The Vance Conservatory was humid and smelled of wet earth and blooming orchids–a sharp contrast to the winter chill outside. Isabella found Lady Beatrice sitting on a stone bench beneath a sprawling fern, her face buried in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking.
“Beatrice?” Isabella rushed over, placing a hand on the older woman’s back. “Is it the twins? Did something happen?”
Beatrice looked up. Her face was wet with tears, but her expression was one of bewildered luminosity.
“No,” Beatrice whispered, wiping her eyes with a silk handkerchief. “I just… I woke up this morning, Isabella. And I waited for the tightening in my chest. I waited for the panic. I waited for Alistair’s footsteps.”
She looked up at the glass ceiling, where the sun was streaming in unobstructed.
“It didn’t come,” Beatrice said, her voice trembling with relief. “For forty years, I have held my breath. Today, for the first time… I exhaled.”
Isabella sat down and wrapped her arms around her mother-in-law. The “Dowager” was gone. In her place was simply a woman, finally feeling the sun.