Chapter Sixteen
Sweet Treats
Eleanor blearily grabbed the cracked coffee pot.
She had forgotten how many cups of the weak stuff she’d drank, much like the glasses of sparkling wine last night.
She’d been drunk enough that she hadn’t needed to break open any of the bottles under her floorboards, and finally, she had slept.
Even if her dreams had been mildly disturbing.
Eleanor assumed they were memories of the evening at the party palace.
Distorted memories, replaying endlessly, until the memories had contorted into the lord with stormy eyes into an impossibly tall figure.
He had been bigger than her in every possible way and he…
well, she wasn’t too sure what he had become in her dream.
He had become someone she should flee from, but she never did.
Instead, she got sucked into him and, unfortunately, not in a sexual way.
It had been an all-consuming pain that stretched and pulled at her until she thought her body was going to break down into thousands of tiny flecks.
After straining through the constant misery, she eventually felt…
bliss. She felt a type of peace she had never known before, and she knew she was supposed to be there, somehow within him, as one.
Only after draining this newest cup of coffee did Eleanor finally feel like she was shaking off the remnants of sleep.
Refilling her cup and ladling out a bowl of porridge, Eleanor thanked whatever higher power that Mirabella had made the porridge today.
It was stiff and sticky rather than the curdling slop it generally was.
Eleanor didn’t think her stomach could handle anything liquid except coffee right now.
Regardless that it was weak, she needed the energy it gave her to fight off this pounding headache, which the ladies around the table weren’t helping with.
Stars. Why were they so fucking loud?
Eleanor focused on her breakfast, ignoring whatever conversation that was being yelled across the table.
She forced herself to eat it all and not give into the nausea that plagued her.
However much she’d drunk last night, it had been enough to give her a rip-roaring hangover, and she didn’t begrudge it.
At least she’d never been as hungover as that time she’d fallen drunk asleep in the ancient wine cellar.
She’d drunk enough to have a pounding hangover for days afterwards.
Her heart squeezed at the brief memory and, refusing to look at it any further, she roughly swallowed the stiff porridge and pushed all of those thoughts aside, focusing instead on the few returning memories of the night before.
Each time an additional detail emerged, she knew it had happened, but she hadn’t registered it at the time.
The one part of her evening that had taken the breath from her, as she’d remembered it from the top of the stairs, and she would have fallen if not for her iron-fisted grip on the railing.
Eleanor clearly and vividly remembered the handsome stranger saying, ‘I've used her enough for tonight,’ as he slammed the carriage door in her face, discarding her and leaving her to return to The Ladies Grace.
She knew that moment hadn’t been her imagination. She knew it had happened, and it made her feel small, insignificant, and used. Sadly, a feeling she was not unused to feeling.
Each time she tried to push away the memory of his handsome face glaring back at her from within the carriage, his face changed each time she remembered that moment.
Until the same expression on his face repeated so she knew it’d been real.
There had been something that had caught her breath and made her swallow against her angry movement to get out of the carriage, it was his angry glare had changed, softened almost. She almost convinced herself that he looked…
guilty, although she didn’t know why she thought that.
As soon as she felt herself soften towards him, she remembered the seemingly insignificant motion he’d made with his hand, a clenching and unclenching of his fingers.
The mere thought of him replacing the feeling of her made her stomach sour to the extent that she wanted to vanish from the world. He had hated touching her.
“—yes, Eleanor,” she heard the almost hissing noise coming from one of the ladies around the table.
There were many things Eleanor could ignore, but that tone used with her current name was not one of them.
Eleanor properly looked around the table for the first time since entering the kitchen.
Everyone was looking at her, and she didn’t like the vitriolic looks that the courtesans were glaring at her.
Shit. What had she missed?
“Hidden talents, clearly,” Jasmine said in a dry tone.
Eleanor frowned at what the ever-loving fuck they were going on about now.
“Playing the piano like that. What lord is going to look twice at us now?” growled Lucy.
“Now they have you as an option,” Veronica added in a bemoaning tone.
