Chapter One #2
“We are arrived — oh young master, it is frigid in here! Are you all right?” exclaimed Peter when he opened the door for Archie.
The stoic manservant rarely had reason to raise his voice, but Archie hadn’t noticed quite how bad it had got until he stepped out of the carriage.
Even though it was still raining, it was so much warmer outside that he nearly gasped in relief.
He glanced back at the carriage in disbelief.
Peter opened an umbrella over Archie’s head, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. “I’ll have it checked for drafts immediately. Very strange, Master Archie, do beg pardon.”
“Yes, thank you,” murmured Archie dazedly, heading into the palace through one of the side gates.
He could have cried when the door shut behind him and he stopped shivering.
He rubbed at his aching fingers and the tip of his nose, which felt like icicles.
Gods, he was freezing, how hadn’t he noticed how bad it was?
It was as if his mind had gone to sleep, unable to deal with it.
He slowly oriented himself and headed towards their quarters, thankful that the walk would warm him up.
“There you are, do you have the — excellent, I was planning to wear it tonight,” said mother the moment Archie arrived at their suites.
“Good eve to you too,” muttered Archie, but his heart wasn’t in it. Mostly he was relieved that the fire was roaring.
As the King’s cousin, his father had a set of rooms allocated to him here, but his parents hadn’t properly resided in them since before Archie could remember.
Mother was in the middle of what she liked to call ‘orchestrating’, her favorite activity, where she directed servants on how to rearrange the furniture, what art she wished to replace, where everything ought to go and a dozen other tiny details Archie quickly lost track of.
She gave him an absent-minded kiss somewhere in the air to the side of his face, and gestured to a door.
“That room’s Oliver’s but why don’t you take it? You can arrange it to your liking.”
Archie took the hint, and got out of her way.
The indicated room was... small. His bedroom in their townhouse was the smallest in the house too, privileges of being the youngest child, but at least that had been decorated with all his personal effects.
Their suite here was only four rooms, designated before he and Estelle had been born.
Most of the space here was taken up by the bed, to the point where the wardrobe door hit it if he was not too careful opening it.
Here and there were a few odds and ends that indicated that his second brother, Ollie, had occasionally stayed in the room and left things here when he’d had reason to visit the palace, but otherwise it was clear.
At least when Archie peeked in the wardrobe, it was his things that had been hung neatly by the servants.
Since getting married, Oliver no longer saw the need to come to the city for the season, and had comfortably settled down at the family country estate with his wife and child, only taking trips every so often to conduct matters with their father or lawyer.
The only redeeming item in the room was the enormous gilded mirror that stood in the corner, no doubt placed to trick the eye into believing that the room was bigger.
Archie grimaced as he caught a glimpse of himself.
Definitely looked like a pumpkin. And then he frowned.
There was a darkening at the edges of the mirror, wispy, like when a drop of ink was dropped into water.
He leaned in to see if there was some discoloration under the glass, but then it moved.
Archie flinched and stepped back, the back of his knees hitting the end of the bed.
The whole room seemed darker for a moment.
Strange. Mage lamps weren’t meant to flicker like old-fashioned gas lamps.
But when he glanced at the lamp on the wall, the yellow glow was steady.
He looked back at the mirror. There was no discoloration now.
It must have been a trick of the light, he told himself, ignoring the way his heart beat faster.
Nothing happened — until he turned to leave, and then from the corner of his eye he saw shadows rise out from his reflection, stretching over his head.
He whirled to stare. He looked normal. Well, apart from the hideous waistcoat.
Archie waited, his heart pounding painfully, but nothing else manifested.
He laughed shakily at himself and backed out of the room looking at the mirror the whole way.
At dinner, Archie sat in dazed silence, trying to figure out if he was going mad or not, until his mother asked about Lady Prudence’s.
“Ah,” said Archie awkwardly. He should have spent some time rehearsing what he wanted to say, instead of wondering if he’d seen something move in the mirror.
The entire afternoon with Amelia had thrown him off-kilter.
“I thought she was very nice, thank you for arranging the afternoon, mother. But I suspect her attention has been caught by Victor of Thetson.”
“Harry’s boy?” said his mother, dismayed.
Archie knew why, Harrison of Thetson was a family friend but his title was only Baron.
By any noblewoman’s standards, Archie should have been a more advantageous choice than Victor, especially for someone like Amelia who wasn’t set to inherit a title of her own.
But Archie could hardly fault her. If he’d been given the choice, he would have picked Victor too.
Victor had thick chestnut hair that he swept out of his face with large hands, strong eyebrows and lips permanently set in a smirk.
He was accomplished in wrestling and riding and had the thighs to show for it.
He could even turn a deft wrist with a sword, though nobles weren’t expected to fight their own duels anymore.
Thick hair, large hands, full lips. Thighs.
Deft wrist. The thoughts came unbidden to him, an image of Victor rising in alarming detail in his mind.
Gods, where had that come from?! Archie didn’t even like Victor.
He hurriedly turned his attention to his potatoes, spearing one so quickly his fork slid straight through it with a clang.
“That’s the one. I’m sorry, Mother,” said Archie as his mother fretted aloud about what other connections she might be able to pull on.
A memory of this summer came to mind, of Victor bending over to strip his socks off when they’d gone swimming in the lake, as if plucked out from his head. Archie flinched. His elbow smacked against his chair arm, the pain lancing up his arm. He yelped, dropping his fork as he shook his arm out.
“Archibald, what in heavens,” said his mother, pausing mid-lament.
Archie shook his head, as if that could clear his mind as well. “Apologies mother, I just hit my elbow.”
“What a fuss. Perhaps we could preemptively talk to Charlotte, you remember my friend Charlotte, about her second daughter,” said his mother. Nothing deterred her.
Archie recoiled. “Mother, she’s a child!”
“Well she won’t be ten forever!” said his mother crossly, but her face indicated she also knew it was a poor gamble. “You’re a… a perfectly acceptable young man, I refuse to believe there is no noblewoman in the whole of the country who would want to match with you.”
“If nothing suitable comes up this year, perhaps you could help Ollie with the estate,” said his father, not unkindly.
It was the first time he had looked up from his newspaper, and Archie rather suspected he usually kept it up so he could get out of participating in the conversation.
The fact that he’d intervened probably meant he could see how badly Archie was floundering.
"Jeremy's invited me to join his box for the opera next week. I assume his wife and some friends of hers will be there, I will make an effort to speak with them," said Archie. A complete lie – he hadn’t spoken with his friend Jeremy in weeks since he’d gotten married and spent the autumn honeymooning. But his mother’s tentative, hopeful smile was enough for now.
Archie knew he should appreciate that his parents wanted to find a place for him.
Their concern was no doubt because Charlie would inherit the whole of the estate as the oldest and he was…
well, an ass. Ollie, as second son, had made himself indispensable by taking on the actual running of the estate, a mutually beneficial arrangement of exploitation because Charlie didn’t to do the actual work.
And Estelle was happily engaged with a summer wedding planned.
Which left Archie, still in search of a lady with a decent enough dowry to supplement whatever stipend Charlie would allow him. He’d have to get in touch with Jeremy and see if he could wrangle that opera visit.