12
THANE LET OUT A FRUSTRATED breath when the maid finally left him alone and shut the door. What a mentally exhausting girl. She didn’t know what she was talking about. The paintings were not beautiful; they were the product of his tortured mind. They were made of nightmares and horrifying thoughts. She was delusional—that was the only explanation.
He rested his hands on either side of his lunch tray and sighed. Everything had just gotten dangerously close to becoming very complicated. Maybe it wouldn’t have made that much of a difference, but if Miss Meadowbrooke would have found what was in his old paint case, things would have definitely gotten bad. He would have had to keep her captive in the manor. But she hadn’t looked in the case; she’d only complimented the paintings that were never to be seen by anyone else but Edgar. He got lucky this time and learned his lesson. He would need to be more careful in the future and make sure that room was locked at all times. When did he get so careless?
Thane grunted and took the silver dome cover off his meal. It was soup again. With potatoes, carrots, and meat. Edgar was a good cook, but Thane missed the variety of dishes he was served while at the castle, back when he was the crown prince and his life had meaning. Thane ate his soup with all the manners he had learned early on in his childhood, and gracefully drank his tea. It was actually quite pathetic. Who would know if he slouched or spilled on his clothes or rested his elbows on the table? But alas, when he had tried to be sloppy, he’d just heard the tsk of his mother from his memories and seen the look she would give him, as if to say, You know better.
That was what had happened in the room with his paintings. He’d been about to explode at the girl when Thane had remembered what Edgar had said about his mother liking Miss Meadowbrooke. So when he’d been about to lose his cool, he’d recalled a distant, but distinct memory of his mother laughing with her maids, as if they were her close friends. Now that he thought about it, he could not recall a time when a maid ran from the queen’s room crying. That was much unlike the interactions the staff had with the king. There seemed to be an altercation of some sort daily, and the turn around for servants was high. The ones who were hired never seemed to measure up to the king’s expectations. Or was it Thane’s father who had been the problem all along?
Thane finished his soup and pushed the tray away with a little too much force, and the teacup smashed on the floor. He swore under his breath and hung his head in his hands. He would ring for Edgar to clean it up, but not until he felt ready to interact with another human.
There was a quiet knock on the door and a voice that said, “My lord, are you alright?”
Thane rolled his eyes. How could someone sound so chipper all the time? “I am fine. A cup just fell and broke.”
“May I come in and clean it up?” she said through the door.
“If you must,” he grumbled.
The door opened, and the girl came fluttering in like an unwanted moth. Thane leaned back in his chair and made sure his hood was pulled low in front of his face. She knelt on the floor and swept the pieces up. The only thing visible to him was the top of her bun, which bobbed up and down from her movement. “No problem at all, my lord. I will have this cleaned up very quickly.”
He grunted.
“I think that is the last of the pieces. Oh wait, there is one more there. Okay, I think that is it!” She jumped up like a hyper rabbit, the broken pieces of porcelain clutched in her tiny hands. “I will take care of this and come back to blot the little bit of tea that spilled on the rug.” In the next moment, she was gone, and Thane sat in silence as he tried to comprehend how someone could exude so much energy and emotion in such a short moment. It was overwhelming in the least.
Soon enough, Miss Meadowbrooke bustled back into the room with a cloth in her hand. She was back on her hands and knees, and Thane was left watching her bun come in and out of view again. “It wasn’t a lot of tea, so I think this should do the trick. Let’s see, oh, there is another spot.”
“Do you always provide commentary to everything you do?” Thane couldn’t help but ask.
She jumped up again and curtsied. “My apologies, my lord. I suppose I am unaware I do it so often, but I do know I do it, because when I was younger, the other children at school would tease me about talking to myself. But they would also tease me because I couldn’t seem to stay on my own two feet for very long.”
“And yet here you are,” Thane said in a bored voice.
“Yes,” she said. “Are you done with your tray?”
“Yes.”
“Very good, my lord,” she said in a sing-song voice and picked up the tray. “Is there anything else that you need from me, my lord?”
“No.”
Thane let out a breath of relief when she was finally gone, and the door was shut once again, leaving him to the darkness and his thoughts. He carefully pulled the hood back enough to be able to look around the room. Something was off. Something was different. He looked around the room from the bookshelf to the chess table to the covered mirror. That’s what it was: the sheet was hanging loose and not tucked up like it normally was. Thane rose from his chair and went to fix it. He didn’t want to risk looking at his reflection when he wasn’t mentally ready. He picked up the loose corner from off the floor and froze. There was a small handprint in the dust clinging to the mirror. Without thinking, Thane reached his own gloved hand out and covered the print with his own. It had to belong to the maid; there was no one else it could be. His hand was monstrous compared to the dainty print she had left.
Thane sneered—a monstrous-sized hand for a monstrous beast. His eyes flicked up, and he glared at the beast before him. The character of nightmares. Twisted horns, black soul-sucking pits for eyes, and the black mark of the curse which covered a large area around his right eye. His lack of luck had led him to be inflicted with a nasty burn on the same side of his face, which stretched wider than the curse’s mark, almost covering half of his face. If he ever got rid of the curse, the mark would be gone, but the burn would remain. He would never look like the flawless prince he once was.
