Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

For several days that followed, the Duke was seldom at home, as though he'd forgotten his agreement with the Arenheim family. He no longer joined them for breakfast and supper, always claiming to have important meetings. Lena had no doubt that this was true, but she suspected there was more to it. It was rather more likely that he was deliberately avoiding her. He had retreated behind the aloof mask of the distant, unapproachable Duke once more.

Just as Lena had resigned herself to the notion that it had all been for naught and that their experiment had failed miserably, out of the blue things shifted once more. Suddenly, he showed her a completely different side of himself that she hadn't seen before.

It was, quite frankly, maddening.

But she couldn't make herself be cross at him. It seemed he was making a considerable effort to bond with Hector. That much was clear. He studied arithmetic and history with the boy, took him for walks, and talked to him whenever possible. Hector had let go of his initial suspicion of him, and it appeared that, even though he might not yet be fond of him, he had come to accept him.

Then, one evening, the Duke returned with a kite.

A kite!

"They were selling them at the market. I thought the boys might like it," he said almost bashfully. "Shall we try it?" He held it out to Hector. "The weather is sufficiently blustery outside today." He left with Hector and Les, heading to the meadow by the river, and from her kitchen window Lena watched the three of them try to get the kite up in the air, which wasn't so easy at first.

Then there was the time when he came back from a walk with Hector, carrying a basket full of roasted chestnuts.

"Good heavens, did you bring home the seller's entire stock?" Lena asked.

"I did, indeed," he replied, looking rather pleased.

Lena placed her hands on her hips. "But I thought we'd agreed that you wouldn't use your money to buy us anything."

"He didn't," Hector put in.

"It was hard-earned, in fact," the Duke explained.

"How so?" Had he finally discovered that working wasn't such a terrible thing after all?

"He saved the chestnut lady's little daughter from a carriage that almost ran her over, and as a thank you, she gave him the whole basket. May I have one?" Hector didn't wait for an answer and helped himself to one.

The Duke made no comment, but quietly peeled a chestnut and popped it into his mouth .

The man really was a mystery.

Then there was the episode when she'd struggled to hang up the sheets in the courtyard. The wind kept blowing the wet cloth into her face, and it was a chore to attach it to the string hanging in the yard.

When her neighbour called, she'd left them in the basket to hang them up later.

When she returned, all the sheets were gently flapping in the breeze.

No one had done it.

Hector and Les were out playing with their kite, Theo napping, and Mona was practising her viola. The Duke, whose bedroom window overlooked the yard and who might have observed her struggling with the sheets, said nothing when she demanded at suppertime who it had been.

A duke? Hang up laundry? Lena shook her head. What nonsense. He would never stoop so low as to hang laundry. It was unheard of.

"Maybe it was a Wichtelm?nnchen , Mama," Hector said as he slathered a piece of black bread with butter and bit into it. Those little mythical creatures who did good deeds in the house when no one was looking.

Since it couldn't have been the Duke, it must have been those little helpers, indeed.

Yes, things had shifted quite drastically with the Duke. He no longer missed breakfasts or suppers and now he was around the house far more often than Lena would have preferred. He seemed to fill every room he entered, and she found it nearly impossible to focus on her tasks whenever he was near. The memory of the kiss still lingered between them, yet neither of them ever mentioned it. Sometimes she wondered if she had imagined it altogether.

It was most maddening, indeed.

Then there was Theo.

He deposited a container in the middle of the table while they were having dinner.

It was a glass jar with a suspicious brown liquid in it and a shrivelled object floating eerily inside.

Everyone screeched.

Even the Duke dropped his spoon into his soup with a splash. "By all the saints."

Lena nearly dropped the soup tureen she'd been holding and only held on to it at the last moment.

"Theseus Arenheim, what is this hideous thing that you have planted in front of us?"

"A hand." He smirked. "From a corpse."

Hector mimicked the motion of vomiting into his soup bowl.

Les pushed his spectacles further up his nose and leaned forwards to study the body part with interest. " Famos . Did you cut it off yourself?"

"Theo, that is the most revolting thing I have ever seen in my entire life!" Mona exclaimed. "Take it away at once!"

