Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Three days later, Alice could still feel the imprint of Kenneth’s hand on her jaw.
The memory had a physical weight, like a bruise beneath the skin that throbbed when pressed.
His thumb stroking her cheek. His body warm through the layers of her gown.
The look in his eyes before Charlie had appeared.
Alice reached for the hairbrush that should have been on the dressing table’s right-hand corner. It was not there.
She frowned, running her fingers across the polished surface where the silver-backed brush had sat minutes ago. Perhaps the maid had moved it during the evening tidying. Perhaps she had placed it elsewhere herself, distracted by the lingering heat of the staircase encounter.
She checked the drawer. The bedside table. The writing desk where her correspondence lay in a neat stack. No brush.
It appeared on the windowsill ten minutes later, balanced on the narrow ledge, the bristles facing outward as though the brush had decided to admire the view.
Alice picked it up and turned it over in her hands. The silver felt cool against her palm.
She said nothing, only brushed her hair in silence, watching the copper strands catch the lamplight, and then set the brush deliberately on the dressing table where it belonged.
Her nightgown had been folded and placed at the foot of the bed when the maid turned down the covers. Alice remembered this with perfect clarity because she had noted the care with which the cotton had been arranged, the corners squared with the precision of a woman who took pride in her work.
Now the nightgown resided in her wardrobe, tucked between two day dresses, folded into a tight cylinder that bore no resemblance to its original configuration.
A noise sounded in the corridor—a muffled exhale that might have been a stifled laugh, quickly suppressed.
Alice paused with the nightgown in her hands. The cotton carried the faint scent of lavender from the sachets in the wardrobe drawers.
“I see,” she said to the empty room. Her voice carried just far enough to reach the door, which stood ajar.
Wide enough for a small boy to hide.
After she closed the door, her maid came in soon after and helped her change into her nightgown.
When the maid went to fetch her slippers, which were usually arranged side by side beneath the bed when she retired to her chamber, she halted.
“They’re over there.” Alice pointed at the windowsill, where the slippers now sat at attention, toes pointed outward.
After her maid left, Alice crossed the room and extinguished the lamp on the dressing table. The room dimmed to the soft glow of the single candle beside the bed.
Another sound from the corridor, clearer this time: a giggle, hastily muffled by a cough that fooled no one.
Alice climbed into bed. The sheets were cool and smelled of starch. She arranged the covers around her shoulders and turned toward the wall, presenting her back to the door and the small observer she knew was stationed there.
She counted to twenty beneath the covers. Then, she released a sigh, the soft contented exhale of a woman settling into sleep.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Small, quick, retreating with the satisfied rhythm of a mission accomplished.
Alice smiled into her pillow. The smile ached a little at the edges, worn thin by the day’s accumulated weight, but it was genuine. Freddie had chosen to engage with her. It was far from acceptance, but still it warmed her heart. After all, he was just a boy.
She understood him. She had acted similarly once, in the years when her father’s attention had been a currency too scarce to spend on her.
She had rearranged the ornaments on his desk.
Moved his ledgers an inch to the left. Small alterations designed not to anger but to provoke a response, any response that would acknowledge she existed in the same room.
Freddie was simply testing boundaries. He wanted to know where she stood. Wanted to know if she would shout, or laugh, or pretend nothing had happened at all.
Alice wouldn’t shout at him.
The sheets warmed around her, and she closed her eyes. She fell asleep with the ghost of a smile on her lips and the sound of small footsteps fading into the dark.
Morning came with all her belongings in their place. Luckily.
She ate breakfast in silence, then returned to her chamber, where she pretended to attend to correspondence. Eventually, she could no longer bear her boredom, so she made her way to the library.
She paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and absorbed the quiet of the room. Morning light fell through the tall windows in diagonal shafts that turned the dust motes to gold.
It truly was the most magnificent room in the castle.
She had not expected to find the library occupied.
Charlie sat in the window seat, with a book open against his thighs.
He did not look up when she entered. His concentration appeared absolute, his finger tracing the line of text with the focused precision of a child who treated reading as both a refuge and an occupation.
“Good morning, Charlie.” Alice kept her voice soft.
He turned a page without responding.
“I did not realize the library was in use,” she added, moving toward the shelves carefully. “I can return later, if you would prefer.”
“Stay, if you wish.” Charlie’s voice emerged level and cool. “It makes no difference to me.”
Alice selected a volume from the middle shelf and carried it to the armchair that faced the window seat. Not directly opposite Charlie, but at an angle, close enough for conversation if it arose and far enough to respect the bubble of silence he had constructed around himself.
She opened the book. The pages fell open to her placemark, a thin strip of blue ribbon that the previous reader had left between the leaves. She smoothed the page with her palm and began to read.
