Chapter 21
“What are you doing in here at this time of the morning?” Mildred asks, setting a teacup in front of me on the table. The kitchen is bustling with activity. Brutus and Kaitlyn are making breakfast while Carson and David clean up after them. Becca, Christine, and Maddy are listening as Tilda and Denise give them their tasks for the day and Franchesca is sewing in a chair in the corner.
Early morning light is just beginning to shine through the windows on the other side of the room, scattering across the pages in front of me. I’m momentarily distracted by the way the light reflects off the glassware on the table, startled when a hand snaps in front of my face.
“Thinking of anything in particular?” Milly taunts, smiling. I don’t have to ask to know what she’s referring to.
The staff have been incorrigible where Alistair is concerned, insisting that more is going on between us than there is.
Feeling the oncoming blush, I look down at the pages in front of me. “No.”
Becca and Maddy laugh at the other end of the table. I stick my tongue out at them, but they only laugh harder. I sip my tea to hide my smile.
“You seem to be in much better spirits these days,” Tilda points out, raising an eyebrow at me. She has a list of chores in front of her and her dark hair is pulled back into a braid, somehow free of grey even though I know she must be fifty.
“Yes, you’re even wearing the clothes I made,” Franchesca agrees, glancing up at me as she sews a shirt, so at ease with the task that she doesn’t even need to watch the needle.
“And the master isn’t nearly as cantankerous as of late,” Brutus pipes up, grinning at me over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you Miss Stella?”
I stick my tongue out at him too.
“Yeah,” David nods, a grin splitting his young face as he gets in on the game. “He’s barely even scary since you arrived Miss Stella.”
Trying to ignore their mocking, I grab my quill and make a few notes on the parchment about a pair of enchanted scissors that can sever magical connections. They were last seen three week’s ride from here, and I doubt they’re in the manor, but I can’t afford to rule out any possible loopholes.
“Hm…” Milly hums, wiping down the table around my papers. For the third time.
“Milly, if you want to snoop, just snoop. You don’t have to stand on ceremony,” I say, giving her a pointed look.
She grins, her wrinkled face brightening. “If you’re sure you don’t mind.” Before I can tell her whether or not I do, she keeps talking. “Now why don’t you tell us how things have been going with Alistair.”
I groan, rolling my shoulders as I glare at the many pairs of eyes watching me around the room. “You all need hobbies,” I complain, rubbing my temple.
“You are our hobby,” Becca teases with a wink. I want to toss a bit of my scone at her freckles, but I resist. They can’t leave the manor and they have no other source of news but what Alistair can scrounge up from the closest village. So, I suppose I can’t begrudge them for being interested in my life.
Even if it is a little annoying.
“Go on, tell us how you’re getting along with the master,” Brutus says, fluttering his eyes and doing his best imitation of the girls.
I laugh. Normally, I don’t make a habit of being so relaxed around others, but here at the manor, my usual fears don’t seem quite so prevalent. “It’s been going well,” I admit. “Which I’m sure you all know from the spying you’ve been doing.”
Carson scoffs, and I note the way his eyes keep drifting over to Maddy. “It’s not spying, it’s reconnaissance.”
“That’s the same thing, you idiot,” Kaitlyn corrects, shaking her head beside her father. She may not look exactly like him, but she certainly acts like him.
“Oh,” Carson deflates, ducking his head. “Sorry Miss Stella.”
“Don’t apologize. You were coerced by older and wiser minds.” I look over at the matrons in the room and they all smile unapologetically.
“The master does seem different,” Denise admits, shier about prying than the other women. “A little softer now. It can’t be a coincidence that the change happened after you arrived.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I insist, turning back to the book in front of me. I agree that Alistair has changed, but he’s the one who did the changing, not me. He needed someone to tell him the truth, but the rest he’s done on his own.
“I think you underestimate your impact,” Milly says kindly, reaching out to touch my hand.
