by Emily Bow
My parents always took our input, even when we were kids. We were a team. My father mostly kept his Captain Commander attitude where it belonged—at work in space. And Mom kept hers at the hospital. I think creating that distinction was how two commanding people made a life together.
The duchess put her hands to her lips. “It’s horrible of me to ask. But with the event being next weekend, there’s really no time to vet anyone else. And as there are so many priceless artifacts here. All uncontained. Out in the open. Uncatalogued. Which is why we need you. But under the circumstances, we can’t have just anyone walk in the door.”
“We don’t know how to serve.” Lily clutched her laptop to her chest. “We’re not servers. I’ve never been a waiter.”
The duchess gave her a once over. “We can provide uniforms.”
Oh no. Resistance curled inside me.
Professor McCrary shifted on her feet. “The girls are volunteers. They don’t work for me exactly. They are students learning about history.”
The duchess pursed her lips and raised her chin. “Serving is a long and honorable tradition. Especially for a family such as mine, in a castle such as this.” Her tone had a coldness we didn’t typically hear from her.
Professor McCrary wiped the back of her hand over her cheek. “I’m sure it is. But these two are students here to learn about history. I can’t make them do work outside that scope if they don’t want to. They do what they like with their free time. I’m sorry. I’m sure there’s a service who has vetted employees who can get someone here. I’m sure the staff have friends who could work for the night for a fee. I’m sure they can arrange that for you.”
“A fee?” The duchess’s green eyes glinted. “I fully understand. I do think compensation is fair. I’ll add the fee to your research stipend. The extra, say…2000 pounds should cover their time. That’s enough for a few hours of work. Right?”
“Mom.” Lily shook her head again, but the gesture was more defeated than I’d like. Few professors let go of research funds when they got them in their hands.
“Two thousand for each girl, of course,” the duchess said.
Every extra dollar tightened the yoke of servitude around me and Lily.
“For the project, it does make sense,” Professor McCrary said without looking at us. “The girls have been given so much. They can give a little back.” She nodded. “The girls would love to help.” She said the last sentence in a “that’s final” tone, as if announcing a test date.
The duchess nodded with a smile and narrowed eyes. She quickly left the workroom once she had gotten her way.
“Mom,” Lily said, plea and annoyance in her voice.
Professor McCrary turned to her daughter. “Do we have to discuss the rental car and what that will cost the project?”
Classic. I knew she’d been saving that up.
Lily flushed and covered her cheeks, then she shook her head, turned, and left. The professor went after her.
I wasn’t angry at the outwitted professor. Heat steamed through me because I knew the real reason for the duchess’s insistence that we become her servants. We’d then officially work for her. She’d be showing her son I wasn’t for him. She’d be making me off limits.
English classism. I knew the social construct existed, why had I thought it wouldn’t affect me? I credited my misbelief to American denial and stalked down to the ballroom where the dinner would be held next weekend.
Thorn stood at the other end of the room in front of the glass double doors that overlooked the statue-filled courtyard looking broody.
Chapter 26
Now, I find him? “Well, if it isn’t Your Grace.” I spoke loudly enough for him to hear me from across the room, my tone snarky and disrespectful. His mother’s shenanigans helped me steel myself against his appeal. He could have texted to warn me. He should have come looking for me. He should have met me at my bedroom door this morning with a cup of tea, a blueberry scone, and red roses.
Thorn made no move to come over to me. He stood straighter and arched one eyebrow.
How dare he? I strode the length of a long table that hadn’t been here yesterday. My annoyance made the trip quicker than usual.
Two of the kitchen workers brought in chairs and put them inside the doorway. One guy called out, “Going to make yourself useful and help us, I hear? You can give me a hand.”
I looked back, and he winked at me.
“She is at that,” Sarah said. She, my least favorite, bent and sprayed lemon furniture polish on the legs of the chairs. She was a supervisor, so this party indeed must be all hands-on deck. “Will you be helping us with this and not disturbing His Grace?”
As she said the words “His Grace,” the male assistant flashed a surprised look around the room, spotted Thorn, and bolted out.
The kitchen supervisor Sarah stayed.
I ignored Sarah’s question and resumed walking toward Thorn and breathed out a frustrated breath.
Yesterday, I’d have been happy to help the kitchen staff set up. I’d have seen the chore as a way to make better friends with them. Today I was furious. Setting up was a weird class weapon, not a favor.
The kitchen staff were poking at me to lord my status change over me. Make myself useful. That meant what I did was useless. I eyed Thorn. How much was he a part of this weird cultural game? I stopped right in front of him. It hit me that my carefully selected jeans and a t-shirt highlighted our differences because he wore slacks and a nice shirt. “If we… If you…”
Spritz. Spritz. Sarah was going to town with the lemon polish.
I took a breath and glanced back at her. Sarah’s head turned back to her task, and all I could see was her bun. Two more staff carried in more chairs. Thorn might not mind talking in front of them, but I did. I looked at him and made my face convey that.
Thorn reached for the handle on the garden door. “Let’s take this outside.”
How dare he dictate where we go?
