Wherein the Ordinary Is Unacceptable
Eight days until the wedding; seven, perhaps, until Llewellyn sent the dreadful parcel to the Duke of Walpole.
Audrina hoped to distract herself from this thought in the kitchen of the Goat and Gauntlet. The leaven had risen nicely overnight; it was pale and bubbly and sticky as paste. With the help of the Goat and Gauntlet’s live-in maid, Jeanette, she worked cup after cup of flour into it, then added warm water and salt.
Jeanette was a raw-handed slip of a young lady, with a light-brown tangle of hair tied back under a sensible dark kerchief. “This is a nice change from doin’ the fires, for once. You’ll tell me if I’m mixin’ the dough righ’, m’lady?”
Her thick Yorkshire accent was a creamy lilt that took on the rhythm of her kneading hands. As flour blended with leaven, she wore a look of delight.
Audrina shared the feeling, muddled and distracted though she was at the moment. It felt good to shove at something, to remold it. To make something new.
But it was not enough to still her whirling, wondering thoughts.
What was Christmas in London like for Audrina’s family? Was the stuffed goose being put into the oven, to be eaten crackling-crisp for dinner? Had Charissa bought a gift for the Duke of Walpole? She had wondered whether that would be proper, but Audrina had left London—had been taken from London—before her elder sister came to a conclusion.
Were the earl and countess at church right now, their eyes roving the tall nave of St. George’s in anticipation of Charissa’s wedding? Or was Llewellyn meeting with Audrina’s father to work out a settlement? Blackmail; such an ugly word. She hated the idea of Llewellyn profiting from lies. She hated the idea of him profiting at all from what had been private.
Whatever the London Christmas might be, Audrina would have been barred from the kitchen.
Cooking and baking was not romantic work, she knew. It was brutal and tiring and endless. Sparing someone else this effort one time was not much, but it was what she could do today. There was satisfaction in knowing that she had a useful task. Even though pushing at such a great quantity of dough made her hands hurt.
Which, of course, made her think of Giles.
“Jeanette.” Audrina hesitated.
“M’lady?”
“Did you ever know anyone with arthritis?”
“Ooh, yes indeed. Me grandmam had arthritis somethin’ terrible. Gave her the devil of a time findin’ work wi’ them hands.”
“When she was young?”
“No, m’lady. It come on when she was old, p’raps sixty. She hurt when she worked hard, and she hurt when she didn’t work a-tall.”
“So rest did not help her.” Audrina shook her head. “There must be more than one type. Some people get it old, some get it young.”
“Can’t say, m’lady. I never heard of anyone gettin’ it young.”
“It happens. Sometimes. But how does one know if it’s arthritis at all, or something else?” Something that would not strip away one’s hope for the future?
Jeanette lifted one shoulder as she pressed at the dough. “That’d be a job for a doctor, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose it would.” Audrina tossed a reassuring smile to the maid. “No matter. I was woolgathering.”
She was spattered with flour; Mrs. Booth’s capacious apron was daubed with sticky dough. But no matter how vigorously she kneaded and punched and shoved at the dough, she couldn’t stop thinking.
“M’lady? How long do we mix the dough?”
Audrina blinked. The great mass of bread dough lay in a sad blob over the surface of the wooden table. “Oh, dear. Ah—until about three minutes before it looks like this.”
With a sigh, she used the back of her dough-sticky hand to push back hair that was falling loose over her forehead. “All right. Let’s add a bit more flour, a little warm water, and work the dough gently into a ball.” If it rose again, they would have fresh bread for dinner. If not, they would have to eat it as crackers.
Jeanette carried out these instructions with smooth efficiency. Setting the hopefully rescued dough in its warm corner near the fire, the maid then promised to tidy up. With thanks, Audrina stripped off the apron. After cleaning her hands, she wandered into the public room.
Lady Irving had just descended the stairs, and the countess cast a gimlet eye over Audrina. “You’ve got flour on your face and you look like a wet cat.”
“I have no idea what that means.” Audrina swiped at her face.
