Lace garter and bow on a thigh

The snow has closed the Coldharbour road since Tuesday, so the carter will not get your ribbon spools through before Lady Day, and I am writing this at the kitchen table of the Fallow Stile with the lamp turned low to save oil. Mrs Penhallow has given me the corner by the bread oven, where the stones stay warm. Through the wall the landlord's dog snores like a bellows.

Yesterday a bride came in off the moor with her mother and a trunk of linen that had been soaked through at a ford. The mother wanted everything sponged and pressed, but the bride only wanted her garter mended. It was pale pink lace gone grey at the edges, with a bow of sage-green silk that had frayed into two long ends. She had sewn it on herself, she said, the night before her own mother died, and she would not have it replaced.

I took it to the window where the light was best and found the bow had been tied a little off centre, as if the hand that made it was in a hurry or in tears. I did not say so. I unpicked the knot, re-stitched the lace where it had torn, and tied the bow again, leaning it a finger's width toward the middle, where the ribbon had always wanted to sit. The silk ends I trimmed to match and singed with a candle so they would not fray again.

She stood very still while I worked, then laughed and said it looked as though her mother had come back to scold her. Her intended stamped snow off his boots in the passage and called her name. I buckled the garter back on her ribbon band and handed it over, and she tucked it into her sleeve like a letter.

Write when the road opens. Tell me whether the thread from Lyons matches the sage.

Yours, Harriet