Astrid

Just before the end of today’s chapter, I take a pause and angle my head to the infinitely blue skies. The back of my neck heaves a muted groan, grateful after nearly an hour of having my head bent over the page.

“Would I recognize you in Ainsfrel, good sir?” I ask.

“No.”

“May I inquire as to where you hail from?”

“No.”

My fingers make a tap-tap-tap rhythm against the hardcover. I pick the book up again and begin to read a few more paragraphs. Then, my hands lay the book neatly upon my lap to massage the base of my neck.

“‘Tis a beautiful garden, is it not? A true refuge; as if these pillars are strong enough to keep everything outside at bay.”

My employer exhales loudly, his exasperation clear as day. But when he speaks again, his tone remains polite: “I don’t really care about beautiful things.”

“You do not? Well, then. You certainly do not belong anyplace of the likes of Ainsfrel,” I chuckle humourlessly.

“Are you not satisfied with your home?”

“My home?” I think of my father. “No, I am. It is just the faceless crowd around it which makes me feel…suffocated, I suppose. They are – how may we iterate this delicately – not very accepting of people who are capable of thinking for themselves?”

He clicks his tongue in allegiance to my sentiments. “Darlin’, you’re basically describing the general notion of society. So what makes you the odd one out?”

I try very hard to ignore the fact that he has just used a term of familiar endearment in addressing me, a perfect stranger – and very casually, at that. Then again, this man has a strange tendency to use words I have never heard before. Perhaps it is because he hails from one of the more progressive cities.

“I am more educated than most women in my town. It does not help that my father has been disgraced after giving up his position as the town’s physician for the sake of pursuing his interest in his inventions,” I say.

“That sucks. I’m sorry.”

I shrug, my thoughts reverting to the events from just this morning. To when Katya dragged me over to give our thanks to Damian outside the jeweler’s. She twisted her shoes into the ground and giggled flirtatiously – much to my mortification – but he simply waved our debt away and called it a duty to “save beautiful damsels in distress”.

Just after excusing ourselves, Damian caught my arm before I could follow after Katya. She glanced over her back and shot me a hopeful smile. All those little reminders she gave me over the past week were not lost on me. She always asked what he thought about her. How was I supposed to know?

I pretended not to see her pointed look.

“May I ask you a question?” A hint of hesitation struggled over his arched brow.

When I nodded, he said, “I cannot help but notice that you seem…rather distracted these days. Is something the matter?”

“Oh. Not at all,” I offered him a smile. “I have just been occupied with ensuring my father recuperates well at home.”

He pursed his lips. “Too occupied to, perhaps, join some of our old friends for a day-long excursion to Friuer tomorrow?”

The nervous hope in his eyes sent a pang over my heart. I smiled again, though with less enthusiasm. “Ah. Er… I do not think the others will be quite satisfied with your decision to invite me, I’m afraid. If you have not noticed already, most of our peers do not take so kindly to me.”

That resigned sigh of his made it clear that he was aware of it. He let his hand fall from my elbow, and only then did I notice that we were standing rather close to each other. I remembered to put some space between us.

“Such a shame.” He shook his head. And then, leaning closer – I watched the sun catch in the golden of his hair and eyelashes, the way it gleamed over his moistened lips as they drew into a smile – he told me:

“In my opinion, they are all fools to dismiss you.”

I smile to the rosebushes, once again drawn back to the garden. Tap, tap, tap, my finger thumps against the book’s spine.

“It is not always terrible,” I tell my employer. “There is still some beauty left in all that monotone. I suppose.”

Silence again. I take this as my cue to continue reading, but I only manage one sentence before he interrupts me: “So you value beauty, then?”

Tilting my head to the sun, I breathe in the scent of the flowers that comes in the breeze.

“Hmm,” I muse. “Yes. Do you not? What value has anything if it does not first attract a person’s senses?”

“That sounds a little superficial. What about second impressions? The beauty inside, and all that? Ugly things can hold value, too.”

“I do not disagree, good sir. It is not ugliness with which I find the issue – it is mundanity. The sheer discipline of being content only with the things that are laid out before us, to only have ambition for the simple things: to be born, to grow, to marry, and lastly to die so appropriately. With no want for…well, more. Something else. Something beautiful.”

None of what I am saying makes much sense, I realize. But before I can apologize for my rambling, my employer asks for more.

“Will you never love an ordinary thing more than a stunning creature, then? Can’t ordinary, boring things hold some amount of value?”

For some reason, an old doll I used to have springs from a crevice in my memory. It was gray and dirty and had two buttons for eyes and a lopsided stitched mouth. But for some reason, little old me dragged it along the ground with me wherever I went.

