Found Out

I couldn’t say when I’d drifted off. When I opened my eyes Herman was gone, and that morning I spent a good long while pacing the sunlit floor, my eyes on the empty bed.

In the end, Herman Ernst had never actually given me his firm word that he would take me to the triumphal ceremony. And yet I could tell, plainly enough, that I would be going at his side.

It would be stranger not to have guessed as much.

From the next day on, the servants set about packing not only Herman’s things but mine as well, and they took my measurements to send off to a dress shop in the capital.

“Oh dear — your waist looks fit to snap in two at any moment.”

Tess clicked her tongue as she wound the measuring tape around my waist.

“You really must eat more properly. With a body like this, however are you to…”

She said no more, but I knew well enough what came next.

A slender waist counted as a prized mark of beauty in society, though only among the unmarried young ladies. For a married noblewoman, a thin figure was nothing much to boast of.

“If you go on failing to give him an heir like this, you’ll have no grounds to complain even should Cedric bring a woman in from outside.”

Try as I might to keep them down, the memories kept surfacing unbidden. My mother-in-law, Madam Helena Drake, who kept to a country villa in the south, used to call at the Count’s manor often, only to needle me. Of course, there was worry behind it too, for her only son had been married better than three years and still had no child.

“If it’s to be like this, I’ll go and find a woman to bear the child in your place myself. I truly cannot fathom how you hid a defect like barrenness and managed to marry at all.”
“…Mother.”
“Enough. I’ve no wish to hear your excuses. Somehow I’ve never once had a word of apology out of you. All you know how to do is put on airs and insist it was never your fault.”
“That isn’t—”
“Enough! The insolence — talking back to me, again and again! Whatever did you learn from your own parents, to be so ill-mannered!”

As the days wore on, Helena’s cruelty only sharpened. I longed for her to give me the chance to say even a word, but on the matter of conceiving I had no excuse to offer at all. And yet, if it came to excuses, the childlessness between Cedric and me was surely his doing, not mine. Not that it was an excuse; that was simply how things stood.

“Mari, don’t take Mother’s words too much to heart. It isn’t as though ours is a poor marriage — when the time is right, a child will come to us as well.”

Cedric Drake always played the doting husband, but in truth he was nothing more than a man forever scrambling to dodge intimacy behind one excuse or another.

I was the only one who ever made the least effort to conceive — so how in heaven’s name was I ever to fall pregnant?

At such times Gloria, feigning concern for my wounded heart, would now and then probe at how things stood between my husband and me.

“Does it still seem the Count is avoiding your bed? How very strange. I do wonder if something might be the matter.”

It struck me all over again how, through that whole long stretch of time, the two of them had toyed with me together. Fighting my anger down, I let out a small, ragged breath.

“Um, my lady. If what I said just now upset you, I’m sorry. I only meant it out of concern.”

Just how dreadful must my face have looked? Still at her measuring, Tess studied my expression and then apologized for her slip of the tongue.

“No, no. I was only lost in other thoughts for a moment. I know full well there was no ill intent behind your words.”

I gave a slight smile and changed the subject.

“But why did His Excellency change his mind so suddenly?”

As it happened, I’d been wondering just why Herman Ernst had reversed himself so lightly, as though it had cost him nothing.

“It’s likely on Hoillun’s account.”

Tess answered, jotting the neck measurement in her notebook.

“Hoillun?”
“Yes — Hoillun’s forever fretting over you, my lady. He said he’d had a light drink with the master yesterday, so perhaps that was when he talked him round. The master doesn’t often go back on a decision once it’s made, but then again, he isn’t one to shut his ears entirely to those around him.”

So that was the smell of drink from the night before. Recalling the wine that had drifted off Herman that evening, I gave a small nod.

“But why would His Excellency speak of me to Hoillun, of all people…”

Even as I listened to Tess’s guess, there were things I still couldn’t make sense of.

I can’t picture it in the least.

Herman, consulting someone about me. The very notion. A man who had always carried on as a law unto himself, and here he was actually seeking another’s counsel, no less.

“The truth is, it’s only that Hoillun’s old now. In his day he was quite the popular one, you know.”

That tugged a smile out of me. Hoillun, a favorite with the women? There was another picture I couldn’t summon for the life of me.

“Why, they say he once herded the village maidens about like a flock of sheep. Warm and tender-hearted he was, and he’d a knack for reading a woman’s heart besides. And he got on so well with his late wife — bless them, they had no fewer than ten children between them.”
“…Ten?”

Shocked, I echoed Tess’s words in a daze.

“You really were more of a marvel than I’d ever have guessed, Hoillun.”

Something in that must have tickled her, for Tess laughed a hearty laugh and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

“Hard to picture, isn’t it? And no wonder — these are tales you’d never dream up, looking at the Hoillun of today.”

I smiled softly along with Tess and let my gaze drift aside. Whatever Hoillun had said to bring Herman round, I had no way of knowing; even so, the fact remained that the old butler was watching over me. How could I fail to notice the warmth in his eyes each time we happened to cross paths, the way he looked at me as though I were a granddaughter of his?

