Flight and Fancy

Chapter 16

The Jacobson family worked hard and as they worked on the unkempt rooms they talked.

Isabelle learned a lot about what her parents had been through. She had wondered if she had any brothers or sisters. Her mother told her of several babies that had been lost early in pregnancy. About a year after Isabelle had been kidnapped Amelia had given birth to twins. it had been a difficult birth and left her unable to have anymore children. As the twins approached their first birthday sickness had swept through the local village killing young and old. Amelia and Simon told of their desperation at trying to help their little ones who had been gripped with fever and how desolate they felt as the twins were taken by deaths cruel hand. They had thought that Isabelle too was dead, taken by some unscrupulous monster.

They told of how just days after burying their babies, they were run off the farm at gun-point and chased from town to town until they were out of the Whiteroad Estate boundaries and had arrived at the forest. They told Isabelle how they had cried in despair as they tried to fathom how they were to exist and then of the blessing of finding a deserted stone cottage which they had cared for and lived in without incident other then being chased from town whenever her father's spies had seen them there. They told of how Magnus and his friends had found them and how Amelia had cared for their injuries.

Isabelle told her parents of her ordeal. She couldn't remember anything of the actual kidnapping but told of how she awoke in a carriage, bound hand and foot with a stern faced man watching her. She named the man - Lord Hugh Graystone.

Amelia's face went ghostly pale and her energy seemed to be sucked from her body at the mere mention of him name. Her knees buckled and she dropped down. Simon went to where his wife had crumpled to a barely sitting position on the floor.

"Lord Graystone," Amelia began, "was my father's chosen suitor for me. I refused his hand in marriage to marry my only love Simon. All these years I have wondered who would take my child."

As they all sat on the floor Isabelle relate the way she had been kept and treated. Both of her parents cried for her and the suffering she had had to endure.

Simon gathered himself together and wiped his face on a rag.

"We're here together now and we are making a new and peaceful start. Let's continue to ready this house so that we can have a celebratory feast."

He clapped his hands and helped pull each of the women  to their feet. He waltzed his wife around the room.

"We shall have music and dancing and a banquet fit for the King!" he said as he laughed and danced.

Isabelle picked up a broom and started to clean again smiling at her father's silly antics and hope filled words.

The house was spotless, the furniture had been refinished. There were new linens in the cupboard and a fully stocked kitchen and larder. The three now turned their attentions to the outside of their home. Kettles of boiling water were thrown across the cobbled paths to kill the weeds that had grown. The gardens were tilled and bushes trimmed. Their "mansion" was now sparkling and fresh inside and out.

Jacob arrived and knocked on the door. Simon opened the door and asked him in.

"I have come as a messenger bearing an invitation for your family. There is going to be a Ball at the Campbell Manor in honour of Wesley's eighteenth birthday."

Jacob reached into the pocket of his jacket and handed Simon a folded piece of paper. Simon opened it and read the words.

"It's in three weeks! Please tell James and Mariah that we are honoured at the invitation and that the Jacobson family will be in attendance," he gladly announced.