Chapter 21
twenty-one
To this day, I don’t like to look at Clinemell Manor, even if I pass it on the way to the village.
The night was dark, and clouds had moved in to cover any winking stars.
The wide expanse of empty sky was stark compared to the bubble of surprised people clamoring for gossip in the ballroom at Blackwell Manor.
I recall my feet crunching against the dirt path I took to get to Clinemell Manor. I know I stayed as quiet as possible, shirking away from the angry Rufus. His valet with the mustache, who once knocked on the kitchen door, shot me a look of such disdain when I entered the Manor.
I wasn’t a guest and I wasn’t their servant, but rather a hostage. Part of me wondered if Rufus ever thought he’d overreacted by forcing me to his place. Surely, I was more of a nuisance than anything else.
His valet with the mustache certainly frowned in a way to indicate that I was.
I found myself in the kitchen, where Gretel had once worked, and couldn’t help but compare it to the one I’d left behind.
The Manor should have seemed similar to Blackwell’s, but I could only find the differences. And they weren’t small architectural details. The place was cold and still with a silence that made my ears ring.
How could Gretel have worked here for so long? I swore the whisper of her cries haunted me as the image of her whipped skin seared into my memory.
It felt like I’d been pushed underwater. The world tilted to a dangerous degree as I tried to get my bearings.
I still wore the ballgown I’d put on that evening. I suddenly wasn’t sure when I ate last, not that my knotted stomach would have accepted much food.
A large part of me wanted to curl up on the floor. What else could I do?
If Clinemell had tried to take Gretel to jail, I would have rallied. But never in my wildest dreams had I thought I’d be the one pulled from Blackwell Manor.
The male servant grimaced at me. I don’t think he spent much time in the kitchen himself, but I also sensed his disapproval at leaving me alone. He didn’t trust me with the finer things in Clinemell Manor.
For several awful moments, I stood in the kitchen. The cold, damp kitchen that creaked in the wind. It wasn’t like Blackwell Manor, whose groans and squeaks indicated an opinion, which normally came during my conversations with Baz and Gretel.
Clinemell Manor had magic, as did all the great manors in the village, but it didn’t fill the air. It might buttress the structure, adding to its might, but it lacked a well of power.
It brought me a slight bit of comfort. Or at the very least pleased me to know that Rufus Clinemell could only grasp at true power. He would never come near Baz’s command of magic.
I stood there in the kitchen, the Manor making its strange noises, when I realized I recognized one of the sounds. Footsteps upon the stairs.
I suppose I expected another servant. Rufus had several; his version of authority came in the form of ordering people around.
“Do you plan for her to sleep on the floor?” a gentle voice purred.
I will forever remember meeting Isabella Clinemell.
I’m not sure I ever expected to meet her in the first place. I went out of my way to avoid her husband, and it’s not like we’d ever find ourselves in the same circles. Unless I spotted her in the market or walking in the neighborhood, my chances of seeing her were distant at best.
I’d envisioned someone cold. Brittle. Thin. Pale with a sharp chin. Because surely Rufus would bring out the sharpness in a person.
And she was tall and thin. And pale. But her chin wasn’t sharp, and her thick brown hair that fell in curls was very pretty.
Isabella was a beauty. But I think from the very first moment I met her, I knew that she was a tad bit strange. It was the way she held herself. Tall, proud, but soft-spoken. Those aren’t inherently bad qualities, but her eyes were so piercing, a shiver skittered over me.
She didn’t care about Rufus’s man. Her hand trailed the banister as she took a few steps. She blended into the shadows, but the male servant couldn’t ignore her.
He cleared his throat, but she didn’t bother to wait for his response. Her voice was cool, but could lash at a person.
“Will she curl on the floor next to the hearth like a stray cat come to stay?” She dismissively took in the fireplace. “Not that you could be bothered to even light it for our guest.”
She turned her back on the man, trailing back up the staircase. Apparently, Baz was not the only one who didn’t mind using a servant's stairwell.
“Please come this way,” she called over her shoulder, barely stopping her trek upstairs, “if you’d like a warmer welcome.”
A disgruntled noise huffed out of the mustached man. I was so out of it, I’m not sure I even properly debated if this might be a trap of some sort.
I later found out that Clinemell’s wife had been at the ball. They’d arrived together, but she’d left before Rufus burst into the ballroom, dragging Gretel with him.
It’s why her hair was already down and she only wore a sheath dress. How she could be so calm, so blank, threw me for a loop, though. And she seemed remarkably calm and factual about the situation.
She somehow already knew everything. About her husband’s outburst. Gretel and Baz. She didn’t show any signs that it might be strange that her husband dragged me back to their home, though.
The room she showed me looked like personal chambers.
A small sitting room of sorts. It was much cozier than any of the other parts of their home.
The walls were papered with light purple.
Some sort of green leafy bouquet sat in a vase.