“No, the other cheek. It means you look tired and miserable, my girl. You need a distraction.”
“I probably do.” She swiped at her face again.
“Well, come and play cards with Richard and me. He only bets chicken stakes, but he’s not altogether terrible. I’ve come in search of a new pack because I suspect him of throwing the ace of spades into the fire.”
“How devious.”
“A bit, at that. There’s hope for him.” The countess’s mouth crimped tightly at the edges, which Audrina knew to mean I can hardly contain my delight, though I regard that as a sign of weakness.
“I had best leave you to your own game.” Kind of the countess to offer, but she and Richard Rutherford would better enjoy their distraction—whatever form it might take—as a solitary pair.
Leaving Lady Irving behind, cursing and clutching at her turban as she searched a sideboard for another deck of cards, Audrina mounted the steps.
The last time she had been at this inn, she’d wished for time to flit forward. Now she wanted it to drag. She was too far away from London, and her head was too full: her distant family, the endangered wedding. Charissa’s happiness and the Duke of Walpole’s stern demeanor. The puzzle boxes and their codes. The Rutherfords’ inevitable departure.
Had she been able to lay down these worries, this snowbound sojourn would have been a respite. For these few days, Audrina had no one to be but herself. There were no parties or falsehoods, no barbs from a disappointed parent or lover. Just good humor, and a bit of work, and—and Giles, who wondered why she did the things she did. Who told her she need not change who she was.
Intoxicating thought.
Already the snow was soft and heavy from sunshine upon it, and the unfortunate stableboy had been tasked with shoveling paths from stable to carriage house, from entrance porch to road. If the skies stayed clear, tomorrow the travelers would be on their way.
She was studying her boots as she mounted the stairs, each polished tip ink-black on the smooth stone-plated treads. Bump. At the top of the staircase, her head collided with a wall.
Which proved not to be a wall at all, but the chest of Giles Rutherford. Nicely clad in a waistcoat checked in dark blue and green.
“If you want attention, just say so.” He steadied her with a gentle grip on her upper arm. “No need to put your balance or your fancy coiffure at risk.”
“I was woolgathering.” Her cheeks warm, she used this excuse for the second time within a few minutes.
“About wanting attention?”
“Ha. No.” Maybe. Yes. She wished she had stepped into the retiring room to clean her face and set her hair to rights.
He stood aside and let her precede him into the corridor. “Did you get the bread pummeled into submission?”
“More than you know. Jeanette and I beat it so much that it might not rise at all. But if it does, we’ll feast on fresh bread this afternoon with our Christmas pie.” A thought struck her. “Were you about to go downstairs? If so, I warn you, Lady Irving will offer to play cards with you. But under no account must you say yes, because then you will have to watch her flirt with your father.”
He pulled a face. “That’s not something I want to witness, though I’m sure they’re having a pleasant time. No, I was coming in search of you.”
“Why?”
“To see how you were doing.”
“Oh. I’m—fine.” Again, she dashed a forearm across her face. Did she look as disheveled as she felt within? She’d had not a moment to compose herself, although a moment would hardly be enough.
“I don’t mean to imply that you’re lying,” Giles said thoughtfully, leaning against the plastered wall, “because that would be rude. But if you’re fine on Christmas away from your family, with as many worries as have been jostling for space in your head, then you must have turned into an automaton.”
“Not an automaton. I am merely a proper English lady of good breeding.” She held up a quelling hand. “I know, I’ve made it easy for you to compare. ‘What is the difference?’ Ha ha. Let me pass, please.”
“Pass whenever you like. I’ve shoved myself against the wall so I’m not in your way. And no, I would never make that comparison in regard to you.” He folded his arms. “For one thing, you’re not as proper as you pretend to be. For another, I know there’s a big difference between not showing a feeling and not having one. And so no, I don’t think you’re fine. But if you want to act like you’re fine, that’s your business.”
She could not trick those blue eyes; she did not want to. And yet there was so much to say, or hide, that speech was impossible for the moment.
She shook her head.
His expression softened, mouth in a sweet quirk. “Come with me, princess.”
