CHAPTER SIX #2
“Did he insult you, Miss Lebon?”
She shook her head.
“Did he frighten you?”
Another shake.
“Did you believe him mad?”
Monsieur Lebon stood so abruptly that his chair struck the wall behind him.
“That is enough.”
The candles guttered.
Every flame in the chandelier bent toward Adrian, although the terrace doors stood open behind Monsieur Lebon.
Adrian remained seated.
He did not appear angry. Anger would have made him seem human.
He looked at Monsieur Lebon with the tranquil attention of something that had waited a very long time and possessed no fear of waiting longer.
Cécile wrote upon the card.
No.
One small word.
Adrian turned the card so the others could read it.
Monsieur Lebon stared at his daughter's answer. Judge Dewey studied the stained tablecloth. Reuben George drained the remainder of his wine.
Then Nicholas laughed.
It was a beautiful sound—warm, bright, and perfectly timed.
“My brother has carried the commander's solemn habits into a room that deserves better,” he said. “Mr. Lucien, you were telling me that your gray stallion cleared the north hedge with a lame shoe.”
Conversation returned because Nicholas required it to return.
Lucien hesitated only a moment before taking up the story. Philip interrupted to dispute the height of the hedge. Warren demanded more wine. The wives resumed their private hostilities beneath Octavia's smiling supervision.
Yet the ease was false now. Everyone could feel the fracture beneath it.
Adrian slid the ivory card back toward Cécile.
“Keep it.”
Her fingertips brushed his as she accepted it.
She flinched at the cold, but she did not pull away immediately.
I wanted to reach between them. I wanted to take the card, seize Cécile by the wrist, and lead her out through the terrace doors.
I did not know what Adrian Fairhaven was, only that his kindness was too exact.
He had watched her for less than a day and already understood what others refused to learn in eighteen years.
He knew where she was most wounded.
He knew precisely how gently to place his hand there.
Cécile tucked the card beneath the edge of her plate. Her cheeks remained softly flushed, and each time Adrian spoke, her attention returned to him as faithfully as a compass needle seeking north.
Commander Vale had been patient with her because he was a patient man.
Adrian's patience felt different.
It felt chosen.
Octavia caught me watching him.
Her gaze rested upon my face, then dropped to the blue mark above my heart. The stain had darkened since morning. It showed faintly through the gray cloth of my dress, shaped almost like folded wings.
Octavia smiled.
“Your maid is very devoted,” she said to Cécile.
Every face turned toward me.
Heat rushed beneath my skin. Servants were not meant to become subjects at dinner.
Cécile looked back at me. “She is m-my friend.”
The words emerged with difficulty, but she forced each one into the room.
Madame's expression sharpened.
Before she could correct her daughter, Octavia said, “How fortunate. Devotion bought by wages is common. Devotion freely given is among the rarest things in the world.”
“I am under contract,” I said before caution could stop me.
The sentence sounded awkward in my mouth. I knew the words were correct, but my Swedish accent thickened whenever I was frightened.
Nicholas turned toward me.
“For five years,” he said.
The pitcher shifted in my hands.
I had not told him.
No one at the table had told him.
Madame Lebon frowned. “How did you know the length of her indenture?”
Nicholas lifted his glass. He had still not drunk from it.
“Five years is customary, is it not?”
“No,” Dinah said from beside the sideboard.
Her voice was quiet, but the certainty in it cut through the room.
Nicholas looked at her.
For the first time that evening, his smile failed.
Only for an instant.
Then it returned brighter than before.
“Then I have made a fortunate guess.”
Beneath the table, Cécile reached back and touched my wrist. Her fingers were warm. The small gesture steadied me, but Adrian watched it with an unreadable expression.
From the corridor came the sound of a clock beginning to strike.
Once.
The note hung in the air long enough to become uncomfortable.
Then the clock struck a second time, weakly, as though the mechanism had lost the strength to continue.
“It is not two,” Lavinia whispered.
“No,” Adrian said. “It is not.”
Somewhere upstairs, another clock answered with a single broken chime. Then both fell silent.
Madame Lebon rose.
“Shall we have music in the drawing room?”
Her voice was steady, but the diamonds at her ears trembled.
The company stood with a scraping of chairs. Nicholas immediately offered his arm to Lavinia, leaving Augusta offended and Reuben furious. Octavia took Madame's arm as if they were already intimate friends. Lucien and Philip followed Nicholas, still arguing about the gray stallion.
Cécile slipped Adrian's card into her sleeve.
As she passed the pianoforte in the adjoining room, her hand brushed its polished rosewood edge. Adrian followed her gaze to the instrument.
Something silent passed between them.
I did not like the anticipation I saw in his face.
Before I could follow Cécile, Dinah caught my arm.
“Hot water for the blue room,” she said. “Mr. Adrian's washstand.”
I looked toward the drawing room. Cécile had taken her place at the pianoforte. Adrian stood beside the tall velvet curtains, watching her lift the fallboard from the keys.
“Must it be me?”
Dinah studied my face.
“Go straight there and come straight back.”
I took the copper pitcher from the kitchen maid and climbed the dark back staircase, its warmth pressed between my palms.
Behind me, the first notes of Cécile's music entered the house.
Above me, the clocks remained silent.
The gallery in the west wing was pitch-black and noticeably colder than the rest of the house. The oppressive July humidity seemed to die away as I approached the door at the far end.
The door to the blue room stood slightly ajar. A faint, pale light spilled out onto the floorboards.
I pushed the door open with my elbow. “Mr. Fairhaven? I have brought your—”
The words died in my throat.
The room was freezing. It was the sharp, biting cold of a Swedish winter. My breath bloomed before my face in a thick, white cloud. The heat of the Virginia night had vanished entirely, replaced by an icy stillness that smelled powerfully of frozen earth and crushed gardenias.
I set the copper pitcher down on the washstand with a loud, metallic clink.
I looked into the porcelain washbasin.
The water inside had frozen solid.
A thick sheet of jagged ice filled the bowl, curling up along the porcelain edges in delicate frost patterns that perfectly mimicked the heavy petals of gardenia blossoms. The mirror above the stand was coated in thick white frost.
“You should not touch the ice, Elin Andersdotter.”
The voice came from the shadowed corner near the wardrobe.
I whipped around. Adrian Fairhaven stepped out of the dark. He had removed his coat and stood in his snow-white shirt and dark waistcoat. His dark eyes caught the candle flame, but there was no reflection in them—only a deep, endless void.
He had spoken in Swedish.
Not accented, broken Swedish learned from a book, but the flawless, ancient dialect of the northern provinces—the language of my home.
I backed away until my spine struck the edge of the washstand. “Who are you?” I whispered. “How do you know my language? How do you know my name?”
Adrian took a slow, silent step toward me. The floorboards did not creak beneath his boots.
“I know many things about you, Elin,” he murmured, his voice echoing in the frigid room. “I know you count the marks on your garret wall every Sunday evening. I know you dream of a boat that will carry you back across the sea. And I know you are very far from home.”
He reached one pale hand toward my face. His fingers did not touch my skin, but as they drew close, the air between us turned so bitterly cold that my breath caught in a sharp gasp.
“What are you?” I breathed.
Adrian's lips curved into a faint, melancholy smile.
“We are the guests your employers invited,” he whispered. “And we have come to collect what is owed.