A chair thumped down on the parquet floor and outside sounded wonderful. I followed Thorn through the double-glass doors into the British hazy crisp morning. I didn’t speak again until we were halfway across the courtyard standing beside a statue of Zeus who overlooked a small pond. “I do not work for you,” I said tightly.
His expression remained neutral. “I know that.”
“Do you?” I pointed at the statue. “Because if you were Zeus, King of the Gods, which you are not, I would take that trident from your hand.” Crap. I frowned. Trident. “I mean, Neptune. If you were Neptune, King of the Sea, which you are not, I would take the trident and stab you with the pointy end before I’d hand out caviar to your select fifty mer-friends who were coming to dine on lobster and sea urchins. I don’t work for you.”
“Agreed.” He blinked and half-smiled. “I would never kiss someone who worked for me.”
He went straight there.
The tension eased from my shoulders. “Did you arrange for me to serve at your next dinner party?” I spoke slowly and clearly so he couldn’t pretend to misunderstand me.
He shook his head.
“You had no part of it? To point something out to me? To distance us or whatever? It was only your mother’s idea?”
“This is the first I’m hearing of it.” His eyes glinted and a clever expression flashed across his face before the expression dropped away. “In fact, would you like to be my guest for the dinner?”
“I would not.” I threw out my hands. “What a weird question. Your mother arranged for Lily and me to serve your meal. Now, you’re inviting me to the same event? Would I tong out the crab legs, sit and eat them, and then pop up to dish out the key lime pie?”
“I don’t believe we’re serving seafood, and I’m sure staff can handle dinner service without you. And without Lily, for that matter, if she doesn’t want the work. This isn’t a country where we make people serve. Serving is a job like any other. More prestigious than some. Less prestigious than others.” H
e led me to a concrete bench beside Athena’s statue. “Did you skip breakfast again?”
That wasn’t why I was annoyed. “I can never get down there on time.”
His mouth twisted. “Cook can be rigid.”
At least he wasn’t behind his mother’s manipulations or even aware of them. I sank to the bench. How many other times had his mother subtly steered Thorn’s path toward a certain type of friend? Had those friends protested or had they relented to the pressure?
Thorn grinned. “Dinner’s settled. I’ll let Mother know you’ll be at the party. You and Lily. As my guests.”
That would escalate everything. Was I prepared to start a war with the duchess? Mother of my date? The force behind my volunteer job? I closed my eyes. “What do you think about what I do all day?” I sounded a little lost.
“What do you mean?”
“Is it…useful?”
“All honest work is useful.” His words weren’t flippant. They were considering.
I breathed out and looked away. A small bee buzzed around a peony. Useless. No one would have asked my father to set the table. Not unless all other crew had been taken out by a meteor. And my mother. Dr. Arundel. It wouldn’t happen. But why was I being such a snob about it? I valued hard work.
“Where’d you go?”
Useless. “Nowhere. I’m fine.”
He arched his dark eyebrow.
“I…I’m rethinking the life choices that got me here.” Maybe every job made people do that.
“Hmph.”
My sister Chelsea wants to be a doctor. “I don’t want to be a doctor.”
“Okay.”
My family thought I was wasting time with history when there was all this science to explore. Literal other worlds within our reach, cures within our grasp, and I want to study the past, to look backward. “I don’t want my life’s work to be considered useless.”
“I don’t think that’s what my mother was saying. If she’s forcing your hand, I think we both know this is about me.” His words were careful, and his gaze was on the Athena statue, so I couldn’t make out the expression in his eyes. He wasn’t giving me real answers.
I rubbed my temple. “How will she take it that I’m now your guest?” How would the professor? How would Lily? How would I?
“I’ll handle my mother.” He touched my arm with his index finger and the small motion was enough to tempt me. “What do you say?”
I nodded. “Okay.” I rose from the bench without looking at Thorn. Conflicted feelings fluttered through me. Excitement to spend time with him fought with worry over the consequences. “I better go back up.” I swung my arms and took the long way around so I wouldn’t have to go through the dining room, and so I’d have a long enough walk to lessen some of these feelings.
Chapter 27
I went back to work. My head was bent over a small blue cosmetic pot when the duchess came in wearing a floating dark teal dress. “No. No. Don’t let me interrupt.” The duchess moved across the room on a wave of rose-scented perfume. “Look at all those boxes. Whatever shall I do with all this stuff?”
I expected her to follow that with a laugh and say, “You must think I’m so ungrateful.”
She didn’t. That wasn’t who she was.
The duchess held up a souvenir teacup with the word Berlin on the side, clearly from this decade. She shook her head. “Maybe my dear boy is right, and we should get rid of the lot.”
Huh? I straightened.
“I didn’t even know this branch of Robert’s family well. It’s not as if the stuff is sentimental. But then again, my dear Robert spent all of his time up here working that winter. This place must have meant something to him.” The duchess’s voice had been flippant, but when she spoke of Robert her tone softened. She held up a cracked frog figurine to the light from the window, pursed her lips, and put the creature back. “I thought to finish the project as a point of honor. Get the house in order. Sort the lot. But maybe I’m focusing too much on honoring the past and being neglectful of the present.”
