Chapter Fifty-Six. A Visit from a Different Maid.
Fifty-Six
A Visit from a Different Maid.
I stop short, then look around for Merc. He’s nowhere to be seen, so I refocus on the cook.
The man is counting something in his cupped palm.
Coins, it seems? Whatever it is, he’s consumed by this effort, his fleshy brows eclipsing his eyes, his jowls pulling forward from his weak chin.
That apron absolutely terrifies me, and I tell myself that maybe he’s just been breaking down sheeplings or cows?
As he pilots a distracted course for the nearest exit, he seems agitated, his free hand passing over his greasy hair repeatedly.
And then he’s gone.
The door flaps shut, and I wait for Merc to appear out of nowhere, anywhere, and follow him. When this doesn’t happen, and the cook doesn’t make an instant reappearance, I bolt for the kitchen entrance. My heart is pounding with anxiety as I worry that we are too late—
Things open again and I jump back. “Oh, sorry!”
A red-haired maid swings around with her tray of food—and then reaches out to steady me. “Pardon, miss. Are you all right then?”
I wish I knew the other maid’s name.
“Ah…” I try to see over her shoulder. “No, but thank you.”
As she bows and goes about her job, I have to enter the kitchen. I need to know.
Pushing the panel wide, I peer in—and get nowhere. Smoke from the chimney’s various hearths clouds the air, and there are so many maids circling the oven, I can’t track them. Brown hair, she has short brown hair …
So do most of them.
“Miss, do you need something?”
I turn around. It’s another young girl, who’s just come in from the floor. She has a huge load of empty tankards on her tray, and her exhaustion drags down the line of her shoulder and stoops her back.
“No,” I say roughly. “Thank you.”
She bows to me, just as yet another young woman with another tray, this time with plates, approaches to enter.
With a sense of futility, I back up and turn to the stairs—where I catch sight of one of the maids who’s out in the tables.
Drunks paw at her and tweak her skirt, trying to pull her into their laps.
To their credit, the working girls who are treated with better respect defend her, slapping at the patrons’ hands and glaring, but there’s only so much they can do.
Coupled with the low pay, the cook’s hard hand …
I hate it all. I’m filled with rage.
And still I do not find the barmaid I’m searching for.
As I go to the stairs and head upward, I feel no better when I reach the top and see all the men gathered around those rooms. I’m hoping one of them gets in my way, but they step aside to allow me passage.
When I arrive at the end of the hall, I disappear myself into my room, and the first thing I do, after I enter, is throw the bolt.
But it feels like I’ve locked myself in, rather than made sure no one gets to me.
I go over and sit on the bed. My hands want something to do, but as the felt skirt settles itself with a bend at my knees like a kink in a branch, there isn’t anything to smooth.
Glancing down, I see that I messed up the do-up with the blouse, and as I yank the buttons out of their stitched holes, I think of all the things I’ve wished I could try again—
Knock. Knock.
Knock.
My head lifts. And then I rush for the door and unbolt it. “Merc, what happ—”
It’s not him.
I instantly focus on the diamond that is centered on that cravat.
Behind Thale, the corridor has gone absolutely still and quiet. Neither the working women nor their patrons are saying a word, and their bodies are frozen in what I’m guessing were the positions they were in when the big man himself made his appearance.
I step back and indicate the way inside.
Taking off his top hat, Thale enters wordlessly, and I shut the door.
“You left this behind,” he says roughly as he focuses on the floor.
From out of the interior of his fine jacket, he takes a silk handkerchief embroidered with golden thread.
“That’s not mine.”
“Then perhaps you’d like it.”
“You didn’t need a pretext to come up here.”
Putting it back into his pocket, he walks around, checking the shutters, and the corner where there’s evidence of an old leak at the ceiling. He leans into the water closet.
“You need more oil in your lamp. I shall see to that.”
I just wait. Soon enough, he turns to me.
“Which maid,” he says gruffly as his eyes remain at my feet.
My exhale of relief is audible. “The one the cook is beating.”
“That hardly narrows it.”
