Chapter 7

C HAPTER 7

Hester sat in her parlor, thinking.

To anyone looking in, she appeared to be embroidering a shawl—or more accurately, to have nearly fallen asleep in the middle of doing so. One of the advantages of age was that you could think a great deal while simply sitting still, and no one would poke you and demand that you go and do something useful.

Doom's daughter had been unexpected. Before their arrival last night, Hester had been half suspecting that the girl would be some great beauty like her mother, perhaps even bait for a trap for the Squire. Middle-aged men had made fools of themselves over young ladies before, and would again before the end of the world.

Certainly she had expected that the daughter would be in on whatever mischief the mother had planned. If there was something not-quite-canny about Lady Evangeline, Hester had expected that to extend to the girl as well.

One look into the frightened-rabbit eyes of the girl had put paid to all those notions. Hester wasn't sure of the whole picture yet, but certainly the girl was terribly nervous, and it did not feel like the nerves of a co-conspirator afraid of being caught.

She looks like a horse that's been beaten so often that it doesn't know what is expected of it any longer. And who doesn't expect that to ever change.

Which was, perhaps, no surprise for Doom's daughter. Hester was quite certain that there was blood and ice behind Evangeline's smile. But then again…

What if the girl's bait for a trap set for a softhearted old fool?

Is Evangeline clever enough for that?

She might be. The woman had turned a chance meeting on the street into an indefinite stay at the Squire's home. Not difficult, particularly not in a respectable house with Hester as ostensible chaperone, but Hester suspected that Evangeline had known exactly what she was doing. Had, most likely, set out with this exact goal in mind, if not a precise quarry.

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.

A bell sounded in the house, and Hester sighed. "Time to dress for dinner," she said, rising. "I'll have another shawl sent up to you, shall I?"

Cordelia blinked at her. "You've already given me so much," she protested.

"Bah. You're doing me a favor by clearing them out. That way Samuel can give me another one for Christmas and I can pretend to be delighted." She smiled down at the girl. "Lend me your arm, will you child? The stairs are a bit more than I like right now."

Cordelia scrambled to help her. She was stronger than she looked, Hester noticed. (She had no actual need of help on the stairs at the moment—the weather was fine and her knees were not giving her more than the usual trouble—but such things were interesting to know.) They parted ways and Hester went to her room, her thoughts as tangled as embroidery threads. And much like those threads, I need to find a way to assemble them into a pattern that makes sense. Whatever that might be.

"Damnation," Hester whispered to herself. "Damn it all to hell and beyond." Which was not language fitting for a lady, but this particular lady had a problem far beyond the scope of what she'd originally conceived.

She'd known that she would have to save her brother from Doom's clutches. That was, if not easy, at least a straightforward enough task. But it was beginning to look as if she was going to have to extract Doom's own daughter as well, and that was a far more complicated proposition.

Hell and damn. I shouldn't… but I can't leave her like that. But what if that's what brings the whole thing down?

But what choice do I have?

Hester was no hero, but there was nothing in her that would allow her to turn away from a person who had been dropped on her doorstep. Even if that person had brought Doom along with her.