhaps they were going to help her run the inn? She almost snorted.
Violet took another step forward. “Are you all right?”
Sophia nodded again.
“She doesn’t look all right,” a shrill voice spoke from the back of the room.
The almost sneering way it was said snapped her back to the present, back to the splinters pushing deeper into her skin and the ache in her muscles. “I am perfectly fine, startled perhaps, but fine nonetheless. Would someone kindly tell me what you are all doing here?”
“That’s none of your business,” an elderly lady said, stepping forward until she stood by Violet’s side.
“Annie, don’t be so unkind,” another lady admonished before pointing to Sophia. “You might want to put all of that down before you drop it on your feet.”
Sophia bobbed her head in the lady’s direction and tried to appear nonchalant as she walked down the middle of the assembled gaggle. She felt rather like Moses parting the red sea. She did feel as though the edges would fall in on her at any moment.
Silently she unloaded her burden by the hearth, dusted the front of her gown of dirt and bark, pushed her damp hair from her forehead and turned to face everyone. “Will you be staying for long?” She truly didn’t mean the question to emerge the way it did, but her nerves once again threatened to destroy her. What were they all doing there?
The one called Annie puffed her chest out. “We’ll stay for as long as we do every month, maybe longer.”
Every month? Why hadn’t Blake warned her? From the corner of her eye Sophia noticed Violet shake her head, her flushed face downcast, wringing her hands in front of her large belly.
“What do you do here every month?”
“None of your business,” Annie told her.
“We sew,” a fair-haired woman offered from the back of the room.
She didn’t bother asking any more questions after that. “I will leave you to it, then.”
“Best you do,” came Annie’s acid reply.
Violet sighed and a number of women shook their heads, but not one stopped her from leaving the room.
Hot tears pricked her eyes as she strode down the corridor past Blake’s office, through the kitchen and out into the yard where the rain still fell in sheets of freezing droplets. She heaved huge breaths of frigid air until her lungs burned but nothing stopped the tears.
This is what came from emotions. It’s what happened when she was made to feel. Then all the thoughts she had pushed away for so many years were able to creep over the wall she had erected. Women hated her. What more could she expect from gently bred females taught to despise what she was.
“Sophia?” The very last thing she expected was for Blake to choose that moment to appear.
She didn’t turn. Her latest humiliation didn’t require yet another witness. “What do you want?”
“Are you all right?”
“I am fine. Perfectly fine.” Maybe if she repeated the words enough times she may start to believe them.
“I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you they were coming.”
“Forgot?” She knew what she implied with the question. Did he leave out the information to hurt her?
“The ladies use the tap on this one morning a month to make quilts and talk nonsense. With the accident and all...”
Should she believe him?
Then the realization dawned. “You heard all of that, didn’t you?”
“I heard enough. I’m sorry, Sophie.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for and neither do they. Everyone has an opinion and I predicted that theirs would be like this. It’s one of the reasons I wasn’t going to come at all.