Flattening my mouth, I pray that the death is happening, right now. “She has a twin who works in the stables.”
Thale nods once. “I know her. Consider it done.”
I take a step forward, focusing on his face as if I am staring down the barrel of a pistol I know how to use. “Just so we’re clear, I will know whether you live up to your side of things. And there will be remedies if you do not.”
Now he frowns, even as he continues to stare at the floor. “My word is bond, no matter what you think of me.”
I hope this is true, because I know I’m lying. I can’t do anything about it if he fails to uphold his vow, but the bluff is the only leverage I have.
Fates, I don’t even know if the girl still lives.
“And now you need to tell me,” he says quietly. “You showed me a lot, but I need the one piece you kept to yourself.”
Opening my mouth, I realize I’m condemning yet another man to death—and yet my words are smooth on my tongue. “The bearded man. The one who sits next to you.” Now I’m frowning. “I don’t understand the weapon, though.”
Thale closes his eyes as if he’s bracing himself. “Tell … me.”
I hold out my hands about twelve nics apart. “It was a blade, but it looked like a piece of ice, about this big. But there was no dripping as if it was melting? I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it before.”
Thale breaks off from me and paces around again. He holds his top hat with both hands, and his brows are drawn so tightly together, they seem to curl his upper lip, his white teeth making an appearance.
“What kind of knife is it?” I ask.
He stops and stares at the closed shutters. “It’s made from a chip off the Crystal Gate.”
Thale stares at those floorboards, as if he can see down through to the trestle table and who sits around it. When he finally glances in my direction, I note the way he avoids my eyes and wonder about all the people I’ve looked at thusly over the course of these many years.
“You do all this, just to protect a stranger?” he asks. “Or is there more of a story.”
“The maid is being beaten and raped. Isn’t that enough of a ‘story.’ In fact, all your maids need protection—and you’re going to have to be more careful who you hire next for the cook position. You need to take care of the girls you pay, not only those who bring in money to you.”
There’s a beat of silence. And then his voice softens with incredulity. “I wouldn’t have believed you, you know. If you hadn’t … you knew where one of my hidden pistols was. You knew the latch—there’s no way…”
“You will tell no one of this or who I am,” I say in a strong voice.
Thale laughs in a harsh burst and puts his hat back on. “Not a soul. Ever.”
With the gallantry of a nobleman, he bows to me and then straightens to his full height. “It shall be done. For all of them.”
I take another deep breath. “Thank you.”
For a moment, he just stares at me without meeting my eyes, his head tilting in what I recognize is a habit of his.
Then he nods once and goes to the door. With every step, he becomes once more the man I first met by the stream, his shoulders moving back, his jaw extending out, his air of unquestioned authority like a cape that he pulls on about himself.
He pauses as he puts his hand on the knob. Then he says slyly, “How do you know I will have to hire a new cook?”
“I see deaths, remember.”
“And you have nothing to do with his demise?”
“I only have visions. I am no killer.”
His eyes slant over to Merc’s pack. “You know someone who is, however.”
When I don’t reply, that taunting smile returns to his lips. “You know, I think I shall let you in on a little secret. After all, someone as altruistic as you should get something for themselves every once in a while.”
“What secret would that be.”
Thale’s chuckle threads through the rain hitting the roof.
“When your husband went to avail himself of Miss Bethle’s charms, he couldn’t perform.
And without becoming indecent, allow me to say that I am very well versed on how …
inspirational … she can be. I reckon he picked her because she looked like you, her blond hair so close to your own color.
But apparently, the substitute does not hold a candle to the real thing. ”
My breath catches. Is this true?
As the man just stares in my direction, I know it is, and there’s an uncoiling of tension in me that I cannot deny.
Thale’s half smile seems self-mocking. “Ah. It appears as though I have made good on something for once. I shall have to toast my virtue later—after I take care of a problem all my own thanks to you—”
A muffled voice cuts him off. “Sorrel. It’s me. Open up.”
“Speak of the devil,” Thale drawls as he ducks his hand into his fine jacketing, no doubt to secure a weapon. “Or rather … your husband.”