The corridor made a leftward jog, then extended straight to the north face of the building. Passing by the bedchambers flanking the corridor on the left, Giles opened a door on the right. “After you, dear lady.”
Audrina had expected to see his bedchamber—scandalous thought!—but instead entered a great square ballroom that soared to the inn’s rafters, slicing through the attic story. The floor was oiled and glossy, the ceiling painted in imitation of marble. Two rows of windows broke the outer wall: the lower of normal dimensions, the upper ones smaller to tuck under the roofline. Molding framed these stacked windows, striping the light-colored walls with chestnut brown.
“Fancy, isn’t it?” Giles said as the door closed behind them.
It was quiet. Pressingly quiet, like wind in one’s ears muting all other sound, and empty. A puzzle box with nothing inside, but there was no guiding message scrawled on its inner surface.
“Look, we’re by ourselves now.” Giles seated himself against the far wall, across from the windows. “If you want to talk about what’s making you all twitchy and shy, fine. And if you want to sit here and not worry that someone is going to try to extort money from you in a game of whist, or make you eat a pie made of five kinds of bird and a rabbit, that’s all right, too.”
Audrina hesitated. She should—she wanted to—she ought to—
Damn it all. She wanted to sit next to Giles.
So she walked over to him and did just that.
The ice that had coated the windows yesterday had fallen, heated by the sun. A cold but clear light filtered into the great room.
“Giles, is it possible . . .” She chose her words carefully. “Could it be that you do not have the same ailment as your mother?”
“That would solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it?” His expression was wry. “I’ve often thought so. But no, it came on right about the same age that hers got very bad. Pain in the wrists and forearms—it’s unmistakable.”
“Jeanette told me her grandmother had arthritis in her hands, and that it never got better with rest. But yours does?”
“Different people feel it differently, I expect.” His tone was light, but its tenor was unmistakable: That’s enough. “I can leave you alone if you like.” Already, he had rolled into a crouch, ready to stand.
“No, stay. Please. I would like the company.”
He searched her for a long moment, eyes clear and piercing. The scrutiny was awkward yet pleasurable, a slow sweep of blue that made her insides clench. She could not break the gaze, and yet to look at him for so long was a type of nakedness she had never felt before.
“All right.” He settled back into place beside her, close enough that his coat sleeve brushed the long sleeve of her gown. The fine hairs on her arm prickled. Her throat felt dry.
“We shall be leaving tomorrow, I think.” Her voice echoed with false brightness in the high-ceilinged room.
“In time to get you back to London for your sister’s wedding.” Giles folded one leg into a careless triangle and slung his arm over the top. The icy sun paled his skin against the dark green of his coat. “That’s what you’ve wanted, isn’t it? To get back to London?”
“I want my sister to be married. Once she is, Llewellyn’s threats will not matter.”
“They’ll still matter to you.”
She clenched her fists in her lap. “Maybe. Yes. But that is not the most important thing right now. Protecting my sister is.”
“From Llewellyn’s schemes? Or from that duke she’s going to marry?”
“Decidedly the former. If Charissa fears anything about the duke, it is that she may not enchant him as much as he enchants her.” Blithe Charissa desired her wedding day’s arrival with single-minded delight. There was no room for any anxiety in her mind, except perhaps a pleasurable flurry of nerves about pleasing her stiff-necked betrothed.
“She . . . loves him,” Audrina added as though it were an afterthought.
When of course it was everything. Love—a word of only one syllable, yet so weighty it was almost impossible for Audrina to pronounce.
Charissa was happy, and Audrina must make sure her own actions did not endanger that happiness.
For that matter, their eldest sisters Romula and Theodosia were happy, too. Quieter than Charissa or Audrina, once they had been scarred by smallpox, they were content to abandon society for a country life with men who loved them.
And then there was Petra, the fourth daughter, who had expressed such a strong desire to study art in Italy that she had retreated to her room, crying, for days on end. Finally, the earl and countess had let her go. For a year they had received chirpy periodic letters from her, and even a painting the previous Christmas.
