Fic: Loyalty for Felicity, chapter 2
Fic: Loyalty for Felicity
Fandom: American Girl - Felicity
Rating: G
The next months dragged for Felicity. Her guitar seemed perpetually out of tune, her garden full of weeds, and her favorite books flat and uninteresting. Only Penny, snuffling at her pockets for carrots, made her happy: and even then, gloom slipped over her again when she took any of Elizabeth’s favorite rides.
Felicity did not ride much. She sat in windows and scowled and snapped so often that her little brother and sister, William and Polly, gave up asking her to play with them.
“You’ve become such a fine lady,” Felicity’s other sister, Nan, told her, as they sat over their mending.
Felicity summoned a smile. It sat uneasily on her lips. “Aren’t you glad?”
Nan hesitated, pulling her thread. “Yes?” she said, and frowned, like the word tasted strange to her.
Felicity tried to write a letter to Ben, to reassure him she would adore him even if he lost his whole left arm, but she felt shy of saying something so blatant to a boy who - she was ever more aware - was not her brother.
And somehow, all her letters circled back to her fight with Elizabeth and the fact that she had not seen her best friends in days - weeks - a month. It feels like I’ve lost a limb, Felicity wrote, and was mortified: how could she write that to a man who had just lost two fingers? She fed the draft to the candle flame.
But that was how she felt. She and Elizabeth had done everything together: admired beautiful horses (and sometimes their handsome riders), practiced dancing minuets, taught each other new songs, and taken long, long rides in the countryside, picking berries and plotting fantastic voyages to find Prospero’s Isle and chatting about Pamela and Pope and, oh, everything under the sun -
It was not like losing a limb, exactly. It was if her sense of joy had been amputated.
There was work to do, of course: bread to be baked, the garden to be weeded, endless mending on William’s trousers - “How can a ten-year-old rip his clothes so often?” Felicity demanded, hurling William’s shirt at the floor.
“I believe when you were ten, you ripped your clothes even more than William does,” Mrs. Merriman said gently.
In the face of her mother’s mildness, Felicity’s outburst embarrassed her. “My skirts caught under my feet when I ran,” she protested, picking up William’s shirt again. “William must be jumping off barns,” she added, trying to sound light, but even to herself her voice sounded dull.
Her mother shook her head. She smiled, but her eyes, resting on her daughter’s bent head, looked concerned. “Such an outburst isn’t like you, Lissie,” she said. “Is everything all right?”
Felicity concentrated on her stitches. “Of course,” she said.
“We haven’t seen Elizabeth for a while,” Mrs. Merriman said. “Did you two fight?”
“No,” said Felicity. “She’s just - busy.”
“She’s been busy for two months?”
“Mother!” cried Felicity, crushing William’s shirt in her lap. She took a deep breath. “I apologize. That was rude and disrespectful. But please, please, Mother, I can’t bear to talk about Elizabeth right now.”
“So you did fight.”
Hot tears flooded Felicity’s eyes. She blinked rapidly. But her soldierly resolve not to cry crumpled, and she hid her face in William’s shirt so her mother couldn’t see. “Oh, it’s the war,” Felicity wept. “This stupid war, and politics, a-and - ”
Mrs. Merriman’s arms encircled her. Felicity turned her head and cried into her mother’s shoulder, as if she were a little girl again and not an almost-young-lady of fourteen. “You’ve always known the Coles were Loyalists,” Mrs. Merriman said.
“I know,” sobbed Felicity. “But that d-d-didn’t mean Elizabeth had to be!”
Mrs. Merriman smoothed Felicity’s hair. “Elizabeth is a loyal girl,” she said gently. “I think it would take a great deal to make her turn against the beliefs of her family.”
