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Authors: Elizabeth Vail
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elementals danced and shivered.
“Three?”
“Her ladyship had this installed the summer before last. Realized she didn’t really need a new dairy but if she let a few weeds sprout up and purchased a few broken columns she could add an ancient, crumbling castle to her property without the expense of actually building one.”
Charlotte laughed. So did Frederick, with a soft, low chuckle, as if his amusement surprised him. He closed his lips in a firm line, cutting off the sound of mirth, as he removed plates, bread, and cold chicken from the basket.
Charlotte filled her plate as Frederick manfully attempted not to look awkward standing and watching while she sat and ate. She tore off an extra leg of chicken and pointed it in his direction. “I can’t possibly eat all this. Have some.”
Frederick stared at her as if she’d offered a severed human leg.
Embarrassment sent hot prickles up her neck, suffusing her cheeks with color. His changeable, sea-colored, un-footman-like eyes had made her forget. She covered up her blunder with a haughty sniff. “A well-rewarded footman is a silent footman. I can’t have you gabbing my predicament up and down the gossipvine. Besides, I can’t eat with you staring at me like a mongrel puppy. It’s indecent.”
For a frozen, staring moment Charlotte thought Frederick would refuse. Then he folded himself into a cross-legged position across from her. He sank his teeth into the chicken leg, licked grease from the corner of his mouth with his tongue. His too-blue eyes flashed up to meet hers, and Charlotte burned nearly incandescent with mortification when she realized she’d been staring. A mongrel puppy, indeed.
“Just think,” she spluttered. “Hundreds of years from now, this will be a famous historical monument—to the frustrated dairy maids of old.”
“Ha!” The deep bark of laughter echoed off the half-finished stone walls, followed by choked coughing as the aspirated chicken leg prevented further response. Charlotte passed a bottle of mulled wine without thinking, and Frederick took a pull without hesitation.
Silence seeped in between them, albeit a warmer, comfortable sort. With a start, Charlotte discovered that, in a half-finished dairy surrounded by cold wind and weeds, she’d somehow found the happiness that had eluded her over the last several days. How odd that she should find so much of it here, sitting on hard stone with a laughing footman, when the hours she primped and posed in a ballroom wrung barely a drop of pleasure out of her.
…
She ought to have preserved some of that happiness in a bottle, for she found very little of it once she forced her life back into its proper confines. In the afternoon, she casually asked Lord Elban if she could borrow some sheet music, played a little piece on the pianoforte, and commented on how much she enjoyed playing. She simpered when Mr. Oswald described his attempts to create a rose hybrid. She attempted conversation with the newly arrived Lord Noxley, a young man of eighteen with bright red hair and the overripe pout of a child long indulged. She quickly found him too distastefully in keeping with Frederick’s warning. She held her coy little smirk pinned in place so long that by the end of dinner her cheeks ached.
Thankfully, before duty required her to sustain her rickety expression of relaxed interest over tea in the drawing room, her great-aunt intercepted her, her face grim.
“My dear, I’m in a terrible crisis, and only you can help me!”
Before Charlotte could think or react, she was bustled away and deposited in a dressing-room decorated to Aunt Hildy’s notoriously colorful taste. Ornate, heavy furniture of dark mahogany carved with demon faces snarled at saintly white marble cherub sculptures lining the mantel. The wallpaper, hand-painted in a design of blooming green bell-trees, clashed with a thick purple Elassine carpet.
Besides that, the room looked like someone had massacred a
“Three?”
“Her ladyship had this installed the summer before last. Realized she didn’t really need a new dairy but if she let a few weeds sprout up and purchased a few broken columns she could add an ancient, crumbling castle to her property without the expense of actually building one.”
Charlotte laughed. So did Frederick, with a soft, low chuckle, as if his amusement surprised him. He closed his lips in a firm line, cutting off the sound of mirth, as he removed plates, bread, and cold chicken from the basket.
Charlotte filled her plate as Frederick manfully attempted not to look awkward standing and watching while she sat and ate. She tore off an extra leg of chicken and pointed it in his direction. “I can’t possibly eat all this. Have some.”
Frederick stared at her as if she’d offered a severed human leg.
Embarrassment sent hot prickles up her neck, suffusing her cheeks with color. His changeable, sea-colored, un-footman-like eyes had made her forget. She covered up her blunder with a haughty sniff. “A well-rewarded footman is a silent footman. I can’t have you gabbing my predicament up and down the gossipvine. Besides, I can’t eat with you staring at me like a mongrel puppy. It’s indecent.”
For a frozen, staring moment Charlotte thought Frederick would refuse. Then he folded himself into a cross-legged position across from her. He sank his teeth into the chicken leg, licked grease from the corner of his mouth with his tongue. His too-blue eyes flashed up to meet hers, and Charlotte burned nearly incandescent with mortification when she realized she’d been staring. A mongrel puppy, indeed.
“Just think,” she spluttered. “Hundreds of years from now, this will be a famous historical monument—to the frustrated dairy maids of old.”
“Ha!” The deep bark of laughter echoed off the half-finished stone walls, followed by choked coughing as the aspirated chicken leg prevented further response. Charlotte passed a bottle of mulled wine without thinking, and Frederick took a pull without hesitation.
Silence seeped in between them, albeit a warmer, comfortable sort. With a start, Charlotte discovered that, in a half-finished dairy surrounded by cold wind and weeds, she’d somehow found the happiness that had eluded her over the last several days. How odd that she should find so much of it here, sitting on hard stone with a laughing footman, when the hours she primped and posed in a ballroom wrung barely a drop of pleasure out of her.
…
She ought to have preserved some of that happiness in a bottle, for she found very little of it once she forced her life back into its proper confines. In the afternoon, she casually asked Lord Elban if she could borrow some sheet music, played a little piece on the pianoforte, and commented on how much she enjoyed playing. She simpered when Mr. Oswald described his attempts to create a rose hybrid. She attempted conversation with the newly arrived Lord Noxley, a young man of eighteen with bright red hair and the overripe pout of a child long indulged. She quickly found him too distastefully in keeping with Frederick’s warning. She held her coy little smirk pinned in place so long that by the end of dinner her cheeks ached.
Thankfully, before duty required her to sustain her rickety expression of relaxed interest over tea in the drawing room, her great-aunt intercepted her, her face grim.
“My dear, I’m in a terrible crisis, and only you can help me!”
Before Charlotte could think or react, she was bustled away and deposited in a dressing-room decorated to Aunt Hildy’s notoriously colorful taste. Ornate, heavy furniture of dark mahogany carved with demon faces snarled at saintly white marble cherub sculptures lining the mantel. The wallpaper, hand-painted in a design of blooming green bell-trees, clashed with a thick purple Elassine carpet.
Besides that, the room looked like someone had massacred a
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