Vincent’s perfect smiling face appeared in his mind. Looking a little worse for the wear, brother. Thane growled and ripped the mirror off the wall. Before he could stop himself, he threw it on the floor, and the reflective material shattered, pieces scattering toward every wall and every corner of the room. Thane stood still and stared at the broken glass that still somehow found light to reflect in the dark room. He wanted to rage and burn the manor down. He wanted to fall to his knees and cry. This was his prison, but it was also his mother’s childhood home, and a place she would bring him when he was young. He didn’t want to break anything that might have meant something to her, and now here he was smashing breakable furniture.
A hurried knock sounded at the door. Before he could answer, it opened. Edgar was not going to be happy with him.
“Oh, dear,” the maid said.
Thane quickly pulled the hood down over his face.
“Leave me,” he said quickly. “It was my fault. I will clean it up.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “It is my job to clean your manor. Besides, the tea cup was your fault too and you had no problem letting me clean that up.” He had no argument for that. “I will go fetch a broom and dustpan.”
Thane got to his hands and knees as soon as she was out of the room and started gathering as many pieces as he could. How absolutely humiliating. She probably thought he was a big, man child having a temper tantrum. Something nicked his finger through his glove; he hissed, but kept going. Miss Meadowbrooke returned in record time with a broom, dustpan, and bucket. “My lord, what are you doing on the floor?! You could cut yourself.”
“I told you, I need to clean it up. I was being irresponsible,” Thane said. He crawled farther away from her and started to make a new pile of broken pieces.
“If you get hurt, I will tattle on you to Edgar,” she said in jest.
The comment made Thane pause. He looked over his shoulder at her. She had started to sweep by the door, too busy to notice his gaze. What an absurd girl. Thane shifted without looking and cursed under his breath. A sharp pain cut through his palm. He sat back on his heels and crushed his hand to his chest, which made it feel worse.
“I knew you would get hurt! Bird droppings! I need to open the curtains,” she said and rushed over to the window. Before Thane could object, he was blinded by the overwhelming natural light. He squinted and looked away from the window. The broken pieces of glass crunched under the maid’s slippers as she approached him. Thane tensed every muscle in his body. “Oh no, you are bleeding. Thank goodness I had the foresight to bring supplies.” She walked away from him toward her bucket, and Thane relaxed a little. “You just never know with broken glass, especially mirrors. They can be so sharp.” Miss Meadowbrooke set her bucket down and sat beside Thane. She held out her hands, and Thane twisted away from her. “Well, let me see it. We don’t want you bleeding all over the rug, or Edgar will have to beat his anger out on it.”
Thane hesitated, then turned toward her and let her see his palm, but he didn’t let her touch him. She seemed to sense his uncertainty and didn’t move to grab his hand. “Move it a little that way so I can see it in the light.” He did as she asked, and he saw the glittering pieces embedded into his glove, with blood seeping through the cracks. “That is unfortunate. We will need to cut the glove off.”
“No.”
“Would you rather the glass be dragged down the length of your fingers and have a much bigger wound to treat?” she asked with an edge of an attitude.
He couldn’t let her see his skin, it was too pale and translucent, or his nails that were black and often looked like bear claws. Thane looked around. The room was still mostly dark, and colors were distorted without light. It was his dominant hand, so it would be hard to pick out the glass by himself. “No.”
“I forgot to grab scissors. I will go—”
“There is a pair in the top drawer of the right-hand side of my desk,” he interrupted.
“Excellent,” she said and hurried to the drawer. “Ah, here they are.” She returned to her spot, scissors in hand. She held her hand out and asked, “May I?”
Thane hesitated again, but let her inspect his hand. She got to work and made a careful cut along the seam of the glove. Her hands didn’t shake as she expertly peeled the glove off his palm. She had managed to do it all without touching his skin, but Thane knew that wouldn’t last long if she had to get the shards out. He held his breath as Miss Meadowbrooke looked closely at his hand and hummed. “I don’t think it will require stitches, but I will need to pull the pieces out, and that doesn’t always feel nice. It is tedious work. Don’t move. I need to prepare my work space.”
Thane sat in silence on the floor as she swept around him to clear the area. She left the room for a moment and came back with a lit candle on a candlestick. She took her spot next to him, but sat facing the window with her back to him, and set the candle beside her. She took tweezers out of the bucket and hovered the tip over the flame. “Okay, let me see your hand.” Thane stretched his arm out, and she grasped his hand gently with both of hers. He braced himself for her to drop his hand in disgust or comment on how pale he was, but she didn’t. He wanted to pull back and lock himself in his room. The touch was so unfamiliar and intimate at the same time. He tried his best to keep his emotions under control and hold still.
The maid worked in silence. Thane hissed every time she pulled a piece out that was wedged in deep. She didn’t chastise him for his weakness; she just kept working and never tightened her grip. The shards were dropped into the empty bucket.
