Chapter Fourteen
Winifred crossed her arms as she surveyed the bulging sacks slouched in the chairs that surrounded the narrow oak table she’d had the servants haul into the music room. “They don’t look enough like people.”
She’d considered using the dining hall, but it was far too cavernous. She needed Marcus to hear her without having to shout.
When she figured a way out of her uncle’s decree and wrote to Felicity, she would leave out the details of this night. Her cousin would surely laugh if Winifred described her music room set for a formal dinner, except with the contents of the cook’s pantry standing in for guests.
The butler, Gillanders, the housekeeper’s husband, she’d learned, cleared his throat. “Hats, perhaps, my lady?”
Unlike Marcus’s valet, Smith, Gillanders was a stout man with light-blond hair and a finely trimmed moustache. He spoke with a soft, reassuring voice and the skin around his eyes and mouth crinkled when he smiled, which was often.
She grinned. “That will do nicely.”
As he left, Winifred walked to the nearest seat and plumped a bag of barley.
Keeping busy helped her avoid thinking about the fact that she might never see her cousin again because of a feud Marcus insisted he knew nothing about.
What she needed to do was have him speak to her uncle about the matter, as Uncle Ethan was much more likely to listen to a man than his own niece.
Unfortunately, she doubted her uncle would make a return visit, which meant Winifred had to bring her husband to London.
Except Marcus couldn’t leave the castle.
If there had never been a rivalry, as Marcus claimed, then that was the first problem she had to solve.
He was so determined to find a solution to his attacks through scientific means, but the new knowledge she’d gained after spending the morning in the library made her believe a more effective approach could involve the principles of Hellenistic philosophy.
In particular, a technique described by the Roman Stoic Seneca that involved focusing on the present when in periods of distress to maintain calm.
Seneca also believed that suffering was necessary for growth, but that one should not become unhappy before a crisis arrived, as nothing in life was guaranteed.
Marcus had admitted that even thinking about going outside caused an immediate and powerful reaction.
As she could not control his thoughts, she had to find a different way of eliciting the precise amount of stress necessary to bring on an attack without overwhelming him.
After questioning him at length about what situations caused him anxiety, she’d chosen the easiest to replicate.
A dinner party.
Gillanders returned with several giggling maids carrying hat boxes.
Winifred chose three to grace the “heads” of her guests.
It was difficult getting them to remain in place, and she had to have a footman lash a few to their chairs to keep them from slouching, but it would have to do.
She even chose a few necklaces from her jewelry box and draped them around the necks of the “ladies.”
“What do you think?” she asked when she finished. Mrs. Gillanders looked ready to burst into laughter while her husband remained as silent and still as a statue. Only the faint twitching of his silver-speckled mustache gave away his mirth.
“I am not sure what you mean to accomplish, my lady,” Mrs. Gillanders said in halting tones. “How is the master intended to interact with these…” She flicked a frayed edge of burlap. “Guests?”
“It is only for practice. When he is comfortable with this, we can add other elements. Such as…”
“Dancing, my lady?” the butler asked.
Winifred nodded. “Precisely. Dancing, music, gossip. Those are all the things my husband needs to reacquaint himself with.” They were also activities he could have engaged in at the wedding, but she’d assumed he’d been overwhelmed.
She would venture to take him outside when he could successfully use the techniques she would teach him to manage these theatrical situations.
Gillanders smoothed his hands over the front of his jacket. “You could have the maids and footmen take the place of the guests.”
She shook her head, having considered that option already. “He is much too accustomed to ignoring servants, and I would not ask them to pretend to be something they are not.”
The soft click of heels from the hallway followed by the creak of a door opening made her turn. Marcus stepped inside, wearing a very fine black suit with a bowler hat tucked beneath his arm. It was almost as if he’d been warned. She turned to Gillanders and pouted. “You told his valet.”
Gillanders tugged on the curly edges of his moustache. “Mr. Smith asked what we were preparing. I could not lie.”
Marcus strolled forward, looking every inch the proper gentleman. He’d been handsome in his loose shirts and rumpled trousers, but if he’d approached her at a ball in Toronto dressed so fine, she would have swooned.
She licked her dry lips and began their evening charade by feigning that they were mere acquaintances and dipping into a curtsey. “My lord.”
When she rose, he took her offered hand and kissed her fingers.
“Your beauty has rendered me breathless, Miss Belltree. Your eyes shine like raging wildfires, and your chestnut curls are as perfectly tumbled as the earth after a landslide. When you enter a party, all eyes fly to your form as surely as the residents of a coastal city watching the horizon when the tide suddenly recedes.”
His use of natural disasters to compliment her made her cheeks warm with pleasure. She flicked open the fan clutched in her other hand and waved it gently in front of her face. “Such flattery. Whatever would your wife say?”
She almost wished she’d met him in Toronto. Exchanging witty banter with him might have made those long nights in crowded ballrooms more bearable.
The skin around his eyes crinkled. “I am certain she’d agree. The countess and I share an appreciation for all that nature creates, both spectacular or devastating.”
She barely suppressed a giggle.