“I, ah — I’d be glad if you could pass along my thanks to Hoillun.”
“Hm? Oh, my lady, honestly. There’s no need for you to say such a thing to the likes of us.”

Tess hurriedly gathered up her measuring tape and notebook and turned away.

“I’ll wire your measurements to Madame Eve’s Boutique in the capital. I’ll ask them to make haste, so you’ll have the dress in hand before the triumphal ceremony.”

After that, Tess had the door open before I could get so much as a word of thanks out. From the way she fumbled the measuring tape at the threshold, she seemed, for an instant, a touch flustered.

“Do rest well, then, my lady.”

With that parting word, the ducal castle’s aged head housekeeper hurried off. Her face, for some reason, wore the look of a woman with a great deal on her mind.

The Ernst kitchen had been in a bustle since first light. Well aware that the master and his lady faced a long road ahead, Tess ran herself ragged putting together something for them to eat along the way.

“Oh, would you look at me. I very nearly forgot the milk.”

And this after all her earnest pleading with Robert, the village dairyman, to have the freshest milk brought round by dawn today of all days. Tess bemoaned her worn-out memory and pressed a hand to her chest in relief.

“Head Housekeeper! The butler says come quick! The carriage is about to set off!”
“Goodness, such fussing. Tell him I’ll be right along.”

A newly hired maid had come running up to pester her from the doorway. Tess answered while she bundled boiled eggs and roasted potatoes in layer upon layer of paper. Cramming the last of the food into a basket already fit to burst, she bustled off after the girl at a brisk clip.

“Tess, where on earth have you got to?”

As she neared the spot before the Ernst castle where the carriage stood waiting, Hoillun knit his brows and scolded her.

“I had things to see to, that’s why! The master and my lady will want something to eat if they get hungry along the way, won’t they!”
“Ah — yes, quite right. Well done. Go on and hand it over, quick.”

At Tess’s indignant outburst, Hoillun nodded at once.

“My lady, I’ve packed a few things to nibble on. They’re arranged with the most perishable on top, so do eat those first.”

Tess said, holding the basket out to the lady, who gazed quietly down at the lovingly wrapped food and then took it with a gentle smile.

“Thank you for taking such care, Tess.”

There. There she goes, smiling like that again.

Tess had to press her lips tightly together against the strange wrongness she sensed in the lady before her. The lady who had come back to the manor of late wore the very same face as ever, and yet her way of speaking, her whole bearing, all of it was plainly different from before.

As though she had become someone else entirely.

“I told you not to talk back to me! Have you forgotten already who your mistress is? What kind of maid keeps sassing her mistress like this!”
“It isn’t talking back, my lady. You’ve already had a great deal to drink, so I’m only saying you ought to stop!”
“Be quiet and go fetch more wine! If you keep snorting away with that sullen face of yours, I’ll stuff this cork up your nostrils — see if I don’t!”

Tess remembered the lady who had once flown into vicious, groundless rages at her. In those days, truly, scarcely a day had passed in peace. So when the lady had shut herself away in her room, quietly steeped in melancholy, Tess had taken it for some fresh sort of tantrum, unlike the ones before. And after the master’s return, she’d put the lady’s meekness down to an act, a bid to keep on his good side.

But seeing how she still held fast to that gentle manner even now…

Perhaps everything the lady told us really was…

Just then Herman, having finished speaking with the coachman, came over to the two of them.

“Let us be off, then.”

Herman took the food basket from her without a fuss, then held out his other hand, steady and straight, so his wife might climb up into the carriage.

“…Ah — thank you.”

The lady looked down at the large hand, then took hold of it and stepped up into the carriage. Before long it pulled away, the clop of hooves and the rumble of wheels over the dirt track weaving into one another. Even after the master and his lady were gone, Tess and Hoillun lingered there a while longer, full of worry.

“They’ve gone.”

Tess murmured. Only then did Hoillun, too, draw his gaze back from the far end of the road and speak.

“Aye. Let’s you and I get back inside, then.”

With the masters gone, the castle turned desolate once more, and this despite all the newly hired servants who had made it livelier than before.

“Hoillun.”

Tess said.

“Do you remember what the lady said, the day she first came back to the castle?”
“Said what?”
“That she was the Countess Drake.”
“Ah, that nonsense. Of course I remember.”
“What if. What if, truly. What if it wasn’t nonsense at all, but the truth…”
“What was that?”

Before Tess could even finish, Hoillun cut her off, scolding her for so preposterous a guess.

“Don’t go stirring up rumors with reckless talk out of nowhere.”
“I know that! You could just let it go in one ear and out the other — why must you take it up so seriously?”

Tess brushed from her apron the dust the departing carriage had kicked up.

“In any case, all I’m trying to say is that I’m content with things as they are now. Whether the lady’s been swapped out or simply changed, so long as the master’s happy, that’s all that matters.”

Tess had seen it plainly, the way the master’s gruff face had softened, ever so faintly, the moment the lady took his hand so gently.