The silence between them acquired texture: Charlie’s breathing, slow and even; the occasional soft creak of the spine as he turned a page; the distant sound of the household moving through its morning routine beyond the library door.
“You tap your finger,” Charlie noted. He did not look up from his book.
Alice’s right index finger paused mid-descent toward the third tap. She curled her hand into a loose fist and set it on the arm of the chair. “Do I?”
“Three times. Then a pause. Then three more.” He turned another page. The motion was unhurried, almost casual, but his eyes remained fixed on the text. “You did it just now.”
“I was not aware.” She kept her voice even.
The history of garden design blurred before her eyes, the text rearranging itself into shapes that conveyed no meaning.
“Most people aren’t aware of their habits.” Charlie’s finger traced the margin of his page, following some invisible path only he could see. “That’s what makes them habits.”
Alice turned a page. The sound was louder than she had intended.
Charlie closed his book. He looked at her directly for the first time that morning, and the expression on his face belonged to a child twice his age.
“So… you are my mother now.”
“I…” Alice hesitated. “I suppose so.”
A frown settled between his eyebrows. “I don’t really know what that is like.”
She simply looked at him and waited. Children who were rarely listened to would speak without encouragement if given the chance.
How well she knew that.
“What does a mother do?” he asked.
“I suppose that she gives love and advice,” Alice offered. “That she cares. I will make sure to tuck you in bed. Read you stories if you want.”
“Miss Leyton doesn’t do any of that,” he admitted. “She… makes sure we behave, but that’s more Freddie than me.”
“What would you like a mother to do, Charlie?”
He looked at her, his head tilted, as though he had never considered the question. “I never thought about it.”
Those words felt like a dagger to her heart.
He paused, then added, “You can read again.”
Alice read the same paragraph four times without absorbing a single word. Her finger began tapping against the arm of her chair. She caught it after the second tap and pressed her palm flat against the leather.
Charlie did not comment, but she felt his attention nonetheless.
The library door burst open with the sudden violence that Freddie brought to all entrances, regardless of the room’s prevailing atmosphere.
He skidded to a halt on the Persian carpet, his shoes leaving faint streaks, and surveyed them with the bright, assessing gaze of a general reviewing his troops.
“Tea,” he announced, before a maid bearing a tray stepped inside.
A pot steamed gently beside two cups, a sugar bowl, and a plate of biscuits that had suffered significant depletion during transit.
“Cook said you might want some. Actually, Cook said no such thing, but I interpreted her silence as approval, which is practically the same as permission, if you think about it.”
Alice set her book aside. “That was very thoughtful of you, Freddie. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I brought a biscuit too! I ate the chocolate off the top, but the rest is still very good.” Freddie grinned.
After the maid set the tray down, he poured with a concentration that transformed the simple act into a performance of barely controlled chaos.
Tea splashed over the rim of the first cup, onto the saucer, onto the tray.
Freddie mopped the spill with his sleeve, which achieved nothing except the transfer of liquid from tray to fabric.
“Here!” He swung the cup toward Alice with a flourish that sent a splash onto her skirt. “For the Duchess! It has a surprise attached, which makes it far better than just plain tea.”
Alice accepted the cup. It was almost lukewarm, which was her least favorite temperature for tea. Still, she raised it to her lips. But then stopped. Because a lizard regarded her from the surface of the liquid.
It was small, barely the length of her thumb, and a vivid green that contrasted sharply with the amber of the tea. Its feet paddled gently, creating tiny ripples that radiated outward toward the rim of the cup.
Alice lowered the cup. She arranged her features into an expression of suitable horror: eyes wide, lips parted, one hand pressed against her chest.
“Frederick Stafford!” she gasped, trying her best to suppress a giggle. “There is a lizard in my tea!”
Freddie’s face lit up with the pure joy of an artist receiving confirmation that his masterpiece had achieved its intended effect.
Charlie still did not look up from his book, but the corner of his mouth twitched once, briefly, a movement so small that Alice might have missed it if she had not been watching for precisely that reaction.
She rose from her chair. The performance required a retreat. “I believe it better to return to my chamber and have my tea there. I do prefer it without amphibians.”
She left the library with her spine straight and her pace measured, and did not allow herself to smile until the door had closed behind her.
The smile lasted all the way to her bedchamber.
It warmed her through the corridor, up the staircase, and past the morning room where Mrs. Finch was telling a footman about the day’s arrangements.
It lingered as she closed her chamber door and leaned against it, before she pressed one hand to her mouth and allowed the laughter to escape in quiet, muffled bursts.
They were testing her. Freddie with his open-handed mischief, Charlie with his watchful silence. She hoped that she would pass whatever test they had in store for her.
The twins, at least, she might win over.
Their father was a far more formidable challenge.