11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

“ L et us see what Miss Derrington has managed to teach you.” Thomas leaned back in his chair, his hand sweeping dramatically over the fully set table.

Izzie had yet to grow accustomed to eating in the great hall. Granted, since her feral act had failed her, the three of them had been dining together in the great hall, but usually at the end of the room next to the enormous curved fireplace that could easily hold ten of her standing upright.

It was cozier on that end of the hall, but still, the high walls and cold stone surrounding them when she looked the wrong direction was always disconcerting. Ravenstone was a monolith seeming to be merely an upward extension of the stone beneath it, a testament to another time in Scotland when the walls of a castle like this were the only defense against raiders from far-off shores.

This castle held ghosts of the past in its walls. Lots of them.

And tonight, seated with Sylvie and Thomas in the middle of the wide, grand table that could generously seat forty people, Izzie could feel whispers of the past all around them.

Despite her better judgement, she gave a patronizing smile to Thomas. While she had given up on her feral act, she hadn’t confessed to knowing much of what she did about how to act in civilized circles. She’d been taught all of it by the Guardians, even though most of her past assignments had been resigned to the servants’ quarters.

She needed a reason to keep Sylvie around at the castle to help her in watching over Thomas, and her own ignorance of anything polite-society related had been the obvious solution.

Thomas’s direction to Sylvie had been simple. Ready Izzie for society in the ways she lacked. The most basic manners were the highest priority.

It was more leeway than she had been expecting from him, especially for how he stormed out of the tower room a week ago. She had been sure he was going to fire Sylvie and try to marry her off to the closest bachelor farmer he could find.

Instead, Sylvie had been granted a healthy margin during the last week to school Izzie on all the finer points of society and what would be expected of her.

He thought she was an ignoramus—a necessary farce she’d perpetuated. That didn’t take the sting out of the way he sat across the table from her—so smug, so judgmental—that the hairs on the back of her neck spiked in defiance.

Which was odd, because she was usually so good at playing the submissive, docile mouse that no one looked at. She didn’t want eyes on her, and they weren’t.

Except here at Ravenstone.

Thomas’s eyes had been on her since he’d caught her in the tower talking to Sylvie. Always. A hawk circling high above its prey, waiting for a moment of unguarded weakness.

In this, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be the docile mouse. She wasn’t even sure she minded his eyes on her. All bad things for her continuing success in this job.

Hector would surely cut her from the Guardians if this assignment exploded on her so quickly. She was supposed to be here at Ravenstone for months, if not years.

Yet all she wanted in that moment was to wipe that sanctimonious look off of Thomas’s face.

Eating properly at the table, with a full spread of fifteen dishes and all the cutlery to match, was the first test he had tossed out before her after Sylvie had declared that Izzie was now up to the task.

“Are you ready?” Thomas lifted his eyebrows at her.

Izzie assessed her plate that he had laden with small samplings from seven of the dishes—oysters, custard, asparagus, trout, ham, roasted fowl, nectarines, and an onion soup in a bowl—and she compared it to the spoons, forks, and knives spread out regally aside her plate.

“We are,” Sylvie said, sending a brilliant smile to Thomas.

He glanced at Sylvie. “I would much prefer to hear it from Izzie.” He turned to her, the full force of his hazel eyes reflecting gold from the candlelight centering on her.

She gave him a hesitant smile, her hand waving over her filled plate. “This is a lot of forks and knives.”

“Not to worry, Izzie,” Sylvie said. “All you need to remember?—”

“Truly, Miss Derrington,” Thomas cut her off, his voice cold. “I do think we can do without your interruptions. I need to judge Izzie on her own merits, not yours.”

Izzie pinned him with a searing look. She hated when he spoke to Sylvie with such little regard. “Why do you need to judge me?”

“So I know what to do with you.” He sent her searing look back at her tenfold, and while she wanted to squirm under the weight of it, she held his stare, much to her own amazement.

Sylvie smiled, her voice light to break the tension running in a churning river between Izzie and Thomas. “Thomas, if I may?—”

Thomas’s fist slammed down onto the table. “You may not.” His glare shot to Sylvie. “Remove yourself from the dining room.”

The smile on Sylvie’s face strained. “But my lord?—”

His palm flew up to her, his expression seething, stopping her words with just a look.

Her lips pulled tight—the most frustrated that Izzie had ever seen her friend. Sylvie had always been able to keep her composure under any circumstance, but Thomas was wearing her thin.

With a slight pout that only accentuated the perfect form of her lips, Sylvie inclined her head to Thomas. “As you wish, my lord.”

With curt motions, Sylvie scraped her chair away from the table and exited the great hall. Each step of her slippers clunked onto the stone floor, echoing high up along the walls in the ensuing silence.

Izzie bit her tongue. It took ages for Sylvie to exit the great hall as she walked the length of the room to leave via the main double doors. To her credit, she didn’t quicken her pace, didn’t attempt to make her long, silent exit any less awkward than it was.

Izzie glanced at Thomas.