“But there has been - there has been a great deal!” Felicity cried. She sat up indignantly, her face flushed with tears and anger. “Why, just think of all the - the indignities and usurpations the king has inflicted on us!” Since her argument with Elizabeth she had reread the declaration, burning with fury at the king’s injustice. Why could she not have recalled them all to fling in Elizabeth’s face? “He’s dissolved our legislatures when they don’t suit him, and refused to call new ones because he wants to rule like a tyrant, and although we have no representation in Parliament, he’s imposed all these ridiculous - ”
She recalled Elizabeth’s scorn about taxation without representation, and changed direction. “And…and now his insistence on this war! Think of the poor soldiers freezing at Valley Forge, because the king can’t bear to admit he’s lost the consent of the governed and let us go.”
“Yes,” her mother said. “You know I agree with you, Lissie. But Elizabeth may never do so. Is this disagreement worth losing her over?” She put her hands on Felicity’s shoulders, looking into her face. “You’ve been friends for years despite politics.”
“It…it just seems to matter more now,” Felicity said. Tears started in her eyes again. “I miss her so much,” she admitted.
“Write to her,” Mrs. Merriman said.
“But what could I say?” Felicity asked. “I can’t apologize. I meant everything I said.”
“Ask if you can put the disagreement behind you,” Mrs. Merriman advised. “Tell her you know that you can never agree, but you want to remain friends anyway.”
Mrs. Merriman went back to her seat and took up the gown she was lengthening for Polly. Felicity stared unseeing at William’s shirt in her hands. My dear Elizabeth, she would write, in the beautiful hand they had both learned from Miss Manderley. I’ve missed you so much, and I don’t care that we disagree about everything, I…
Felicity’s throat closed. “I can’t,” she said. “What if…what if she doesn’t write back?”
“Then at least you tried,” Mrs. Merriman said.
Felicity bent over her sewing. But late, late that night, she slipped out of bed and lit her candle. She twirled her goose quill pen between her fingers for a long time before settling down to write. You left your copy of The Castle of Otranto with me, she wrote, finally. Perhaps you can come retrieve it - or I, bring it to you - and we can eat raspberries (they have ripened since last we spoke) and discuss the book. I am convinced Hippolita would be an infinitely more satisfactory character, if she added Spirit to her store of Virtues.
Felicity read the page over one, twice, thrice before she sprinkled it with pounce to dry the ink. Elizabeth would know it for an apology, she was sure. Perhaps she would even come the next afternoon! They could have raspberry fool and laugh at the delicious excesses of The Castle of Otranto together. Giant helmets falling out of the sky, indeed!
She felt so much lighter that she finally completed her letter to Ben, as well. I don’t think any less of you - indeed, I think more of you - for your sacrifices for our country. I kiss your hands.
The last sentence was perhaps overwarm. She left it in anyway, and sent both letters off in the morning.
But Elizabeth did not reply.
Felicity tried to put it out of her mind. She had adored The Castle of Otranto: she was more than happy to keep it, she told herself, and promptly hid it at the back of her wardrobe so she need never look at it again.
She took to rereading Paine’s pamphlets on The American Crisis, instead. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Sitting on her bench in the garden, Felicity reread that sentence in the failing twilight. They still owned some breeches Ben had outgrown, saving them against the day William might grow into them…
And what a relief it would be, not to be haunted by the memory of Elizabeth’s presence everywhere she went!
“Felicity?”
Felicity dropped the pamphlet with a gasp. She thought for a moment that the soft voice had been conjured by her own memory, and the ghost-like figure at the gate just a figment from an imagination overheated by Gothic novels.
But the figure shifted from foot to foot, as Elizabeth did when she was nervous, and Felicity gave an inarticulate cry and dashed across the garden. She held her hands over the fence, and Elizabeth grasped them, her fingers cold in Felicity’s warm hands. “Oh, Elizabeth, I’m so glad to - But what are you doing here? And at this time of night!”
“I had to come,” Elizabeth said. Her eyes gleamed in the fading light. “I had to see you once more, before - oh, Felicity! My father has decided we cannot stay any longer in the colonies. We sail for England tomorrow!”
