by Finley Blake
After a moment of watching him, I sank down into my seat and cut my potato into bite-sized pieces. I peered at him all the while, trying to gauge his reaction to the food.
When he pushed away from the table, his plate empty, the only words he spoke were “Breakfast by eight,” before leaving the room.
I hesitated and watched him go, before chewing the mouthful of food I had. That was it? So I was an educated, young lady of quality, trained to be the perfect companion, now relegated to the roles of maid and cook, not to mention stuck in the Alaskan wasteland with a surly, mysterious Viking.
Fantastic.
Chapter 3
One week passed.
Two weeks passed. I couldn’t take it anymore.
Cooking and cleaning were simple and boring tasks. I had avoided the bookshelf long enough after Nicholas’ outburst. It was dusty, first of all. And then there was the possibility, second of all, that it might hold secrets. I wasn’t nosy, exactly, but I wanted to know what I could about this man who refused to give me the time of day, yet had probably paid a pretty penny for the privilege of my company. The privilege of a maid.
Cleaning cloth and spray in hand, I approached the bookcase slowly, peering out toward the short hall that separated the living room from the kitchen. Nicholas tended to remain in the basement. Sometimes, I thought he even slept down there. Still, there was no sense in taking chances.
With a deep breath, I straightened and looked at the shelves. They seemed innocuous to me. I sprayed the cloth and then reached out to run it along the wooden shelves. After several long, steady strokes, the layer of dust was gone, leaving polished wood. It was a basic shelf, but there was no sense in it looking like no one cared about it. I swept the cloth over the books with a lighter hand until they, too, were free of the offending motes.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I froze in place at the sound of Nicholas snarling at me from just beyond my line of sight. Trying to control the shudder that threatened wrack my body, I stood my ground and turned to look at him. “I’m dusting,” I answered. Brevity, I decided, was better than trying to butter him up. After all, he wasn’t the kind of patron I’d come to expect in my time training at the school.
He glared at a moment longer, his gaze lingering on the books, and then shrugged. “I suppose it needed it anyway and you might as well be useful, since you aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”
My heart lurched and I took a step toward him. “Do you mean there’s a chance I could be going somewhere… later?”
“Of course not. We both signed the contract. You’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you.” He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving me to stare after him.
Well.
That was just peachy.
~****~
With cooking, cleaning, staring out the window at the snow, and listening to my music as the only way to pass the time in the austere cabin, I finally worked up the bravery – or perhaps the frustration – to make a request over dinner.
“May I have some supplies for making things?” I asked, cringing at the vagueness of my request. It wasn’t that Nicholas gave me any reason to fear him. On the contrary – ever since the bookcase incident, he acted completely indifferent to my presence and I rarely saw him between meals. He said nothing unless I asked him a question, which I did not do often, and then answered me in as few words as possible.
He raised his gaze from the plate of pesto, a dish I had taken quite a bit of pride in preparing. I wondered if he liked it. Not that his opinion should matter to me and not that I tried to please him, but still…
“Supplies for making things?” he repeated and his brow furrowed. All I wanted to do was reach out and smooth his expression, run my fingertips along those scrunched eyebrows until they relaxed and he stopped feeling the need to frown about everything.
My heart skipped a beat and I pushed those thoughts away as I wondered how someone so handsome could also be so cold. Maybe it had something to do with the woman in the photo. Swallowing the question, I pushed my train of thought back on track. “Yes. Things like clothes, blankets, rugs, cushions… You know – cloth and yarn and sewing things.” My voice faded. I still sounded ridiculously childish, and he just glared at me. I finally looked down at my plate and whispered, “Never mind.”
The next morning, I found a bounty of fabric, yarn, embroidery floss, sewing and knitting needles, and more in the living room. It took a moment for me to realize what I was looking at.
It was a surprisingly generous gesture for him, and when I found some bolts of fabric that would only do for one thing – new clothes – I wanted to cry. I could make anything and everything with this abundance of supplies. There was enough for sheets, blankets, curtains, cushions, pillows, and anything else I might imagine. The motley assortment of textures and patterns looked very out of place in the stark living room. I had almost feared I would never see any textures but wood and drywall and snow again.
Rather than let myself get carried away by the lavish display, I turned and walked into the kitchen to start breakfast. I sang as I heated water for oatmeal, set the table, and prepared the food. Since Nicholas never made any specific requests for meals, I usually placed honey, syrup, cinnamon, sugar, and brown sugar on the table for oatmeal days. Yet he eschewed those choices every time and ate his oatmeal plain.
This time I mixed some brown sugar and cinnamon into both bowls, added sliced peaches on top while still marveling at the existence of the fruit that seemed to appear in the cooling chest every morning, and set breakfast on the table. I poured the milk into both bowls, sat, and waited for him to arrive.
His brows lifted a fraction when he walked in and looked down at his place setting. Had I not been so accustomed to his poker face, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
But I did.
I cleared my throat and said, “I’d like to thank you for the sewing supplies.”
“No need.” He pulled out the chair and sat down.
“Of course there’s a need. It’s called courtesy where I come from.”
