Chapter 4 #2
Still, the dread spreads through my chest like ice, and it’s a relief when Abigail steals my attention back to her.
“I have two.”
I blink at her, stumbling out of the horrors of the wedding night, and back onto the rug, where we card and wrap gifts, and I’m safe for another year.
Then I hear what she told me.
“What?” An incredulous look warps my face. I still, the pen firm in my hand, and I sputter, “You have two children?”
Her nod is slight.
For a heartbeat, I just stare at her, my face a furrowed mess of disbelief, then a scoff chokes me. I toss the pen to the discarded wrapping paper, then shove the two boxes aside to make way for the last one.
Abigail pushes the final box closer to me.
Identical to the ones I just carded and ribboned, this one must be Oliver’s.
That’s confirmed when Abigail says, “The gold watch.”
I keep my moody frown on her. “What are they?”
Abigail’s brows lift. “Pardon, Miss Olivia?”
“Your children,” I intrude. “Are they boys, or girls, or one of each?”
“A boy and a girl,” she says, soft, and hands me a final address card. “Twins,” she adds, proud. “They turn three next month.”
I sink my weight.
My bum presses into my heels, legs folded too long, starting to ache, but I just frown at her. “When were you pregnant?”
Her cheeks are on fire now.
It must be the hearth, since she’s so close to it.
“The staff of a house often schedule these things,” she says.
My answer is a raised brow. “Schedule…? Like… you planned your pregnancy around me?”
“Yes, Miss Olivia.”
“I was at Bluestone?”
“Yes, Miss Olivia.”
I make a face, slack, confused, baffled, stunned—all of it meshed into one ugly look.
Then I huff a breath and scribble Oliver’s name on the card before sticking it to the final wrapped box.
But my curiosity isn’t satiated. “Was it arranged—your marriage?”
Abigail startles.
Her gaze swerves at me, a deer in the headlights, before she clears her throat. “No, Miss Olivia.”
I push aside the parcel. “Lucky you.”
There is no answer to come.
Abigail starts to stack the wrapped gifts into piles to be carried out.
As she draws in all the scraps of wrapping paper and ribbons, I watch her—and realise I didn’t know her at all.
Children and a marriage.
How much she has concealed from me.
I hide just one small thing from my parents, like a visit to the library for a book on deadbloods, and all hell breaks loose in my life. I walk on eggshells, a minefield, and here Abigail is, a servant, but one who might just have autonomy, a freedom I don’t know anything about.
How different our lives must be.
More than I ever gave much thought to.
Is it because we are from different classes that she has more freedom than I do… or is it because her parents actually love her?
Silent, Abigail carries out the gifts, as many as she can manage at a time, until they are all piled out in the corridor, and the soft click of the door tells me she’s gone.
I look at the mantel clock.
I missed dinner.
Supper is soon, but I hardly feel up to it. Sitting at that oval table, facing Oliver, Mother more than an arm’s reach to my right, Father far to my left—surrounded by the orchestrators of my poor fate.
I am more than Abigail.
Not as a person, but in the world.
I am aristos, I am elite.
I am a fucking Craven.
Yet she gets to marry for love, she gets to choose.
I don’t need to wonder. Her parents do love her.
It’s an absolute truth.
One that fills me with bitterness—and then I think of Nonna.
If anyone in the family loves me, it’s her.
That propels me off the rug and over to the rotary phone, a phone I just had to have, so cute, but a pain in the ass when I’m calling anyone other than the direct line to the kitchen.
I call Nonna.
But it rings for a moment too long, and just as I’m about to hang up, there’s a click, silence, then a servant picks up.
Mila.
I can tell by her mousy voice.
“It’s Olivia,” I say, and stare out the window.
There’s a beat of silence on the other side, that way she hesitates under the slightest bit of pressure. Maybe that’s why Mother doesn’t like Mila, she’s too… mousy.
But Nonna likes her, treats her more like family than a servant. I saw them out the window once, sharing tea together on the patio that overlooks the vineyard. Just sitting there at the little blue metal table, like equals.
It threw me for a minute.
Not a sight seen around Elcott Abbey or Craven Cottage or Thornbury Park.
But I suppose since Nonna lives alone, and she’s gentry, not like Ethel who would choose her grave over the table where servants and krums sat, so it’s different for her.
Mila tells me Nonna is in town with my Uncle Aldo, and I make a face at the sound of his name.
As far as estranged family members go, I have a special dislike for him, and I hate that Nonna is with him right now when I need her to be on the phone, telling me she loves me.
I abandon my quest for reassurance and call the kitchen instead.
Draping myself over the window seat, I wait for my dinner to be delivered.
The view is a grey mist and a brewing storm.
It reminds me of Dray.
It reminds me of Rugby Sunday, the drizzle on his face, the dirt streaks and mud drops sprinkled over him, the scrapes on his unblemished complexion.
I’m thrown back to the library, his mouth hot on mine, my kisses unwilling, but his hungry and devouring, his hand gliding up my side, the warmth of his touch, the affection and urgency in it.
Two dances and a kiss.
I knew there was torment in his agenda. A new way to torture me, make me react to him in a way that floods me with self-loathing and shame.
But I never looked at it any deeper than that.
He was having fun in his torment of me, knowing my future is with him—but with me in the dark it’s entertaining for him.
I feel like a cat whose owner is darting a laser light all over the floor and ceiling, look over here, look over here, and the cat never wins.
How the owner laughs at that suffering.
I know because I have done it.
I’m wicked, too.
He’s just much, much better at it than I am.
Because in all that torment, in all the malice and entertainment he finds in my ignorance, he’s been preparing me, too.
Grooming me.
I down the tea that Abigail brings me. It scalds my insides, but it isn’t enough to burn away the sick swirling in my chest.
Abigail is in and out for the next hour, cleaning the rug, rearranging the coffee table back into its place, bringing me trays of teas and dinner, tidying the couch I was rotting on all day.
She’s just background noise until I hear the familiar faint creak of the overnight bag.
I throw my gaze at her.
My pillow and my wet shoes and my overnight bag, it’s an untouched and abandoned pile behind the open door.
Abigail has spotted the pile, and she’s tilted over, her hand firm around the bag strap, ready to lift it… to start unpacking.
My heart lurches—
Because the deadblood book is in there.
I snap at her, “Get out.”
Abigail pauses at the door, knees bent in an almost crouch. She blinks at me once, then nods. “Yes, Miss Olivia.”
Her fingers slip from the strap, and she leaves.
My heart only settles back in place when the door shuts softly behind her. The moment it does, I slip off the window seat and dash for the overnight bag.
The pillow, I kick aside, but the bag, I toss into the walk-in-robe. I slip out the deadblood book, then wander around my bedchamber for a while, looking for a safe keeping place for it.
It did well under the seat of the armchair. But I’m not convinced it’s a great place now, with all the crumbs and paper scraps littered around my lounge area.
The imps will get into the furniture soon, vacuuming and scrubbing everything back to new.
I need another hiding spot, one that will last until I leave for Bluestone, and then I can return the book to Dray.
It’s not like I want to give it back to him, but I don’t need any more reasons for him to come after me.
The sigh that sags me comes with the awful realisation that I’m days away from stepping into a semester at Bluestone—with no parents around, no protection of any kind, and all masks dissolved.
My insides feel just like the violence of the rainfall battering the gardens out there.
I hide the book in the slot of my suitcase.