Fandom: American Girl - Felicity
Rating: G
The next months dragged for Felicity. Her guitar seemed perpetually out of tune, her garden full of weeds, and her favorite books flat and uninteresting. Only Penny, snuffling at her pockets for carrots, made her happy: and even then, gloom slipped over her again when she took any of Elizabeth’s favorite rides.
Felicity did not ride much. She sat in windows and scowled and snapped so often that her little brother and sister, William and Polly, gave up asking her to play with them.
“You’ve become such a fine lady,” Felicity’s other sister, Nan, told her, as they sat over their mending.
Felicity summoned a smile. It sat uneasily on her lips. “Aren’t you glad?”
Nan hesitated, pulling her thread. “Yes?” she said, and frowned, like the word tasted strange to her.
Felicity tried to write a letter to Ben, to reassure him she would adore him even if he lost his whole left arm, but she felt shy of saying something so blatant to a boy who - she was ever more aware - was not her brother.
And somehow, all her letters circled back to her fight with Elizabeth and the fact that she had not seen her best friends in days - weeks - a month. It feels like I’ve lost a limb, Felicity wrote, and was mortified: how could she write that to a man who had just lost two fingers? She fed the draft to the candle flame.
But that was how she felt. She and Elizabeth had done everything together: admired beautiful horses (and sometimes their handsome riders), practiced dancing minuets, taught each other new songs, and taken long, long rides in the countryside, picking berries and plotting fantastic voyages to find Prospero’s Isle and chatting about Pamela and Pope and, oh, everything under the sun -
It was not like losing a limb, exactly. It was if her sense of joy had been amputated.
There was work to do, of course: bread to be baked, the garden to be weeded, endless mending on William’s trousers - “How can a ten-year-old rip his clothes so often?” Felicity demanded, hurling William’s shirt at the floor.
“I believe when you were ten, you ripped your clothes even more than William does,” Mrs. Merriman said gently.
In the face of her mother’s mildness, Felicity’s outburst embarrassed her. “My skirts caught under my feet when I ran,” she protested, picking up William’s shirt again. “William must be jumping off barns,” she added, trying to sound light, but even to herself her voice sounded dull.
Her mother shook her head. She smiled, but her eyes, resting on her daughter’s bent head, looked concerned. “Such an outburst isn’t like you, Lissie,” she said. “Is everything all right?”
Felicity concentrated on her stitches. “Of course,” she said.
“We haven’t seen Elizabeth for a while,” Mrs. Merriman said. “Did you two fight?”
“No,” said Felicity. “She’s just - busy.”
“She’s been busy for two months?”
“Mother!” cried Felicity, crushing William’s shirt in her lap. She took a deep breath. “I apologize. That was rude and disrespectful. But please, please, Mother, I can’t bear to talk about Elizabeth right now.”
“So you did fight.”
Hot tears flooded Felicity’s eyes. She blinked rapidly. But her soldierly resolve not to cry crumpled, and she hid her face in William’s shirt so her mother couldn’t see. “Oh, it’s the war,” Felicity wept. “This stupid war, and politics, a-and - ”
Mrs. Merriman’s arms encircled her. Felicity turned her head and cried into her mother’s shoulder, as if she were a little girl again and not an almost-young-lady of fourteen. “You’ve always known the Coles were Loyalists,” Mrs. Merriman said.
“I know,” sobbed Felicity. “But that d-d-didn’t mean Elizabeth had to be!”
Mrs. Merriman smoothed Felicity’s hair. “Elizabeth is a loyal girl,” she said gently. “I think it would take a great deal to make her turn against the beliefs of her family.”
