Page 18 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
“Oh yes,” said Cordelia’s mother. “Before he passed, rest his soul, my late husband had a passion for starting grand projects that he did not finish. He would read about a new invention and immediately begin thinking of ways to use it about the house. Not one of them worked. I loved him, of course, but it was enough to make a woman long for someone a bit… steadier.”
Cordelia had never heard so many words about her father in her life. She stared at the beef and the sauce congealing on her plate, wondering if they were true.
When the time came to eat the lobster at last, the plate was removed from the table and then slivers of lobster meat and aspic placed in front of the diners. Even if Cordelia had not been full, she would not have been able to eat. Her mother gave her a sharp glare and jerked her head to the Squire.
“Uh… ah…” She tried to think of another question. “Do you… err… like lobster, sir?”
Ridiculous question. He must or they wouldn’t serve it, would they? She didn’t dare look at her mother.
“Love it,” said the Squire happily. “We never had it when I was a lad, you know.”
“You didn’t?”
“No, my mother wouldn’t have it in the house.” The Squire spooned up a bit and popped it into his mouth, then dabbed his chin with his napkin. “She was from far up the north coast, you see, where lobster’s as common as turnips. Fishermen eat it five meals of the week. Mother said it tasted like poverty and she couldn’t abide the smell.”
“Where on the north coast?” asked Evangeline, deftly taking control of the conversation. The Squire explained in tediously precise terms, and she clapped her hands in apparent delight.
“I’ve been there,” she said. “Oh, years ago, when I was a girl. With the little white houses with the funny shingles on the roof?”
“Yes, exactly.” She and the Squire went back into their conversation, with Evangeline expressing her desire to go back someday—“Such a lovely countryside!”—and the Squire giving her an extensive description of his family’s holdings in the region, and every huntable beast that crawled, swam, flew, or ran.
Cordelia sank back into her chair, hoping that she had averted disaster. When she looked over at Hester, the Squire’s sister gave her a rueful smile and murmured, “Hunting is always such a spectacle.”
It is, Cordelia thought grimly, and she’s going to keep hunting the Squire until she catches him.
Cordelia woke with a panicky start, remembering dinner the night before. She almost certainly had not been charming enough. She’d used the right forks, at least, but her mother couldn’t very well see around the lobster to notice that.
I haven’t been in school for years. The most I speak to anyone is after church, or riding with Ellen. Surely she couldn’t have expected me to do any better than that.
It was a hopeless thought. Her mother would certainly have expected better. Evangeline was not concerned with such things as shyness or inexperience.
The thought struck her that her mother might come into the room to scold her and that propelled Cordelia out of bed. Her room was such an unexpected oasis that she did not want her mother coming into it if she could help it. It felt safe and Cordelia knew that it would only feel that way so long as Evangeline did not set foot within it.
Alice tapped on the door as soon as Cordelia’s feet hit the floor. “Come in,” called Cordelia, and despite her dread, the words gave her a tiny thrill, as if she were doing something illicit.
“I’ve rung for tea,” said the maid cheerfully. “Would you like breakfast up here, or would you like to go down?”
Cordelia bit her lip. She would have preferred to see no one, but if she went down to eat breakfast with Hester and the Squire, her mother couldn’t do anything terrible to her over breakfast. Would that be better or worse? The longer her mother had to wait, the more likely she was to have rewritten the story of what had happened in her head. That could be good or bad, depending on whether she decided that Cordelia was maliciously stubborn or simply hopelessly ignorant.
In the end, she decided to go down. If the Squire was there, perhaps she could try being charming again and buy herself some goodwill.
As it happened, her mother wasn’t there at all yet. “Help yourself, my dear,” said the Squire, looking cheerful and avuncular despite the early hour. He waved to the sideboard. “We don’t stand on ceremony this early.”
Hester was already sitting there with a cup of tea in one hand and a broadsheet in the other. The rest of the newspaper was spread out in the corner between her and the Squire, and they were both picking up pages and reading through it. Cordelia took a plate and set several cold meats and a hard-boiled egg on it. She was not used to quite such an extravagant breakfast.
A servant poured tea for her. “Would miss like chocolate?” he asked.
“Tea is—” Cordelia realized that she was whispering, licked her lips, and tried again. This time her voice came out slightly louder. “Tea is fine, thank you.” Oh damn, I’ve thanked the servant again. Her first instinct was to apologize, but if you weren’t supposed to thank the servants, you definitely weren’t supposed to apologize to them. She gave him an agonized look, hoping it would serve as apology without the extra faux pas of being spoken aloud.
He winked at her. Cordelia felt an intense rush of relief and gulped her tea, which was so hot it burned her tongue.
“Good heavens,” said the Squire with horrified relish. “How dreadful!”
Cordelia shrank in on herself, thinking that the man had somehow noticed her exchange with the servant, but the Squire was staring at the broadsheet in front of him.
“Eh?” Hester glanced up. “What, did the price of tea go up again?”
The Squire cleared his throat. “‘Grisly Scene at Manor House,’” he read aloud. “‘Constables were summoned to the estate of the Parker family in the town of Little Haw Tuesday morning, following reports of screams emanating from within the manor. They found there a scene of carnage, as it appears the patriarch of the family, one Edward Parker, fifty-five, had assaulted the other members of his family with an axe.’”
