Not For A Million Gold

“Chloe!”
“What is the meaning of this!”

Eileen and Viscount Patrasche let fly at the same moment, and a twitch ran through the shoulders of several of the household staff standing around the sofa.

Dong-hui did not so much as blink. She crossed her legs slowly, as though putting on a show of it for the pair of them, and looked coldly at the father and daughter, entirely at her ease, their faces flushed a deep red.

The Chloe Grace who had laughed so foolishly and cried so maddeningly easily was nowhere to be found.

“I will not be selling the village of Morta. And I cannot understand how that land comes to be worth a mere three thousand gold, either.”

Viscount Patrasche took it for a fuss over a price not to her liking, and let out a thin snort of a laugh. However much she played at being grown up, however much ease she put on, to him she was still sitting right in the palm of his hand.

A tantrum on this scale he could indulge, and find almost sweet. She had learned to haggle over the price of land, so she had grown a little in the meantime, it seemed, and he even felt a mild flicker of approval at that.

Still — best to cut the bud off before she grows any further.

The Viscount buried the cold wariness rising in him behind an unhurried smile.

“Is it that you have not enough money? You seem to have grown greedy in the meantime. You rascal — heh heh! Four thousand gold I shall give you. Any more than that is hard even for me.”

Patrasche winked, for all the world as though he were giving way because she was such a sweet thing.

A whole thousand gold added on, and he had expected her to sign on the spot and be glad of it; instead Chloe, out of whatever nerve she had found, still did not so much as blink. She had to be desperate for every last coin just now, and that made it strange.

“Even if you offered me not four thousand gold but a million, I would not sell. So please, go. Oh — Eileen. There is no such thing as your room in Grace Castle any more. So don’t come looking for your room in my castle again.”

“Chloe!”

Had the girl gone out of her mind? But Eileen only stared, wide-eyed, and could not bring herself to spit out the vulgar words shoving their way up her throat. She would not be seen at her worst in front of the underlings.

Chloe ignored Eileen and went on, her eyes on the Viscount, who stood there with an expression of pure disbelief.

“I’m afraid I can’t offer you a meal. I have business outside, and I’ll be taking the head cook with me. Butler!”

Chloe’s voice came out with a keen edge on it as she called for Handsome. Handsome had been standing there dazed along with everyone else, but he answered at once and stepped smartly forward.

He had the look of a man snapped hard to attention.

“Yes, my lady!”

Eileen had naturally assumed old Scrooge would be the one to answer. What she got was a young man, tall and well made.

“Our guests are leaving. See them out.”

Having given the order to have them shown out, Dong-hui turned sharply away without so much as a glance at the pair of them and strode toward the open door of the library. Then, as though she had forgotten something, she turned back and tossed the thing in her hand down in front of Eileen.

It struck the corner of the table and dropped to the floor. The brooch Eileen had brought with her.

“Oh, and take that with you. It’s so cheap I couldn’t even give it to the servants.”

Chloe wheeled round again and walked out, as though she had said everything she had to say, and the two of them only stood staring after her, blank-faced, for a long while.

Dong-hui stood on the balcony without moving until the Viscount’s carriage had disappeared. The wind was sharp enough, but she could not feel the cold at all. Delma, who had been standing behind her, fetched a thick blanket and put it round Chloe’s shoulders.

Only then did the cold reach her, and Dong-hui pulled the slipping blanket close about her throat.

“Thank you.”

“It was a fine thing to see, but will it be all right?”

Delma asked it, holding out a glass of hot lemon tea, her face anxious. A fresh scent and white steam rose gently off the glass.

Dong-hui took it, blew across the top and swallowed a mouthful. The warm liquid went down her throat and left her a good deal warmer.

In the fireplace the logs crackled and popped, warming the air of the room.

“Now, of all times? And who was it that was itching to tear into those two even more than I was?”

Delma, stung perhaps, quietly avoided Chloe’s eyes and went on.

“That’s true enough, but my position and my lady’s are hardly the same, are they. What if Viscount Patrasche does my lady some harm?”

Now that she heard it said, there was reason in it. She did not know the man well, but he had the look of someone who would not care what means he used so long as he got what he wanted.

Something about him had been nagging at her as familiar, and now she had it: the loan sharks who used to come around demanding their money had had eyes very like the Viscount’s. Those eyes had run up and down her, hunting for one more thing they might carry off, and they had glistened like oiled glass marbles.

“Ughhh.”

Just calling it up again brought the gooseflesh out on her, and Dong-hui hugged her own shoulders and shuddered.

“Are you very worried?”

Delma read the gesture differently, and asked in a voice pressed low, more worried than before.

“No, it isn’t that. Someone just came to mind, that’s all. Handsome!”
“Yes, my lady.”

Handsome, standing near the balcony, answered at once. Ever since he had watched her throw the Viscount out, his own reactions had grown a great deal quicker.

“How is the mercenary hiring coming along?”
“Yes, my lady! For the moment I have sent word to the guild that we need somewhere around fifty.”

Fifty men…

To put extra hands into the Black Forest and still station men at Morta, at Enol and around the castle, fifty looked as though it would not be enough.