Petra had found happiness, too.
That just left Audrina, sitting on the hard wooden floor of a ballroom in a York inn.
“Charissa. Audrina.” Giles ticked the names off on his fingers. “You’ve mentioned a Petra. And who else?”
“Romula and Theodosia are the oldest.”
Giles whistled. “Your parents certainly didn’t give you ordinary names.”
“They didn’t want us to be ordinary.”
“What’s so bad about ordinary? Ordinary is the way most people live.”
“That alone makes it unacceptable.” She stretched out her legs, keeping her focus on the glossy toes of her boots. Blinking too often by far, but there was no help for that. An occasional tear must leak out with these words. “And yet I am ordinary, Giles. Unnecessary. There are five of me within my own family. I could do nothing that had not already been done first or better. So I could only do things last and worst.”
“Not worst.” He spoke low and gently. “Different. There is only one of you anywhere, and I guarantee you none of your sisters has done anything like what you’ve done over the past week or two.”
She could make no response but a tight smile. Tense, to hold in feeling that trembled like a plucked guitar string. Love and joy come to you . . .
A man like Giles could only have come from a family where he was loved enough to stretch, to go his own way and come back when he was ready, knowing he’d be welcome. He could only have come from a land where buildings were new and snow scrubbed the sky clean and blue and white. None of these gray winters, these gray people in ossified buildings.
Maybe he was not her equal by birth, if one went by titles, but she was not his by behavior. She was the one who had been foolish and weak and tricked.
But he had never held that against her. She was the one who had chosen to dwell on it. She had agreed, meek and tired, to stay away from London. She had let her father tell her she was not welcome at a family wedding. That she was an embarrassment.
Because she believed him. Because she had put her trust in the wrong person, and he had betrayed her, and therefore she agreed that she deserved to be punished.
Once upon a time, maybe, there had been bravery in secretly doing what she ought not. Oh, what a clever girl to take a lover. To slip from the house to call on a scandalous friend. Oh, how cunning and sly to do these things and smile demurely over dinner, no one the wiser.
But there was no such thing as a secret. Any interaction—from conversation to intercourse—involved at least two. Though she might guard her tongue and her speech and her behavior, that other person had the power to make a different choice.
Had power over her.
And now she was eaten by the idea that no one on earth was proud of her, not even herself. To be different was to be unacceptable. To be ordinary was to be unacceptable.
To hold oneself at a chilly distance was intolerable, but to mingle with servants would never do. To bake was improper; to be idle was insufferable.
She was familiar with every negative prefix the English language had to offer, but she did not know their converse. What to put in their place? How to fill the gaps in her time and her heart?
“No,” she said quietly. “None of my sisters has done what I have.” None of them had wondered like this. None of them had needed to.
Giles Rutherford seemed to like her the way she was. Not as a reflection of her family, or a purse to be dipped into. As fellow travelers, they were on their own, divorced from the outside world.
But the world waited. It crouched outside the snowbound inn, with the sharp claws and teeth of rumor and ticking time. It would tear apart Charissa’s wedding, and that would tear apart their family.
Inside the inn, though, was Giles, and how she loved to be near him. To breathe in his scent, soap and starch and something sweet, like sugared coffee or a stolen apple tart. To study the map of freckles over his cheekbones; the thin slice of a scar through his lip, permanent proof of his devotion to a younger brother. To admire his hands, his strong-fingered, broad-palmed hands, and to want them tracing every line of her body.
Not worse, he had said. Different.
Maybe different was better—or could become so. Maybe she could be brave enough to see herself differently, just as Giles had.
And maybe, just for a while, she could have him. Not as a way of forgetting, but as a treasure to remember.
She reached for his hand. The air between them felt thick and vibrant as crystal.
“Giles. Will you come to my chamber?” she asked.
For an instant, he looked startled. Then, eyes closing, he took a deep breath; a breath that looked as though it hurt him or scoured him clean. She could not tell which, and her heart tottered, ready to fall into despair or delight.
When he opened his eyes, they looked like a warm summer sky. “Lead the way, princess.”