Thane was positioned in such a way that it would be hard for her to look at him without him knowing, but he could easily look at her without too much movement. He had taken such great lengths to avoid being seen by anyone that he hadn’t laid eyes on anyone else other than Edgar in months. The old man wasn’t much to look at, especially in the dark. Thane really only knew the few people who crossed his path by their shoes. He decided to be reckless and looked up at her face. Thane was surprised by what he saw.
She bit her bottom lip as she concentrated on getting out every last piece of broken mirror from his palm. Her cheeks were dusted with light freckles, which reminded Thane of a spotted fawn. Shy, but majestic. A lock of her light brown hair had fallen out of its high bun and loosely curled down her back. Looking at Miss Meadowbrooke half in the light of the window and half in the shadow of the room, gave Thane the urge to paint the picture before him. He was suddenly aware of the warmness of her hands and flinched.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t think that one would hurt,” she said as she glanced over her shoulder at him. He ducked under the shadow of his hood. Her eyes were a warm brown, like hot cocoa in the wintertime. “Almost done.”
What was wrong with him? The artist in him was stirring and grabbing at every color and shape in front of him, eager to put it on a canvas. It was a feeling he couldn’t remember having since the death of his mother. His heart was pounding. With excitement? He was unsure. Could she hear it? He needed to say something and control his thoughts.
“Tell me if this hurts,” she said as she ran a finger across his bloody mess of a palm. He fought the urge to take his hand away. He needed a distraction.
“I don’t feel anything,” he said.
“Good, then I think we got them all out,” she said and reached for a small jar of salve. “Like I said before, you shouldn’t need stitches, but if you don’t put on salve and a bandage, infection is inevitable.”
She dabbed salve gently onto his wounds, then started to wrap his hand with a strip of cloth which had also come out of her bucket.
“You—” He cleared his throat. “You are very good at that.”
“I have had a lot of practice,” she said.
“Were you a nurse before you came to work here?” he asked, honestly curious.
She shook her head. “No. I have just had many instances where I have had to bandage myself up.” She shifted as if she were uncomfortable with the topic of discussion.
His gaze caught on to the back of her right hand, where a thick scar stretched from pinky to thumb. “Is the scar on the back of your hand one of those instances?”
She tucked the end of the bandage in and let go of his hand. “Yes,” she said quietly as she examined her scar.
“How did it happen?” he asked, tucking his bandaged hand into his jacket pocket.
“With glass, actually,” she said, smoothing her skirt with her hands.
“A broken mirror?”
A fleeting smile touched her lips. “No, a glass bottle.”
“How—” he started, but stopped when he heard something behind him.
“Oh, Miss Bridgette, there you are. I— What happened here?” Edgar asked, his tone thick with suspicion. Miss Meadowbrooke stood and brushed her skirt off. “My lord, why are you on the floor?”
“Lord Thornwood cut himself trying to clean up a broken mirror,” she said in a light tone, but Thane could tell it was slightly forced. “I just bandaged him up, so now I just have to clean up this little galaxy left on the floor.”
Thane looked at the floor and realized she was right. The tiny scattered shards glittered on the dark rug and wood floor like stars in the night sky. How did he not see that before?
Miss Meadowbrooke started sweeping in the far corner by the chess table, and Edgar helped him to his feet. The valet gave him a look that could have been interpreted in a hundred different ways. Thane knew Edgar had never expected to walk in on the scene he just did, and the fact that he’d let the maid treat his wounds was absolutely shocking. He would ask his questions later, and Thane would have to explain what happened, but for now, he needed air.
“Edgar, will you please help Miss Meadowbrooke clean up my mess? I am going to turn in early.”
Edgar gave him a look of pure confusion; it was almost comical. Thane hurried into his bedchamber and shut the door behind him, but he didn’t stop there. He continued into the next room, where his paintings of darkness and shadows sat mocking him. He walked past the dark canvases and exited onto the balcony. He hadn’t stepped out on a balcony since he arrived at the manor. He gripped the railing with one gloved and one bandaged hand, and winced at the pain. Pain was good. Pain meant he wasn’t dreaming. But it felt like a dream.
He filled his lungs with fresh air and shook his head. When his mother had passed away a few years before, a part of Thane had gone numb. He had thought it had died, but that was a lie. It must have just fallen into a deep sleep, because now it was awake and yearning to create. It scared him. He didn’t know what to do with it. It didn’t make sense.
How could a young maid, who saw a broken mess as something beautiful, make him breathe again? It was a trap. It had to be a trap. Anything that seemed good in the world was actually hiding its corruption. There was nothing completely pure and genuine. Everyone had their own motives. No one cared who they had to cut down to get what they wanted. That was what his father did. That was what Vincent was doing.
If there was anything that happened to be good, it was quickly silenced by the cruelty of others. That’s what happened to his mother.
Could Miss Meadowbrooke be genuine? Or was it an act?
Whatever it was, it changed something inside of him, and now he had to decide what he was going to do about it.