“Raise it to two hundred.”
“I beg your pardon? Yes!”

Handsome started, then saw the firm set of the lord’s face and ran straight out. If the carrier pigeon was to reach the guild before the day was out, he had to hurry.

When Patrasche had heard that Chloe had handed out grain to the estate’s residents, he had thought nothing much of it. There could not be much grain in the Grace storehouse, and he had supposed that, with the residents angry and past bearing their hunger, she had thrown them just enough to keep bread in their mouths for the moment. The discontent of the base-born could be lulled readily enough with a beating and a loaf of bread.

But the sight of Chloe standing there declaring she would not sell the village of Morta would not go out of his head.

Patrasche and Eileen left Grace Castle and drove straight to the village of Morta, to pour oil on the anger of the starving residents and then stand there fanning it.

Yet before he had so much as reached the edge of the village, Viscount Patrasche knew in his bones that his plan was going to fail.

“What in the world has happened here?”

Eileen was no less astonished. In the space of a few short months the village of Morta had changed out of all recognition.

The whole village was clean, for a start, and the houses that had been falling down stood repaired and neat, and the smiles never left the people’s faces. Smoke rolled up out of the chimney over every house, and a savory smell hung thick in the air everywhere, as though supper were being got ready. Which meant food in plenty.

The clothes the children had on, besides, were far too bright and gaily colored to belong to poor commoners.

“Father, those look as though they were made out of Chloe’s dresses.”

She had recognized the children’s clothes, and said so as though she could not believe it.

Patrasche narrowed his eyes and studied the clothes the children wore. His daughter was right. They had plainly been made out of Chloe’s dresses.

They were absurdly thin stuff for keeping off a bitter winter wind, but set beside the rags the children had worn before there was no comparison.

“Something is wrong. There’s no way Chloe would do this. Where did the money come from? And she had her own clothes torn up to have clothes made for the base-born? Chloe is absolutely not the sort of girl who would do that. Somebody must be at her side pulling her strings. Ah—! There must be somebody besides us with an eye on the Grace estate. Those jewels were certainly given to her by that person too.”

Eileen rattled the thoughts off as fast as they came into her head. Patrasche’s own thinking was not much different.

“I shall have to plant more men. I need to find out who is behind Chloe.”

The fellow he had planted in Grace Castle long ago had never got hold of any of the particulars. Had the man only done his work properly, there would have been no humiliation such as today’s.

He was angry at his own complacency, too.

“It seems I have been looking on my dear niece a great deal too fondly.”

The carriage that had stopped near the village of Morta stood there a long while before it left.

“My lady! The party that went to buy the cloth has arrived!”

The ill humor Viscount Patrasche’s visit had left in her melted away like snow at the welcome news.

Dong-hui broke off in the middle of her supper, sprang up and ran outside. Her fork went flying to the floor, and it never occurred to her to pick it up.

“My lady! Do be careful! It’ll be a disaster if you fall!”

Delma shouted as she ran after her, but there was no catching the lord, who was running with all her might.

“When on earth did she get so good at running!”

The lord who had never taken a scrap of exercise, who had done nothing but sleep, had changed, and changed far too much. The running left Delma gasping for breath, but her lips still curved round in a smile like a half-moon.

Ten carts in all came through the gate of Grace Castle, every one of them heaped full of winter cloth.

Dong-hui went round and round the carts, so pleased she did not know what to do with herself. With this much she could manage winter clothes for the village children easily enough.

“And the tailors?”

The question was scarcely out of her mouth before a knot of people came jostling forward to stand in front of Chloe and bow.

“These are the tailors who came back with us.”

It was Den who answered, the one given charge of the party. Young in years, but so uncommonly responsible that Scrooge had entrusted the errand to them specially, or so she had heard.

“Is this all of them?”

She had ordered twenty tailors brought back at the very least. Not even half that had been managed, and Den, who had been sent on the errand, hung their head without meaning to.

“We were only able to find eight.”
“Why?”

At the lord’s question Den floundered, at a loss, and hemmed and hawed. They seemed to be weighing up whether it was all right to say.

Delma saw it, came to Chloe’s side and answered in their stead. If Den, who was nothing if not good-natured, was reacting like that, it had to be something that could not well be said in front of the lord.

“They likely thought that if they went to Grace Castle they wouldn’t be properly paid, I should imagine. To people outside, Grace is still nothing more than an estate on its way to ruin.”

With Delma stepping in to help, Den, who had gone on the errand, seemed to find some courage, and went on in a clearer voice than before.

“However generously we offered to pay them for their trouble, they did not believe it. I am sorry, my lady.”

Den bowed their head low. Watching someone who already looked so mild apologize to her, Dong-hui felt needlessly guilty.

The tailors looked no more than fifteen to twenty years old at the very most. Tailors with long careers behind them would not have wanted to come here, so they had evidently brought back whoever they could get at short notice, young and without experience though they were.

They had found work, so their faces ought to have been glad ones, and yet there was no gladness at all in the row of faces before her, nothing but worry.