The Seventh Miss Hatfield by Anna Caltabiano

it?’
    I agreed. ‘Does that mean we can go back now?’
    ‘I don’t see why not.’
    We returned to the carriage. As we climbed aboard, I realized I was finding it easier to navigate my skirts and layers, now that I’d had a little more practice. With a knock on the side of the carriage from Henley, we were once again rocked into heavy motion. Oddly, I now found the horse’s steps comforting, beating out a familiar pattern.
    Conversation in the coach was small talk compared to the meaningful conversations we’d been engaged in earlier. Our previous exchanges had been filled with almost-truths that were closer to reality than some truths were themselves. Anything would sound trivial in comparison to that. We arrived at the house after a journey only a few minutes longer than the one which had taken us into the heart of the city.
    A man in traditional black and white livery answered the door immediately. ‘Welcome home, sir,’ he said. He glanced at me and gave a curt nod. ‘Madam.’ His voice didn’t have the slightest hint of emotion, his tone dead and still. ‘Packages have arrived for Miss Beauford,’ he said to Henley as if I wasn’t even in the room. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of telling the porter to place them all in her room.’
    ‘Very well. Thank you, Jim.’
    ‘Sir.’ Jim bowed his head and disappeared.
    ‘Well, he’s not exactly a homey sort of fellow, is he?’ I commented as I watched his retreating back.
    ‘Homey?’ Henley laughed. ‘Jim thinks of duty first.’
    ‘Duty? It’s almost like slave labour.’ I was joking, but the words flew out twisted, and before I could shut my mouth I’d already said them.
    I looked tentatively at Henley, wondering what his reaction would be. His face was smooth, betraying no emotion at all.
    ‘I don’t think the servants would think of it as that,’ he said quietly. His tone changed abruptly. ‘Now, run along to your room and see what the porter brought.’ He shooed me away to my room as he, too, made his way up the stairs.
    I heard rustling even before I opened the door. Nellie was scurrying back and forth between heaps of hats and whatever else was tucked away beneath those heavy box tops. She stopped when she saw me and sank into a deep curtsy before speaking. ‘Miss, your hats and garments have arrived.’
    ‘So I see,’ I mumbled under my breath, forgetting to keep my thoughts to myself. Towers of hats swayed dangerously. Scarves in Nellie’s hands fluttered in the breeze coming through the open window. It looked as though she’d sprouted wings as she skirted from tower to tower, but for some reason the image didn’t amuse me as much as it should have.
    I crossed the floor to the window and caught a glimpse of the brash blue tail of a bird. It was a fleeting sight – not even a second long – but the colour stayed with me. I knew I would never see the same colouring on the same bird in the same way. I would never see beauty in that exact same manner. It only existed in that one fleeting moment, and then that, too, was gone. In a normal life, I felt that blue would have been the thing that would let me continue living. It would have been the first colour I’d see behind my eyelids in the morning, and the last colour I’d see in my mind’s eye at night. That vivid hue would have been the one thing that spurred me forward into life, when nothing else could have moved me. That flash of blue was a symbol for my life: quick yet enduring.
    I reminded myself that my entire so-called life would now be filled with moments like this. It would be comprised of fleeting moments – one life after the other, but I’d never stop being Rebecca Hatfield. I would never die.
    Suddenly I felt robbed of that blueness. Its fleeting beauty was meaningless to me now that my days had no end. I was robbed of death, and in some ways of life as well. That blueness would never be my last thought; the last thought at the end of it all. Instead it would just