“Being polite won’t get you anywhere.” He picked up the spoon, but made no other move.
I rocked back in my chair and looked at him, blinking. His gaze was down on the food as he scrutinized it. Was something wrong?
“I wasn’t trying to get anywhere,” I said. “I was just being nice. That’s how people in civilized soc–”
“Enough.” He shoved away from the table, rose to his feet, and strode out of the room.
I sat for the next minute, staring at the spoon he had dropped next to his uneaten bowl of oatmeal and trying to make sense of his anger. It only produced more questions. So many more…
~****~
Rather than dwell on the incident at breakfast, I did my housework for the day, eager to distract myself with something far more interesting. As soon as I could, I faced down the mountain of material bounty in the living room. It would feel good to sink my hands into something other than soapy dishwater, to think about something other than my strange circumstances.
“This house needs more blankets,” I declared, because while the physical cold did not permeate the walls, the house still lacked visual warmth. I selected a red toile fabric with various pastoral scenes on it. It was thick and soft with a fleece-like texture, so I found a roll of batting and a white fabric of a similar softness with crisscross stitching on it. Before long I had the two fabrics measured, cut, stitched on three sides, and was stuffing the batting between the pieces to make a sizeable blanket to drape over the back of the wooden loveseat.
Over the next week, I filled the cabin with handmade quilts, curtains, and cushions. The following week as I started on latch-hook throw rugs, I marveled at the transformation. The cabin was no longer sparse, plain, and forbidding. Warm colors and soft textures filled every room. I turned on my music device and sang as I worked, completing a simple rug in a shifting, waving pattern of yellows, oranges, and reds. It
was like a desert sunrise – out of place in the wasteland, but an inviting sight when one walked in the front door. Granted, I had never seen Nicholas walk in or out of the front door, yet that’s what he did only moments after I stitched the edges, laid down the small rug, and sat back down to knit a new scarf.
At first, he didn’t seem to notice anything as he stomped just inside the front hall, knocking the snow from his boots. He took two steps and then there was silence.
I tried to ignore the sensation curling in the pit of my stomach, and sang and knitted as if oblivious to his presence.
He gave a very low but audible grunt, and walked into the living room. I kept my eyes on my work as the harmony faded in my throat.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked as he leaned against the opposite wall.
“Doing what?” I focused on the action of needles – knit a row and then purl the next row. I could visualize his brow furrowing, as it so often did. Didn’t he have any expression other than angry and angrier?
“Why are you afraid of me?”
“I’m not,” I answered, aware my voice trembled slightly. Damn it.
“Then look at me.”
I exhaled and lifted my gaze to his.
After a few heartbeats, he said, “I don’t need some girl who can fill my house with pretty, useless things.” He waved his hand at the items I had worked so hard to craft. “What good is any of this to me?”
Setting my knitting aside on the loveseat, I ran my palms over it a few times to smooth the yarn. I cleared my throat and then nodded. “You’re right. This was a mistake.”
“Excuse me?”
“This was a huge, enormous, fucking mistake.” My voice rose with each word. “Do you even know who I am? No, you don’t, because you’re living in disgrace, far from the real world, so I’ll tell you who I am.” I stood, clenched my fists at my sides, and glared back at him. “I am Violet Glory Morningside, daughter of one of the most prestigious families in the Southern Territories. And here I am – wasted on a man like you, a man with no name and no connections. You are nothing and nobody. Based on the contract I signed, I have to live here. Since you are not the usual patron – since you don’t want me for companionship or even some basic sexual services, all I ask is some comfort. Maybe something to keep me from being so bored, too. But, no, you don’t care about me. As long as I keep the house clean and put food on the table so you don’t have to, you don’t care whether or not I’m happy. You aren’t just a nobody. You’re a selfish nobody who means nothing to me or anyone else, and you don’t care if I’m miserable too!”
The shrillness of my tone startled me, but I had to speak the words or hold them back forever.
“I didn’t even get a real chance to refuse the match – to meet you first and let the headmistress know you are entirely unsuitable for me. No – I am stuck here with you, you asshole! I deserve so much better than this! You are an ungrateful barbarian with no sense of civility or kindness, and I hope you get lost in a snowstorm! You don’t care about anyone and no one cares about you, either. The world would be better off without you.”
His hands shook at his sides and, for a brief moment, the wild fear that he might strangle me flashed through my mind. Then he spun on his heel and stalked out of the room.
Hissing out a loud breath, I squeaked, “Shit!”
Chapter 4
I dined alone that night, which only ratcheted up my anxiety. The sleepless night that followed made it worse. As I tossed and turned, I fretted about what would happen when I was once again face to face with Nicholas. There were a few moments of elation, when I decided the only thing he could possibly do was contact the school and send me back. But even if he were to do that, I would have to wait for someone to fetch me. That seemed like a very unlikely possibility, so I returned to worrying off and on throughout the night.
The next morning, he sat down to breakfast and said, “Dress warm. We’re going outside.”
I looked up from my waffles and syrup, which I had no appetite for anyway. “We’re going outside?” I repeated, my body going numb with fear. There was an option I hadn’t counted on – him taking me out in the tundra and abandoning me to my death.
