Chapter 4 #3
“Oh.” Cerys leaned her elbows on the sill, hanging out the window without a thought. “How enchanting.”
“Finally, something to impress our Cerys!” Dot exclaimed.
Mame chuckled. “Much like Wales, pet?”
“Almost as green,” Cerys acknowledged, “but the mountains of Wales are wilder. These are mild-mannered, respectable hills. Tamed.”
Manelli gave them an indifferent glance from the doorway. “Nothing like the mountains of Italy.”
“No, I would imagine not,” Cerys said, only to realize she was being agreeable. To him! She turned her shoulder in his direction. “Who will share with me?”
“You’ve this one to yourself, pet,” Mame said. “Rhoda and Dot will share the next, and I’ll pair up with Tryph.” Cerys opened her mouth to protest, but Mame turned back to their reluctant host. “Mr. Manelli, I am assuming the doors lock?”
“Are you concerned about keeping out unwanted guests, madame?” Manelli drawled. “Or looking to lock her in?”
Cerys threw one last glare at him as he turned away, and he met her with that raised, arched brow. His condescension had the most infuriating effect on her. Heat flared throughout her body, like she was a smithy fire stoked with a bellows. An unfamiliar tightness clenched in her belly and breasts.
It must be rage. She was not a person given to rages, though all her family would acknowledge she was easily riled. Something about this Mr. Manelli crept beneath her skin and pinched, like an ill-fitting shoe.
She would simply ignore him until he went away. Surely once he’d finished the Countess’s last commissions, he’d return to his evil lair and brood upon the next round of insults he could heap upon the heads of unsuspecting folk.
She turned her back to begin the work of cutting him, but the dratted man appeared not to notice. He simply led the others away and shut the door as if he’d forgotten her already.
She would endeavor to do the same with him, as soon as possible.
Unpacking was the work of a moment, until her trunks were brought up.
Cerys laid her hairbrush and hand mirror on the dressing table, then unpinned her hat and placed it and the pins alongside.
She put her book on the small table by the armchairs.
The Memoirs of Mrs. Clarke were absolutely fascinating, recounting the life of the former mistress of Prince Frederick, Duke of York, and the scandal that had cost him his place as commander-in-chief of the Army.
But not even salacious gossip about the royals could lure Cerys into sitting still at such a moment.
After some thought, she laid her gloves beside her hat and pulled her Norwich shawl from her bag. Not vanity, no; she was not endeavoring to impress the sour, glowering Mr. Manelli. She simply knew from experience that large houses were drafty, and she wouldn’t be so foolish as to take cold.
Dot and Rhoda’s room was half the size of the one Cerys was given, with a wooden four-poster bed and walls papered in a design of twining flowers. Rhoda lay on the goosedown tick, still wearing her shoes, staring at the canopy above.
“Like clouds,” she said. “I’m lying on feathers on clouds.” She giggled.
Dot rolled her eyes and continued unpacking her bag. She declined Cerys’s invitation to go exploring.
“Rhoda means to catch a nap,” she said with a yawn, “and I might join her. Fancy, lolling about in the middle of the day! No rehearsals, no sets to fix, no costumes to repair.” She looked around at the gilded wall sconces and the portraits of gracious ladies in heavy gilt frames.
“One could grow accustomed to this, one could.”
“I cain’t sleep in a place so grand,” Rhoda said, closing her eyes. “I’ll just be waitin’ for the housekeeper to come turn me out.” She gave a sigh, and in the next moment, the gentle rise and fall of her chest said she was asleep. Dot winked, and Cerys giggled and withdrew.
Mame’s room was also small, with pale yellow patterned wallpaper and no canopy over the bed. “Why do I have the largest room all to myself?” Cerys asked.
“Don’t argue with your elders, pet.” Mame leaned back in an upholstered chair set near the window and raised her feet onto a small stool with a contented sigh. “Tryph and I’s already settled in.”
“They’s sachets in every drawer,” Tryphenie whispered, peering into the armoire. “And our bed linens smell like sunshine, not like the cupboard at all.”
“Want to take a wander with me, Tryph? The whole house is ours, if the viscount is gone.”
“Oh, not I. What if we’s caught?” Tryphenie’s eyes were wide as a doe’s.
“We’re guests. I should think we’re allowed to move about.”
“I don’t want to run into the Italian.” Tryph still kept her voice to a whisper, as if they were yet in the public house with its walls no more than thin planks. “He makes me stomach all jumpy, with his scowl. Why don’t he turn you into a pudding, I want to know?”
“Most men are turned into pudding by our little Cerys,” Mame said. “But not this one. Wonder why?”
“Because he’s made of ash and stone, not blood and flesh,” Cerys retorted. “I shall see you at dinner.” And she left to go exploring on her own.