Page 16 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
Her woolgathering was interrupted by a hesitant knock on the door. “Eh?” said Hester, not having to fake her befuddlement. “Someone there?” It had been such a light knock that she might have mistaken it. One of the servants would have waited and then entered, but no one did. “Hello?”
Another timid knock. Heavens, do we have bogles or bogarts or whatever those creatures are that go about rapping on walls? Tommy-knockers? No, those live in mines, I think. Blast.
“Come in!” called Hester loudly.
The door opened and Doom’s daughter poked her head around the jamb. “Hello?” she said. Her voice was very soft.
“Oh, there you are. Come to help an old lady with her embroidery?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know how,” said the girl, staring at the floor as if she were admitting to some terrible failing.
“It’s not fatal,” said Hester. Privately she was a bit surprised—most girls with pretensions to gentility learned embroidery, however shoddily, almost as soon as they could walk. “Would you like to learn?”
Cordelia looked up, those frightened-rabbit eyes round and startled. “Could I?” she asked.
“Certainly you can. Very foolish women learn to embroider, and you don’t strike me as terribly foolish.” She patted the cushion next to her. “Here, take a square of fabric and I’ll draw you out a pattern…”
It only took a few moments to show the girl a basic stitch. Hester watched as Cordelia bent over the square of cotton with intense concentration. A line formed between her eyebrows, as if she would make the thread behave through sheer force of will.
“It’s a good skill to have,” said Hester. “If you’ve got a dress that’s sound but the cuffs are frayed, you turn the cuffs and then embroider over the seams and no one’s the wiser.” Cordelia flushed a little and Hester saw that the cuffs of her dress had indeed been turned to hide the wear. Blast. Well, perhaps I can salvage it. “There’s nothing worse than having a gown that suits you perfectly and then ruining a cuff, is there?”
“You turn your cuffs?” said Cordelia in clear astonishment.
“Heavens, yes,” said Hester. “My gowns are old friends, most of them. I’m not wasting my pin money on a visit to the dressmaker if I can avoid it.” She smiled at the girl and after a hesitant moment, Cordelia smiled back. And if she goes back to her mother to report that the Squire’s tightfisted with his money, so much the better.
It was completely untrue, of course. The Squire was a generous soul to begin with, and Hester had amused herself breeding fancy geese for years, which had brought in a small but substantial income. And if Doom gets her hooks into my brother, I may have to start up again. Richard’s still got the breeding flock I gave him, over at Evermore House, he’ll return them if I ask. Geese were surprisingly easy to work with once you understood the way their tiny minds worked, but they had a reputation for ferocity and for turning bad luck. Also for driving away wicked magic, not that it ever came up. She’d sold quite a number of guard geese over the years. She’d given it up a few years ago, as the birds fell out of fashion, but fashion was fickle and they might well come back in again.
The girl flinched just slightly, barely noticeable. If Hester hadn’t been watching her, she would have missed the motion entirely.
“Oh no,” said Cordelia, sounding suddenly distraught.
“Did you prick your finger?”
“Yes, but I’ve bled on your lovely fabric!” She held out the piece of linen, and Hester saw with surprise that her hands were trembling. “I’m so sorry. I’m so clumsy.”
“Bah,” said Hester. “You’re not clumsy. You’ve only been practicing for fifteen minutes. No one masters a skill in fifteen minutes… and frankly, if you did, I should be rather put out, because I have been practicing for over forty years, and I’m not a master yet myself.”
She hoped that would win a smile, but Cordelia was a tougher nut to crack than that. Hester examined the small, rust-colored blot on the fabric. “And that’s nothing. It’ll wash out. If the stain worries you, put a flower over it. Or a butterfly. No one will see it under the floss.”
Cordelia blinked at her. “You can do that?”
“Good heavens, yes. I’ve bled gallons onto hems in my time. Change the pattern a bit, add another touch of embellishment, and no one will ever know that it wasn’t supposed to be there all along. Here, let me show you how to draw out a little pattern. A butterfly, do you think? It can be hovering over the flower, and the nice thing about them is that you can make them any color you like, and use up the leftover ends of the thread…”
They worked together in companionable silence for several hours. Cordelia tackled the embroidery with fierce determination and improved noticeably while Hester watched. Interesting. Not a fool, it seems. Determined. Fragile, though, and very young.
“How old did you say you were, my dear?”
“Four… seventeen!” Cordelia’s eyes shot up and she stabbed herself again with the needle and yelped.
“Which?” asked Hester gently.
“Seventeen.” Cordelia’s eyes flicked toward the closed door.
Wanting to bolt, or wanting to make sure no one is listening to hear her slip up? Interesting.
“It’s quite all right,” said Hester, as Cordelia began to stammer an explanation. She didn’t want to make the girl lie to her. For one thing, she wasn’t very good at it. “I forget how old I am regularly. They say it’s a sign of senility, but I don’t think so. Sometimes it feels like I’m thirty-five again. It was a good age. My mind still feels thirty-five, it’s only the rest of me that seems to have kept on going.” Which was true, so far as it went, and it moved the conversation along. Now why has Doom told her daughter that she is to give her age as seventeen? For she doesn’t look it at all, and many women would want to claim their child was younger, so that they seem younger themselves.
She can’t be planning on marrying the girl off to my brother. Samuel’s a bit of a fool, but he’d have no interest in a little thing right out of the schoolroom. And I would swear that she’s trying to hook him for herself, not her daughter.