From the looks on their faces, she’d missed something important, while the Bellas, despite Annabella’s purplish hue, looked positively gleeful at having some entertainment with their morning tea.
Milk and Cookie seemed uncertain whether to jump in the middle of everyone or shelter under the table until the upheaval had passed.
Eleanor couldn’t be sure what position the Petals had taken.
Although Calla and Lauressa thankfully weren’t in their usual giggles.
Those pair were strangely subdued at the end of the table.
Lauressa had draped her fawn brown hair over her face to hide her greenish eye.
While Calla’s usually creamy complexion had a grey tinge to it.
She looked like she needed coffee more than Eleanor.
“Eleanor will bag the marquis or duke now,” Iris said.
Eleanor focused her attention on the shrewd-eyed woman.
“She’d just have to compete with their orgies,” Annabella added in an all too gleeful tone. “See how long you can keep their attention, then.”
“Your little piano playing won’t impress them for long,” Mirabella added in a sing-song voice.
The Bellas also weren’t happy with her, they were either stoking the ire from the other women for amusement, or they were worried others would hear of the piano playing prostitute and that might affect their clients.
If Eleanor had thought her musical performance would adhere some of the ladies towards her, she’d been mistaken.
Eleanor sighed into her coffee. She’d been foolishly thinking tonight would be a welcome reprieve from the party palace, where the court ladies wouldn’t be able to stoke the flames of jealousy.
Eleanor now grasped the reason why the handsome noble with blue eyes appeared bored on her initial night at the palace.
The novelty had steadily worn off for the courtesans, new cloudy dresses only distracted them for so long, the short-lived excitement presumably had been added to all of their debts.
Eleanor wearily pushed away from the wooden kitchen table and ignored the Bellas and their continued diatribe. She had enough of the way the women were behaving. It reminded her that this was exactly why she didn’t bother with anyone.
Julia rushed to her side as she deposited her porridge bowl in the sink and carefully poured a cup of contraceptive tea from the teapot, avoiding the chipped spout.
“Don’t listen to them,” Julia muttered so only she could hear.
Eleanor made a noise that sounded more like a grunt and quickly drained the pungent cup of cloying aniseed. She swallowed through the bile that threatened to rise, making Julia grimace.
Eleanor needed to clear her head, it felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and she couldn’t think straight. She left the kitchen as silently as she’d arrived and retreated to her room, alone, and with a cup of coffee and jug of water.
“Knock, knock.” An all too merry tune came from Eleanor’s doorway as the door creaked open.
Eleanor suppressed her groan, with a great strength that she didn’t know she had in her right now.
The pounding in her head was lingering and drinking some wine, mixed with coffee and water, had somewhat eased the hurt, along with a brief nap.
With bleary eyes, she saw Lauressa was standing in her doorway.
The meagre sunlight shining on her indicted it was still daytime, and dawn was far off.
This is why we don’t get involved. One thing leads to another.
Even with a slightly green bruised eye, Lauressa looked too young.
She had wrapped a faded dressing robe around herself.
It had once been a fine robe. Only a large blossom’s outline remained, the floral pattern long gone.
At some point, the tie had been lost. Undeterred by this, Lauressa had replaced the lost tie with an equally fraying scarf.
In the hallway behind her, the ladies were darting around giggling. The sound of numerous cupboard doors was being slammed shut as their owners hastily retrieved whatever they needed.
Eleanor pushed herself up, covering herself with her flimsy grey robe as she dropped her legs over the edge of the squeaky bed.
Lauressa’s tentative smile brightened as she ran a quick eye over the room. “The old bat’s opening the bathing house for us until tonight. Thought you’d like to come?”
Feeling the aches in her body, Eleanor stretched her neck first to one side and then to the other, realizing that a soak in the hot, steaming bath was exactly what she needed to sweat out the lingering throb in her head.
A slightly ripe odour caused Eleanor to scrunch up her nose, immediately suggesting that a good soak and a thorough wash would greatly improve her current state.
“Ressa, you coming?” Calla called, poking her head into the doorway.