"Why? What's so revolting about a hand? Most of us have one." Theo lifted his hand as if playing an imaginary violin. "Do you know how many veins we have in our hands? Hundreds," he announced with satisfaction, without waiting for an answer. "A complex network of deep and superficial veins. This particular specimen, a donation, I might add, allows us to study it in great detail. We had the most interesting anatomy lesson with Professor Barth today. I am almost convinced that I want to specialise in this field myself."

"What other body parts did you study?" Les asked.

"Legs." Theo grinned. "It was a male leg, in case it matters."

"I wonder, if it had been a female leg, if it would have come complete with stockings on," Mona mused aloud. "Would you have had to take them off before cutting into it, I wonder? Considering you are all men, I mean."

"Harmonia!" Lena groaned. Not only was the topic of conversation scandalously inappropriate, but they were talking about undressing a woman's legs. Whether it was a corpse's or a living woman's leg, with or without stockings, it simply wasn't the thing to discuss at supper. What must the Duke think? Not to mention the children's behaviour…

Hector propped himself up on both elbows as he slurped his soup, Les abandoned cutlery altogether and drank straight from the bowl; Theo had brought in a piece of a corpse, which now sat on their supper table between the soup tureen and the milk jar. Then Mona insisted on talking about women's legs, of all topics. Lena hardly dared to look at the Duke. He hadn't said a word all evening aside from the shocked expletive he'd uttered earlier, but impassively proceeded to eat his soup, which was overly salted, as usual.

Rubbing her eyebrow, she desperately sought to change the subject, but Mona intercepted her. "It is a legitimate question, Mama, considering the price of stockings these days. It would be a shame to ruin them by cutting into them."

She had a point.

"To answer your question, naturally the bodies are first stripped of their clothing." Worse and worse. Theo prepared to describe the intricate process of undressing a corpse in minute detail. "Now. As for female bodies. Most come in naked?—"

"Theo!" Lena shrieked.

"What?"

"You can't talk about that now."

"Why not?"

She leaned forwards and hissed with a sideways glance at the Duke. "In case you've forgotten, we have a duke sitting at our table."

Theo dismissed him. "Oh, him. I don't think he'll mind."

One of the Duke's eyebrows lifted. "I am still sitting here," he observed, but no one heeded him.

Lena's mind worked feverishly. Stockings. Price. A better subject than naked female bodies, dead or otherwise. Lena jumped on it. "It's true. Stockings are horribly expensive," she babbled before Theo could continue his elocution on naked female corpses. "I was looking at the shop window of Sch?nberger's the other day. There was a lovely pink pair with such pretty embroidery. I wanted to buy them, but…" She sighed. "You cannot imagine how much they cost. I was so shocked, I nearly dropped the violin." She looked around to make sure she had their attention. "Guess how much they wanted for a pair of pi nk silk stockings? The winner gets an extra helping of Apfelstrudel ." It was a game they sometimes played.

The children enthusiastically jumped at the opportunity. The distraction worked. Lena sighed with relief.

"Five Gulden ?" Hector offered.

"Eleven," suggested Les.

"Nineteen?" Mona said.

"Since we are talking about a purveyor to court," Theo said, "I assume a pair of embroidered silk stockings might cost more than that. I say twenty-nine."

All heads turned to the Duke.

He folded his arms across his chest. "I say less. Twenty-five."

Lena wondered, fleetingly, if he'd ever gone shopping and knew the price of stockings, and if his lower number was to let Theo win. If so, it was inordinately kind of him. She flashed him a quick smile. "Fifty. Fifty Gulden for a pair of silly stockings. Isn't that price shamelessly exorbitant?"

Theo whistled.

Mona shrieked.

Hector and Les grumbled.

"Good brother that I am, I'll share the Apfelstrudel with you, never fear," Theo said, satisfied that he had won that round.

"You may not collect your prize until you have removed that body part from the table," Lena insisted. "It's robbing me of my appetite."

Theo did so promptly.

"Well, this has been a most…enlightening evening," th e Duke murmured after they had finished supper. "If you will excuse me. I have some work to do."

Lena fiddled with the cords of her apron. "I'll see that you're not disturbed by my brood of barbarians. You must think we have no manners at all, discussing female body parts and legs—" She floundered hopelessly, succumbing to an embarrassed coughing fit. "Your Gr—that is, of course, Julius."

Then something incredible happened, leaving Lena completely stunned.

The corners of his mouth turned up, and the cold steel in his eyes melted to liquid silver as they looked at her appreciatively.

The Duke of Aldingbourne smiled.