CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"I've not been to this part of the estate in so long!" Nadia exclaimed as Shadow galloped lazily through the long fields of tall, swaying grasses. "Well... save for the brief few moments of Shadow dashing through it this afternoon," she chuckled. Her eyes bright and her expression full, she felt a contentedness in her heart she hadn't felt... perhaps in her entire life. This, she believed, must be what love feels like; this fullness pressing the inside of your chest, begging to be let out, and she wanted so dearly to simply scale the tallest rolling hill in the Emerys estate and let out a great cry that she had fallen deeply for someone so special, so different than the rest.
Shadow trotted along, whinnying happily as the clouds broke and the sun began to shine, just as night began to fall; a beautiful sunset soaked the sky, beams of brilliant orange and pinks cresting through deep-black clouds. Her heart filled with life and she looked to her lover's face, wanting to see if he was enjoying the sight on the horizon as deeply as she.
Instead, she found an expression she could only charitably described as... very troubled. She had noticed it in the cabin, though she wanted to say nothing; she had noticed it as muddy Pierre pulled himself out of the rain, as they began to trot through the forest. Her life had been turned upside-down, and in a wonderful way, by the man trotting along at her side, but he seemed only distressed at what had happened between them.
"Don't you love rainstorms, Marshall? They seem to be just about as deep and dark and gloomy as you are," she teased in a childish little tone, trotting up alongside him, again showing off just how skilled a rider she was compared to him. While these jokes and his own failure at matters equestrian had brought them smiles of joy and laughter only hours ago, since their moments spent together in the cabin something profound had changed about the man she had come to appreciate so deeply. She expected one of his deadpan, chuckle-worth responses to her little taunt, but she got nothing; he appeared utterly lost in his own thoughts, and when she drew too close for him to ignore her any longer, he startled from whatever dark reverie had cloaked his mind.
"Gloomy? I suppose," he said half-heartedly, giving a forced smile.
"Are you... quite alright, Marshall? Has the rain storm or... some other manner, of happening, put you off of our conversation?" Nadia asked with worry, fearing she had perhaps not been what he had hoped in their intimate moments together, her own insecurities playing deep at the creases of her face.
"I'm quite alright, Lady Havenshire," he responded, dour. Lady Havenshire? She didn't enjoy hearing him call her that, no. She wanted to hear Nadia, the same way he had crooned it as they lay together, cloaked in need for one another.
"Are you worried my father will be cross with you, Marshall?" she whispered to him. He trotted along on lazy old Pierre, sighing and shaking his head.
"I've no worries about your father, no. He seemed quite agreeable to any... arrangements, being made between us," he spoke obliquely. Arrangements? What manner of trouble had befallen the duke to speak in such a manner?
"What manner of arrangements did you have in mind?" Lady Havenshire prodded at him as Shadow paced ahead.
"...We'll discuss it another time perhaps, m'lady," Marshall insisted. Silence fell; it remained with them as they paced back across the moors, through the grasslands, making the trip back to the stables. The entire trip, made in silence, and the doubts began to return to Nadia's mind. She had been so sure, in those loving and lusting moments together in the cabin, that she had finally found something special, but she began to fear for herself. She remembered Ms. Mulwray's urgings in her youth - men are animals, who will take from you what they wish, and you'll never know that they've selfishly availed themselves to you until it's too late.
Nadia thought and thought on it, with only the occasional horse-clops and whinnies to accompany her worried introspection.
When they arrived at the stable they remained silent; she had begun to wonder if these same doubts had been what had driven Lord Beckham to silence. Monsieur Therriault emerged from the stables with a yawn, welcoming the pair back with a tired grin.
"You must've 'ad quite a long day, what with the storm!" he proclaimed with a devious grin. Lady Havenshire gave him a sideways glance and a nervous smile; Lord Beckham simply dismounted poor Pierre, who laid immediately in the dirt, much to Monsieur Therriault's chagrin. "Lazy creature!" he exclaimed.
"We found an old cabin out in the wood and took refuge and... talked," Lady Havenshire commented, her words empty and distant.
"Ah, talked, eh?" the horse-keeper said. Lady Havenshire looked back and noticed that the duke had already left and begun to scale the path back to the manor; she hurried along behind him without another word, only hearing Monsieur Therriault berating Pierre with a string of French expletives.
"M'lord! I... I had wondered, how you intended to handle the conversation, with my father," Lady Havenshire said breathlessly, "about quite... what we had been doing, during the rainstorm? I had not thought on it, until the stable-keeper just asked," Lady Havenshire tried to pry more jokes, or conversation, or anything at all from Lord Beckham, who strode unfettered towards the manor.
"Your answer seemed to convince Monsieur Therriault just fine," he answered nonplussed, before returning to silence.
"Are you certain everything is fine? You don't seem to be fine," Lady Havenshire insisted, her worry beginning to transform into ire. What business had he to treat her so cross after the afternoon they'd had together? She began to fear she had failed him in some way, as they crossed through the garden, the doors to the manor opening wide. Lord Havenshire sat on the couch, as if he had spent the whole afternoon waiting anxious for the pair to return.