That is, until a little girl snatched it roughly from my hand, called it “an invention of a loony who left his wife to die because he was too busy with his toys”, and then tore its head clean off.

“I am afraid I must disagree with you, sir,” I say. “It has been in my experience that things that are not beautiful rarely hold much worth at all.”

To that, he makes no response.

When I continue to read again, he does not speak to me, does not even thank me when I finish. I leave wondering if he’d left long before I even finished.

It is far too windy today. My hands clutch my bonnet tightly as I make my way from the garden to my house.

The wind blows the front door to a slamming shut behind me. From the kitchen, someone exclaims in surprise.

“Astrid, is that you?” Lady Tremaine’s voice echoes all the way to the front of the house.

I make my way into the kitchen, where she and Sir Rotwell are seated by the dining table with steaming cups of tea before them. They nod in acknowledgment when I curtsy.

“Where is…” I start, but I no longer have to ask when my father enters the kitchen. He lugs a huge suitcase onto the table – much to Lady Tremaine’s chagrin – and counts the little machines arranged inside it before clicking it shut.

“Ah!” he beams at me. I remove my bonnet and allow him to ruffle my hair.

“Good news, darling. Frederik and I will be off for a week – they say the sales in Arnetia have skyrocketed to the benefit of new entrepreneurs.”

I blink. He is leaving?

“Are you…” I moisten my lips. “Are you making fun of me?”

He looks confounded. “No.”

“Then are you making fun of yourself?”

“Astrid!” Lady Tremaine snaps sharply, but I ignore the admonishment and approach the table, my hands balanced on my hips.

“You know full well you are in no shape to travel,” I say. “And yet you persist.”

“And what am I to do?” He throws his hands in the air. “Let poverty overtake us? Create more tales to be passed around Ainsfrel when the debtors drag us out of our own abode?”

Defeat overcomes me.

“Papa, please,” my own voice betrays me when it breaks at the end. “You do not have to go.”

My hands fumble for the satchel weighing against my waist, tied to my thin leather belt by a string. I empty its contents onto the table. The sound of coins clattering in a heap in front of their gaping mouths fills the stunned silence.

“There,” I gesture to the coins. “See? Thirty silvers, just for us.”

Sir Rotwell struggles to regain control over his mouth. “Wh-where did you obtain this?”

“I earned it all.”

“Earned it!”

My father starts to break into his coughs. I move to help him onto a chair, but he waves me off and does it himself. I wait until he stops.

“A gentleman hired me,” I say, which is partially the truth. I do not know if he is a gentleman at all. “Thirty silver coins a day to entertain him.”

Lady Tremaine’s eyes nearly pop out of their sockets. “Who is this man? And what do you do to entertain him?”

“I read.”

“Read?”

“Yes, Lady Tremaine. It is when one deciphers the meaning behind an arranged lexicon and pronounces it aloud to be heard,” my words are sarcasm dipped in saccharine dew, which she does not appreciate.

She narrows her eyes at me. “And to whom do you read?”

At this, I hesitate.

“I…I have never seen his face.” To aid my own cause, I add helplessly: “But neither has he seen mine.”

My father rubs at his eyebrows with the side of his hand. “Astrid…”

“You daft girl,” Lady Tremaine interrupts. She rises from her seat and wags a finger in my direction. “Nobody earns thirty silver coins by reading to a stranger. What else does he make you do?”

“Nothing!” I cry in indignance. “I am not so stupid as to allow someone to take such an advantage over me!”

“It seems as though you are!”

Sir Rotwell clears his throat, cutting the rising tension in the room. “Astrid, child. Surely you must see the potential danger here.”

There is no hope in arguing with her or persuading him to stray from his wife’s opinion. Instead, I turn to my father.

“Papa, please. Just…just accept these. I have already paid for your medication with what I have earned so far. Let me take care of this. Do not go.”

The pale green in his eyes softens at my plea. He glances at the coins, and for a split second I am sure he truly is contemplating this.

Then he looks up at me.

“You will do no such thing, lest you’ve suddenly become a fool.” His hardened tone cuts. “If I come home and find out you have been going to see this man again, you will not like the consequences. Is that understood?”

It is most definitely not understood. The only thing I can process is how angry I am. How stupid they all are. How foolish my father is being.

“Fine!” I cry, retreating. “If you want to die so badly, then go ahead.”

He flinches.

But I do not pause to feel remorse over my words. I flee to my bedroom and lock myself in until the sun goes down.