He was staring at her. Staring. Waiting. Not paying Sylvie’s exit the slightest attention. Just watching her, curious even, if the man was capable of curiosity. She thought not. His look was full of annoyance.

The door closed to the great hall and they were alone.

“There would normally be servants around to wait on you throughout, but as I told Jensen to help Cook clean the kitchen, you will have to perform to the best of your abilities without assistance.” His forefinger flicked out to her. “Proceed.”

Izzie heaved a sigh. Anything to break the stare that he still had pinned on her.

She looked down at the plate. Not the oysters. She’d always hated oysters. Would eat them to survive, rancid ones at that, which was probably why she hated them.

Soup. Start with the soup.

She picked up her soup spoon and started to sip as delicately as she could.

He didn’t join her, just watched.

She wasn’t going to eat alone, was she? It sickened her looking at the amount of food that was spread out on this table about to be wasted.

Her stomach churning at the thought, pangs of hunger haunting her from long ago dissolved her appetite down to nothing.

She set her soup spoon aside and picked up her fish fork and knife. Cutting into the delicate flesh slowly, she kept her eyes on her plate.

“Tell me of your mother. What did you know of her?”

She glanced up, looking to Thomas, as his question was just what she needed, grateful for anything to slow down the meal to the point where she could eat again without making her stomach turn.

Thomas had leaned forward, still not eating, but setting his elbows upon the table, his hands curled together under his chin. Polite manners at the table required of her, but not him.

She held her tongue on the matter, choosing to answer his question instead.

“My mother died when I was a small child. That is all I ever knew of her.” Not quite true, but she tried to keep her lies as close to reality as possible—it made keeping track of them easier. “My father never spoke of her.”

“And your father was as Mr. Smith implied?”

She jabbed her fork into a bite of the trout. “Rotten?” Her eyebrows lifted and she looked up at him.

He nodded.

“He was that. I do not remember a time when he was anything but a terror in my soul.”

A slight wince flashed across his eyes. The slightest movement, but she caught it.

“And there is no other family on your father’s side?”

She shook her head. “Not that I am aware of.”

“Then who took care of you when you were young? Raised you? Taught you, well, everything, since I doubt it was your father? You said you know how to read and write, but you also said you weren’t allowed to speak to anyone in your town.”

“You are correct about my father.” She lifted the bite of trout to her lips, then set her fork down without eating it, lifting her glass of wine to her lips and taking a sip. “For the most part, I was raised by Mrs. Dellcrane, our closest neighbor, though she was still a twenty-minute walk away. She was shunned by those in town, except when they needed her for an herb or potion. She was seen as a healer or a witch, depending on one’s ever-changing needs. But I loved her and I loved her cottage—it was filled with dried herbs and strange liquids and parts of animals and bones, and I can still close my eyes and smell it.”

She did just that, closing her eyes and walking back in her mind. For all the lies she told Thomas, Mrs. Dellcrane was completely real and there was true comfort in thinking of her.

“She was good to you?”

She opened her eyes to him, and for once, the sour look on his face had disappeared. He was looking at her intently, as he usually did, but his ever-present aggravation had abandoned him.

She nodded, taking another sip of her wine. “She was. She taught me most everything she knew, and in exchange, I would work the pestle and mortar for her, or pick and tie up herbs, or whatever else she needed me to do. She had gout, so she didn’t walk around well. And she truly liked me—she recognized an oddness in me that was the same in her.”

“What was this oddness?”

“How do I explain it?” Her eyes drifted up, following a line of mortar between the stones to the giant wooden beams that supported the roof of the great hall. “It was the part of us that would not allow us to exist in peace in the town with others. We both thought about things differently than others. We questioned too much and didn’t judge enough. Yet we could still see things for what they were, and what they were not. That there are forces upon all of us, twisting us through life.”

A deep frown set into her face. “It was an oddness that only begot cruelty upon her.”

“And you?” he asked, his voice low.

Pausing for a long moment, she lifted her shoulders, neither confirming nor denying. Mixing too much reality into the farce she had created here at Ravenstone would do no one any good. “Mrs. Dellcrane always said my mind would be the life or the death of me, depending on which way fate decided to blow her breath.”

“You’re still alive.”

She laughed, setting her wine glass down on the table. “That I am. For now. And I know how to hide my oddness.”

“You do?” The slightest quirk lifted the corner of his mouth, almost like he was on the verge of smiling. “If you’ll recall, your entrance into my household wasn’t exactly sane.”

She laughed again. “No. And I apologized for that. You know my reasoning.”

“I do.” He nodded. “I understand the reasoning, if not the actions.”

She looked down, fingering the bottom edges of the knives. “Whether you believe it or not, that oddness in me, the thing that makes me not like others…I can hide it. I know how.”

She glanced up at him. “How I arrived here may have been beyond explanation, but I do know how to hold my tongue so people do not look at me strangely. Mrs. Dellcrane taught me all about the mystical world, but I also know to never speak of odd things most folk would not understand. People thought she was mad, but she truly just wanted to be left alone.”

He pointed to her hand still fiddling with the knives. “And she must have taught you to properly hold a fork and knife.”