"Ah! Lord Beckham, Nadia, it's a pleasure to have you back," he announced, in a manner transparent enough that she could tell it had been rehearsed. Defeated and tired, Nadia began to feel like an actress, dragged through a disastrous production by some manner of trickery. With a bit of confused venom, she glanced at Lord Beckham, who stood still in the doorway, watching her father; never looking into her eyes.
"Father, is Mary about?" Lady Havenshire asked.
"Here, m'lady," came a loud pronouncement from a young maidservant with bushy blonde hair, emerging from the shadows of rear of the foyer. "Have you need of something, miss?"
"Will you see me back to my bedchamber, please? I'm quite ready to retire after the day I've had," she announced loudly, looking back expectantly at Lord Beckham. She hoped to see something - anything, expressed in his eyes. Instead, he simply stood silent; unmoved. She sighed.
"Certainly, m'lady," Mary exclaimed, bumbling nervously towards the stairs. Lady Havenshire follows, each of her footsteps echoing, daggered, through the hallway. She looked back once more - longingly, wantingly - and caught sight of Lord Beckham again, hoping to see anything. Please, she thought; please, just say something. Just say anything, Marshall. I thought I loved you... I want to love you.
He said nothing.
With a flourish and a humph Lady Havenshire stormed down the hall, Mary rushing along behind her. The young maidservant had a thousand questions, no doubt begging for tidbits of gossip to share with the rest of the house staff once Ms. Mulwray retired for the evening.
"M-m'lady! W-was that the man who—" Mary hurried along behind Nadia, nearly out of breath with how quickly Nadia fled the foyer. "The man who's interested in courting you? Lord Beckham?"
"You know his name, do you? Quite good ears the girls down in the maidservants' chambers have, don't they?" Nadia bit back quickly.
"He's—he's so handsome! I've never seen a noble with a face, or features, like that, not any around here, at least," Mary commented. "Do you think he's handsome, m'lady? I think he'd be quite the envy of any girl down in the servant quarters."
"Yes, he's far nicer to look upon than the normal sort of buck-teeth, cheap suit-wearing, wormish men one tends to find among the manors and dinner banquets around these parts," Nadia sighed. The serving girl giggled, certainly loving the titillation of learning something so scandalous about the madam of the house.
"Your father, when I was a little girl, he was the most handsome noble I had ever seen, but I think Lord Beckham is even more handsome," Mary chattered. They rounded a corner and Lady Havenshire pulled open the door to her bedchamber with a grunt, flowing into the room angrily, landing in a fluid, quick motion onto her bed, staring at the ceiling with a disaffected sigh. Mary entered after her, quickly pulling the door shut, hoping excitedly for a gossip session with Lady Havenshire. Instead, Nadia quickly and quite bluntly asked her own question.
"Mary, pardon the particularly personal query, but," Nadia said rather nonchalantly, "have you ever been intimate with a man before?" Mary giggled loudly, her cheeks blossoming in a bright burst of cherry-red embarrassment.
"M-m'lady! I'm..." she gasped, covering her lips. "I'm not... certain, if I am meant to answer that question, or if it's s... simply..."
"You can speak freely, Mary, in fact I prefer that you would be honest, and of course I'd never hold your answer against you," Lady Havenshire assured her.
"Y... yes, m'lady, I've been intimate with men, before," she replied, her voice full of shame.
"You've nothing to be ashamed of, Mary. You're a grown woman, and you're free to find men handsome and interesting, I certainly wouldn't hold it against you," Nadia said. "I have a... query," she continued hesitantly, "about... the first man you were intimate with. How often did you interact with him after?"
"The first man? Oh, he had been a friend of mine for some time," Mary recalled; the line of questioning clearly unsettled the maidservant, whose voice grew unsteady as she began to pick up odds and ends left scattered about Lady Havenshire's bedroom, pulling linens from the corner and idly ensuring the surfaces to be dust-free. "We've... not spoken, often, since then," she said; the manner of her speech suggested to Nadia Mary had not thought much on the subject until prompted. "...I don't see him as much as I used to."
"Do you think there's a reason for that, Mary?" Nadia pressed her, glancing up from the bed.
"I'm... not well-versed in the manner of men," Mary laughed nervously. "I suppose... some men, are simply... well, they've an idea of what they wish to have, and once they've gotten it, they move on with their lives. Perhaps that's what... my friend, thought. The other serving girls, they've... mentioned it, of how men have treated them. It's an unfortunate part of how the world is, I wager." Mary pondered, before blushing embarrassingly. "Men of the sort I spend time with, anyway. I'm certain the kind of gentleman you'd find would be quite different, m'lady. Why do you ask?"
"No reason in particular," Nadia said dismissively, though the reason proffered weighed quite heavily in her mind. She felt embarrassed herself, having such little experience in these matters; she had spent her years abroad studying, thinking, learning about the wild ideas the world had to offer, but when it came to matters of the sexes and of relationships, she found her own viewpoint quite lacking. She hadn't even considered so crass a thought before the sight of Lord Beckham had enticed her so deeply.
Had she been used?...