“But there has been - there has been a great deal!” Felicity cried. She sat up indignantly, her face flushed with tears and anger. “Why, just think of all the - the indignities and usurpations the king has inflicted on us!” Since her argument with Elizabeth she had reread the declaration, burning with fury at the king’s injustice. Why could she not have recalled them all to fling in Elizabeth’s face? “He’s dissolved our legislatures when they don’t suit him, and refused to call new ones because he wants to rule like a tyrant, and although we have no representation in Parliament, he’s imposed all these ridiculous - ”
She recalled Elizabeth’s scorn about taxation without representation, and changed direction. “And…and now his insistence on this war! Think of the poor soldiers freezing at Valley Forge, because the king can’t bear to admit he’s lost the consent of the governed and let us go.”
“Yes,” her mother said. “You know I agree with you, Lissie. But Elizabeth may never do so. Is this disagreement worth losing her over?” She put her hands on Felicity’s shoulders, looking into her face. “You’ve been friends for years despite politics.”
“It…it just seems to matter more now,” Felicity said. Tears started in her eyes again. “I miss her so much,” she admitted.
“Write to her,” Mrs. Merriman said.
“But what could I say?” Felicity asked. “I can’t apologize. I meant everything I said.”
“Ask if you can put the disagreement behind you,” Mrs. Merriman advised. “Tell her you know that you can never agree, but you want to remain friends anyway.”
Mrs. Merriman went back to her seat and took up the gown she was lengthening for Polly. Felicity stared unseeing at William’s shirt in her hands. My dear Elizabeth, she would write, in the beautiful hand they had both learned from Miss Manderley. I’ve missed you so much, and I don’t care that we disagree about everything, I…
Felicity’s throat closed. “I can’t,” she said. “What if…what if she doesn’t write back?”
“Then at least you tried,” Mrs. Merriman said.
Felicity bent over her sewing. But late, late that night, she slipped out of bed and lit her candle. She twirled her goose quill pen between her fingers for a long time before settling down to write. You left your copy of The Castle of Otranto with me, she wrote, finally. Perhaps you can come retrieve it - or I, bring it to you - and we can eat raspberries (they have ripened since last we spoke) and discuss the book. I am convinced Hippolita would be an infinitely more satisfactory character, if she added Spirit to her store of Virtues.
Felicity read the page over one, twice, thrice before she sprinkled it with pounce to dry the ink. Elizabeth would know it for an apology, she was sure. Perhaps she would even come the next afternoon! They could have raspberry fool and laugh at the delicious excesses of The Castle of Otranto together. Giant helmets falling out of the sky, indeed!
She felt so much lighter that she finally completed her letter to Ben, as well. I don’t think any less of you - indeed, I think more of you - for your sacrifices for our country. I kiss your hands.
The last sentence was perhaps overwarm. She left it in anyway, and sent both letters off in the morning.
But Elizabeth did not reply.
Felicity tried to put it out of her mind. She had adored The Castle of Otranto: she was more than happy to keep it, she told herself, and promptly hid it at the back of her wardrobe so she need never look at it again.
She took to rereading Paine’s pamphlets on The American Crisis, instead. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Sitting on her bench in the garden, Felicity reread that sentence in the failing twilight. They still owned some breeches Ben had outgrown, saving them against the day William might grow into them…
And what a relief it would be, not to be haunted by the memory of Elizabeth’s presence everywhere she went!
“Felicity?”
Felicity dropped the pamphlet with a gasp. She thought for a moment that the soft voice had been conjured by her own memory, and the ghost-like figure at the gate just a figment from an imagination overheated by Gothic novels.
But the figure shifted from foot to foot, as Elizabeth did when she was nervous, and Felicity gave an inarticulate cry and dashed across the garden. She held her hands over the fence, and Elizabeth grasped them, her fingers cold in Felicity’s warm hands. “Oh, Elizabeth, I’m so glad to - But what are you doing here? And at this time of night!”
“I had to come,” Elizabeth said. Her eyes gleamed in the fading light. “I had to see you once more, before - oh, Felicity! My father has decided we cannot stay any longer in the colonies. We sail for England tomorrow!”