I shake my head. “Alistair is the one who did all the work.”
“Well of course he did,” she says, as if this was obvious. “If all he needed was someone to force him to change, then he would have been changed ages ago. But you didn’t force him to change, did you?”
“No. It wouldn’t have worked.”
“Exactly. We’re not saying that you alone changed him, but you can’t deny that your presence here has ignited something in him that led to the changes.”
And I don’t. Alistair is different since I first arrived. But all I did was be honest with him.
I’m sure Milly has done the same thing…But knowing the housekeeper, she also reminded him of his potential on a daily basis. Is that all he needed? To have someone who didn’t expect him to live up to anything?
“If things are going so well, then why are you hiding in here instead of waiting for the master in the library?” Christine asks in her sweet, noninvasive way. I look at her, her honey brown hair catching the light and her kind smile so genuine it’s almost painful to look at. She’s so old for someone so young, having been the adult for her sisters for so long.
She deserves more. They all do.
“I’m trying to find something that will help me out of a predicament,” I explain tentatively. Even Alistair doesn’t know the extent of my situation, and I’m loathe to share the details.
I don’t want him to know what his brother has done. I’m afraid it would hurt him more than the duke has hurt me. Orrin may have killed their father, but that was six years ago. I can see it in Alistair’s eyes that he holds onto hope for his brother.
I can’t steal that from him.
“Let’s just say that the person I ran from has magical means to keep me under their control,” I explain evasively. “And when my three months of the curse are up, and my…master comes for me, they will be able to take me. Unless I can find a way out of it.”
Milly’s hand squeezes mine, and I find a hurricane of empathy and fury in her eyes. “Whatever we can do to help, we will. Any master that comes for you will regret it.”
She’s wrong. The master she expects is not the one that’s coming And even if the entire staff were willing to take on the duke for me, Orrin is nearly impossible to kill. He’s strong—too strong—and very paranoid, which means that he’s always three steps ahead. I’ve contemplated killing him myself, but I couldn’t risk trying unless I was sure I could accomplish it.
“Surely there’s a way out of this predicament,” Tilda says worriedly. “He can’t hold you under his control forever.”
“Oh, but he can,” I growl, thinking of the ring he wears on a chain around his neck. He never takes it off and every time I’m near it, I can feel the heat pulsating toward me. Latching onto me like a handcuff. “My only saving grace is that he has to be in close proximity for the magic to work. But I imagine it won’t take him long to look for me here. And if he finds me…”
“You’ll lose your chance at getting away,” Milly finishes angrily. “You have to leave then when your time here is up.”
“But I—” I cut myself off, unsure how much I want to admit to the group. But when I see their worried faces, I break. “I can’t leave him—Alistair.” Since I met him—since we’ve become close—everything has changed. “The curse needs to be broken. Alistair deserves to see sunlight and you all deserve to live real lives. I can’t leave until you’re all free, and even then…”
A soft smile finds its way onto Milly’s face and happy tears fill her eyes. “You don’t want to leave him at all,” she says.
I hesitate, uncomfortable with this type of honesty. I haven’t openly shared such vulnerable feelings in so long that it feels dangerous.
But in the end, I shake my head and she scoots over, folding me in her arms. “I have waited for ten years for someone to see in that boy what I do,” she says into my hair. “For him to see it. And now he does—now you do.”
“But if I have to leave—”
“Don’t worry about that,” she commands, giving me a stern but loving look. The kind my mother would have given me. “It will all work out. You keep looking for something that will break the contract, and we’ll work on the curse. Either way, by the time your three months have ended, one of the two will break.”
“How can you be sure?”
She smiles and shares a conspiratorial look with the other adults. “Because I’m a parent, and we have a way of knowing things.”
I want to believe her. But with every day that passes, I worry that the duke knows where I am and is just biding his time until I can be taken away without the curse’s interference.
In a few weeks, we’ll find out.