“That’s what I said.”
As the shock wore off and Nicholas ate his breakfast, shoving large pieces of waffle into his mouth, my pulse stopped racing and I finally nibbled at my own food. Of course my fear was silly. He had paid good money to the school to have a match. It made no sense to harm me. But what could possibly be of interest to me outside a house in the middle of nowhere?
Once I cleaned the dishes, I ran upstairs for a change of clothes. Everything I had packed was too frilly and feminine for this rough living. I looked at the beautiful floral summer dress that was my absolute favorite, and felt hopelessness well up in me once more. Then I shook my head and made do with the knit tights and my school uniform – a black, white, and red plaid dress with a white pinafore. I layered a coat over my clothes, and donned my hat, scarf, and gloves.
When I met him at the bottom of the stairs, Nicholas looked me up and down. His brow creased slightly as he winced. “That will do for now, but you need better protection than that here. This isn’t exactly the place to wear your dresses. Your next project should be to make some warm clothes for yourself. I expect you to get started on that today. Come on. I need to show you something.”
It was the most words he had ever spoken to me and the first time he had shown any concern for my well-being. With a tilt of my head, I followed him into the kitchen.
He gestured toward the door at the back of the pantry and said, “This is just one of many secrets. Maybe understanding this house will help in some way.”
Understanding... the house?
The door led to a warm, dark square of a room. Stairs descended to my right and a door in front of me opened onto the blinding snow and sunshine.
I squawked a bit at the brightness. When I realized how I sounded, heat flared into my cheeks.
“I know it’s disorienting,” Nicholas said, perhaps mistaking my redness for a reaction to the sudden chill, “but you’ll appreciate it after you’ve lived here during the darkest months. They’re just around the corner.” Nicholas walked into the snow and after hesitating on the threshold, not wanting to immerse myself in that bone-chilling cold, I followed. After several blinks, my eyes adjusted and I realized we were standing in the walled-in backyard. Nicholas banged at the wall with his knuckles. “Only a nuke can take this down, and not even the Regime would waste their precious resources bombing a little cabin in the middle of nowhere.”
Still blinking, I gulped and nodded. Nukes? Why is he telling me this?
“It took a hell of a lot of work to build this place, but it was worth it in the end.” He pointed at the striped pinwheel contraptions on the corners of the wall. “Wind turbines and moisture collectors.” He waved his hand around the yard and I turned to follow the gesture.
The appearance of the cabin, I realized, was deceptive. My initial sight of planks and logs at the front of the building was only a partial view – a true façade that deceived anyone who did not come further than the front door. I reached out to touch the cold exterior of the house. That wasn’t wood under my palm. It was cold steel.
“Shit,” I whispered. There it was – that memory again, only clearer now that I had a more complete picture of everything. “I don’t believe it…”
“Solar panels,” he said, motioning to the roof. “Not that we get much sun, but you’d be surprised at how far a little bit of power goes, especially with all of it working together, all the elements harnessed to give us what we need.” He looked at me. “What’s wrong?”
I removed my hand from the house and shook my head, backing toward the door.
“It’s getting too cold for you.” He followed me, concern shadowing his expression for the first time.
I pointed at him. “Did you know Doctor Thaddeus Morningside?”
He
stopped in his tracks and gaped at me.
“Did you?” I cried, and wrapped my arms around myself as if that could contain the shudders wracking my body.
“Violet…”
A sob broke from my throat, and I managed to gasp out, “Where the hell is my father?”
Nicholas was looking at me with wide eyes, his face a mask of shock as he took slow steps toward me. “So that’s why she sent you,” he whispered. He reached for me for the first time in the few weeks I had lived here as his supposed courtesan, but I didn’t care. I turned and ran back into the house, tears streaming down my face.
So that’s why she sent you.
Those words echoed in my mind. Was that why the headmistress had sent me here – to torment me, first with an ice-cold patron and then a stark reminder of my father’s unexplained disappearance twelve years ago?
“Violet!”
As my feet hit the first step, I heard him behind me. I ran blindly up the stairs, shouting, “Leave me alone!” only to hear him thundering up after me. I slammed the bedroom door behind me, but he caught it.
“Christ! You’re fast!” he shouted, shoving the door so hard it swung back into my room and hit the wall behind it.
“Fuck off!” I yelled as I backed away from him, my fists clenched and my arms ramrod straight at my sides. Would I swing at him? Azure would and she wouldn’t miss.
“Just calm down.”
“No!” I flailed at Nicholas when he reached for me. It wasn’t the most effective way of warding him off, but it was all I could do. After all, I was the sweet one, the girl one… the doormat.
But I didn’t want to be a doormat any longer.
“Go away!” I cried.
He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me. They were warm and strong, and all that I had imagined in my idle thoughts about Nicholas. Despite that, I strained against their hardness until I could only gasp for breath.
“This is the game we have to play,” he said in my ear when I finally stilled in his arms. “You’ve been tossed into it, so you’re going to need a hell of a lot more strength if you want to survive it.”
