Free Here Burns My Candle by Liz Curtis Higgs

Lord John drank to ease his chest pain, he’d succumbed on a cold winter’s morning, the first of January 1738. It was as if he could not bear another year in the city, another year apart from his beloved Tweedsford.
    Marjory pulled his pillow to her heart, fighting the unexpected wave of loneliness that swept over her. Would that you were beside me this night, John .
    She squeezed her eyes shut, but the painful images persisted: an aging husband, who’d indulged his headstrong bride and reluctantly moved his family to Edinburgh; two pale sons lying in their feather beds, struggling to breathe; and a widow who’d knelt by her husband’s grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard and wept for all she’d lost and the little she’d gained.
    No wonder the Almighty had turned his back on her. Or had she turned her back on him? Marjory was no longer certain. In the morning she would lift her head and face another day, leaving behind such melancholy thoughts. For now, she could only endure them.

Ten
But be faithful, that is all.
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
    E lisabeth gazed across the room at her husband, his body relaxed, his head buried in a goose-down pillow. Donald had not stirred when she rose from their bed nor when she lit a candle at the fireplace. But he would not sleep much longer. Not with dawn creeping across the windowsills.
    After quietly moving the perfumes and powders on her dressing table, she reached for her Ladies’ Diary , a slender almanac no bigger than her hand. Each month had its own page, with the phases of the moon across the top, then below them a descending calendar of days. She’d already circled the most important one that month: 20 September . The sixth day of the moon.
    The rest of the almanac was filled with enigmas, rebuses, and charades meant to sharpen a woman’s intellect. Elisabeth turned the pages in search of an engaging query or some clever rhyme, but the lettering was too small and the candlelight too faint to read at that hour.
    In truth, ’twas not her mind but her heart that needed tending.
    She’d waited all evening to claim Donald for herself. But he’d retired earlier than usual, then fell asleep before she could broach the subject that pressed down on her like a millstone. Are you truly mine, Donald, and mine alone?
    The mere thought tied her stomach in knots. Are you mine? How could she say those words aloud? How could she look into her husband’s eyes and repeat the ugly bits of gossip she’d heard over the years? Or ask how intimately acquainted he was with Anna Hart?
    Elisabeth had her own secrets, to be sure. But nothing like this. Much as she dreaded his response, she needed to know the truth, else how could she go on?
    Resolved to seek what help she could find, she pressed open her almanac to the last page, dipped a sharpened quill into the ink pot, andadded yet another item to her long list of entreaties for the sixth day of the moon. Unless she wrote them down, she couldn’t hope to remember them all when the time came. She chose her notations with care, lest anyone discover her almanac. A. H. would suffice for the young woman in question.
    Much as she longed to plead with the Nameless One at that very moment, her request would have to wait. “Thou moon of moons,” Elisabeth whispered in Gaelic, glancing at the windows, still veiled in gray. Better a faith riddled with doubt than no faith at all.
    When her husband awakened at cock’s crow, she would ask him straight away before she lost her nerve. Please, Donald . She sprinkled sand across the ink, silently pleading with him. Please tell me the truth .
    A male voice floated across the room. “Writing in your diary, I see.”
    “Oh!” Elisabeth turned in haste, scattering sand across table and floor. “I didn’t hear you rise.”
    “Nor I you.” Seated at the edge of their bed, Donald slowly yawned, dragging a hand over his face.
    She stood, brushing the sand from her lap, summoning every ounce of courage she possessed.