They’d inherited a castle full of stuff from her late husband Robert, who’d inherited it from his family. Cataloguing everything was mandatory in my mind. You didn’t receive a bunch of stuff and not go through the lot. Not when the legacy was an entailed castle containing heirlooms. Was that belief the historian in me? Some sense of responsibility my parents had instilled? “I think it’s amazing.”
The duchess looked at me sort of like, who gave you an opinion? Not an expression she’d given me before.
I didn’t like being disregarded. My American self-esteem was butting up against her aristocratic desire to oppress. My heart thudded and my cheeks flushed. And after a heartbeat, I was glad I didn’t like her dismissiveness. My parents had brought me up in a way that made me expect better treatment.
The duchess then held up the frog again. “This has worth?”
“The project does. This castle would make an incredible community center. A B&B. A university. A pottery shop. A place for artist lectures. Authors. A cultural center and museum. Or a retreat. The last thing this estate should be is a closed-up warehouse.”
“Hmm.” She considered me with a look.
“Or a home, or multiple homes for the people in the community. They lay the limestone after all.”
The duchess pressed her lips together and tilted her head down. “I’m fairly certain Robert’s ancestors built this place. That’s why I’m here sorting amphibians.”
I was sorting the amphibians. “You know what I mean. The locals dug up, dried, and placed the stones. They did the work. Their rents paid for the materials. Their descendants are invested.”
“And will you apply to work in this communal…” The duchess wiggled her fingers. “…business you’re proposing?”
“No. I’m going to grad school. It’s just a thought.” I sank back to my chair, not realizing I’d half risen.
“I do like the idea of an art center. A gallery. Or a university. They’re very interesting ideas.” She waved her hand. “Not the B&B. We don’t need the money.” She snickered. “Can you imagine?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “It’s an honest endeavor.”
“A community enrichment center.” She wore a benevolent duchess expression and her powdered skin glowed.
“This could be a staged process. If you brought in movers for the delicate items, you can get something going here while you’re still cataloguing everything.”
The duchess crossed her arms over her chest and put one finger to her chin. “I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t know why we have three scholars doing all this work. That shortcoming is an issue which has been raised to me before. We really do need a team of experts in here.” She turned from the boxes. “No offense, but you haven’t even finished this one room.” She gave me a wincing smile. “That’s the sort of work you get with volunteers. Why, last week you took off.” She paused as if I should justify my leave.
“I’ll finish the room before I return home in December.” I crossed my fingers under the table.
“Tenacity is something. Very American of you.”
Back home, I never called myself an American. I was just me. Being here made me feel like an American though. Mostly because of how frequently my country of origin was pointed out to me. But every now and then, the reason was more subtle. An attitude difference. My belief in change. The way Billy’s dad seemed so impressed he was in college and could achieve something. Billy was bright. Of course, he was in college and could achieve something. There should be no doubt or amazement over that fact.
The duchess threw out her arms. “Maybe we’ll consider plays. This house has that lovely small theatre. I would thoroughly enjoy weekly evening productions.”
The theatre room had an old-fashioned Victorian décor, a small stage, and a number of gold-backed chairs that were currently stacked but could be taken down for a production. “If you know anyone in the entertainment industry, that may make a wonde
rful documentary special. A contest of scripts, a renovated theatre; it has the makings of an interesting home reality show.”
“Hmm. A play would be just the thing after a lovely dinner.” The duchess paused for effect. “I understand from Thorn that you will be joining us for our dinner party?”
It must have taken all of two seconds from me leaving him in the garden to him telling her. And here she was, asking me about it straight to my face. If anything, I thought I’d get a passive aggressive cold shoulder. I pressed my lips together. “He’s asked, yes.”
“And you plan to take him up on his…invitation?”
“I believe I will.”
“I see.” The duchess re-crossed her arms over her chest, tapped her chin, and looked out the window with a faint frown. “It’s not only in here that needs work, you know.”
Billy rolled a dolly in with new boxes.
I groaned internally. How could I finish these boxes when there were more coming? My insides tingled with a sick realization. In the first weeks, when we’d bring in new boxes, I was giddy, excited by the possibilities they represented. Now I was groaning? I breathed out and ran my brain over the tasks. Okay, work wasn’t what had sparked my groan. It was the hovering duchess.
“And you, you work in the stables, right?” the duchess asked Billy.
Billy nodded. “Aye, Mum.”
“And how’s that looking?”
A grin broke over his face. “The stables are glorious.”
“Not surprising. My husband’s people were horse-people. The whole lot of them. This castle may make a delightful let for an equestrian family.” The duchess turned to Billy, who was wheeling the dolly back out of the door. “Billy. We do pay you. Is that right?”
He grinned and nodded. “Every week, Mum.” He left with that.
The duchess turned to me. “Hmm. Hardly seems fair.”
“What’s that?” I gave up examining a mid-century tea kettle and folded my hands on my lap. “What hardly seems fair?”
“Why, that Billy is paid and you…aren’t.”