The furniture was well-made but not stuffy.
A woman’s touch certainly guided the décor.
And that woman was the nearly ethereal being, Isabella Clinemell.
She lit a few lamps, placing one on the side table closest to the sofa. And then she sat. Like any person, despite her beauty and grace, she was, after all, human like the rest of us.
“Please.” She motioned for me to sit beside her on the blue sofa.
Stiffly, I obliged. She picked up a cup and saucer, focusing on her tea. She barely looked at me, but in some ways I preferred that. I wanted to blend into my surroundings.
“I am sorry for my husband,” she said to her teacup. Even her voice was beautiful. A dainty, musical hum. “Such a fuss.”
They were spoken so plainly, uttered so simply. Yet, I believe she really did mean them.
“So you and Baz have been protecting Gretel,” she hummed, sipping her tea.
She sounded so sure of herself, saying their names.
“And whose idea was it?” she asked, sipping more of her tea. Like this was some drawing room chit-chat. Did she not realize we were up in the middle of the night discussing something incredibly important?
She blinked at me. Her amber eyes were darker thanks to the dim light. She expected an answer.
My muscles burned as I sat stiffly in my seat. My head hurt thanks to the late night, the busy day, and now this dramatic turn of events.
My eyes burned, but I barely blinked. I think I was afraid that if I closed my eyes, I might not be able to open them back up. I wanted to sink to the floor, to curl up in a ball.
I wanted to go home. To sit in the library with Gretel and Baz, where the fireplace always roared and they kept me warm.
An owlish look settled on Isabella’s face as she waited patiently for my response.
It took me a moment to get my dry mouth to work. “We. . . we,” I ended up saying and nodded to emphasize that it had been a mutual decision between Baz and me.
Isabella lifted her chin, reading something on my face. “Ah,” she uttered, lifting her teacup.
“She is beautiful, is she not?” Isabella’s teacup clinked as she set it down on the matching saucer. I couldn’t speak. It didn’t bother the wealthier woman. “She is,” she answered, assuredly.
She placed her teacup on the small table beside the sofa. “Your Baz”—my breath stilled at how she said the words—“is quite handsome. A very romantic sort, no?”
Again, she didn’t wait for a response. Probably understanding that speaking was a bit beyond me at the moment.
“I would not blame a woman for falling in love with him.” Isabella hummed under her breath again. A nauseating sensation swirled in my stomach. “Is he caring?”
He allowed Clinemell to take me, and I felt her judgment in regard to that. Yet, I nodded anyway.
Because when it came down to it, I would never have let Rufus take Gretel to jail.
I’d told Baz plenty of times that all three of us would take care of each other.
That meant protecting each other. I couldn’t deny the fear and confusion from being torn from Blackwell Manor, but I didn’t regret keeping Gretel away from this place.
It just meant I had to hope that Baz and Gretel were trying to come up with a solution.
“Tomorrow my husband will go to the Council,” Isabella murmured. “I think your Baz will have a plan by then. Though one should not underestimate my husband.”
She glanced at me.
“Y-you think. . .” How could we win against someone as awful as Rufus Clinemell?
“My husband does not like to be made into a fool,” Isabella said. “He is not like your lover. One who can take things on the chin.”
No. Rufus certainly lacked the ability to laugh things off.
“You love them both?” Isabella asked me. This time when she glanced at me, I swear her piercing gaze saw everything. Her gaze flickered down, and my chest swelled. For a moment, I believed it was like she could picture me without any clothes on.
The hair on the back of my neck stood to attention. An understanding passed between us.
Isabella could never love a man like Rufus.
She smiled lightly. “Yes, my husband and I are nothing but a mere business transaction.”
I swallowed a lump down my throat.
“Your Gretel is quite beautiful,” she said. “Her body. Her silly little laugh.”
My heartbeat ticked up, something squirming inside me.
“I did not mind my husband satisfying his needs where he saw fit. I thought it would be an enjoyable experience.” She picked imaginary lint off her dress. “I regret ever mentioning it to him.”
Much later, it would occur to me how rare this was. Isabella admitting, or at least alluding, to a mistake she made.
In another life, Gretel could have found herself with Rufus and Isabella. If Rufus had been capable of love. He was a jealous man, though. He could have Gretel all day, taking her as he wanted. But his wife, wishing for a slice of that fun. . . that was unacceptable.
Sadness and anger mixed into one, cutting into my fear. Rufus hurt Gretel badly, and now he meant to sharpen the blade again. And for what? Because a weak little man got jealous that someone else dared look at his plaything?
Isabella rose from the sofa.
“There is a blanket,” she offered, not bothering to present me with a guest bedroom. Which was fair, seeing as in only a couple of hours I’d need to be up so I could be dragged to the Council.
And what I would do if I could just force the Council to understand how awful of a man Isabella Clinemell’s husband was.