A chuckle escaped her lips. “She did. But Sylvie schooled me on the many other utensils you have had set on the table.” Her fingers lifted to motion to the assortment of dishes. “But you didn’t have to do this on my account. I was fine in pretending to properly eat five different kinds of meat and the array of vegetables and fruit and sauces and soups and custards. To actually have the food to go with the utensils was too much. Mrs. Havergrove nearly smacked Sylvie across the brow when she went to the kitchens this morning for some bread and jam.”

He looked down at the pile of food that would be straining a lesser table. “I may have overdone my request of Mrs. Havergrove. I agree that it is far too much food for the few of us here in the castle. Luckily, she is a sorceress when it comes to reimagining food that is left over after a meal.”

A shiver went down her spine. Normal . Normal words from him. He’d just uttered to her the most amount of normal words stitched together that weren’t laced with anger.

A victory she was neither expecting nor knew what to do with. She only knew that she wanted more of his normal conversation now that she’d heard it.

She picked up her fruit fork, stabbed a slice of nectarine, and slipped it into her mouth, chewing it slowly. It had been ripened to perfection, not too hard, not too mushy.

Another sip of wine and she looked to him, hoping to press her current good luck in the realm of conversation. “That place you brought me to that first day, that manor house, what was it?”

“It is the estate of my cousin, Nemity Lonstrick, and her husband. She is my one other living relation.” He picked up a fork and knife and started in on the beef he had set on his plate. “Springfell Manor is so close to Ravenstone that Nemity and I grew up together, the closest of cousins. She is akin to a sister to me.”

“Did you speak with her that day?”

“I did not.” He shook his head. “I spoke with her husband, Callum, as I actually brought you there to leave you with her.”

“What?” Her eyes went wide. She’d considered that had been his plan—or at least to gain Nemity’s insight as to what to do with her—but that he was going to cut her from his life before she’d even entered it was sobering. Her last chance at redemption over before it began. “You thought to foist me upon your cousin?”

“I did. She would do better than I with the feral creature you were.” No apology landed on his lips. “But she has much that she is currently dealing with. She is with child, and she is busy raising the two children she has taken in as her own.”

Izzie considered the tone of his voice for a long moment, watching him with his head down as he sawed at his beef.

“You say that as though you dislike the children.”

“I actually enjoy their company.” He glanced up at her, his voice not giving a hint to actual emotion. “The younger one, the boy, I intend to leave as much as possible from my estate as I can so his future is secure. And for the rest of the earldom, I plan to petition the title to go to Nemity’s son when one is born.”

She blinked hard, her head jerking back. “You do? Why? Do you not intend on producing heirs?”

“That is the last thing I intend to do.” He popped a bite of beef into his mouth, staring at her.

“Why not?”

He swallowed, his look not leaving her. “It is none of your business, Izzie.”

She nodded and her gaze dropped to his plate, staring at the sawed-apart pieces of meat soaking in a thin sheen of blood. “I am not to ask questions like that at a table like this, am I?”

“No, you are not.”

“My apologies.” She bowed her head, folding her hands in her lap. This was why Hector had never put her in an assignment that required her to dine at the table of a titled gentleman. She spoke too freely. Was too curious for her own good.

None of which was appropriate at an earl’s table.

So much for hiding her oddness.

No matter how Thomas rankled her, she had to remember where she was. Who he was.

Across from her, Thomas kept eating. He finished the beef on his plate, then took a sip of wine.

He cleared his throat as he set his glass on the table. “I am celibate, Izzie. I have been for years.”

She was grateful her head was still bowed, for it was the only way to hide her jaw falling agape. It took her the beat of a deep breath to look up at him, and she hoped the shock had subsided from her eyes. “Celibate? Why?”

His shoulders lifted. “Reasons.”

Well…hell.

She and Sylvie were going about this all wrong. Maybe they needed to pull Hal from the job and get a new coachman in that would be more enticing to Thomas. Hal was a delight and a great Guardian to have her back, especially with a knife in his hand, but he wasn’t exactly the prettiest man around.

Realizing she’d stilled, frozen in place, she gave Thomas a slight smile, her head tilting to the side. “What are those reasons? Do you not enjoy women?” Best to verify it before jumping to conclusions.

His look narrowed at her. A flicker in his hazel eyes, almost like a wild fire had been lit in a dry field, sparks flying madcap to burn everything to a crisp.

“Women are my preference. And the reason for celibacy is my own.” His voice offered no margin for further questions.

Her lips pulled inward, her head nodding. She was mucking up this assignment so badly, it was laughable. She took a few moments of fiddling with the bottom edges of her forks before she looked up to him, her voice a whisper. “What exactly are you planning to do with me?”

“I haven’t decided quite yet.”

“Maybe I should go back to my cottage.” Her hands clasped together in her lap. “I can find my way back if you will let me leave. I will do better there. I won’t bother the people in the town. I should have run away from Mr. Smith, but I remembered his wife and I didn’t think he was a threat. But I should have run.”

“And you would be dead now. They just would have sent someone else after you.”

She exhaled a long sigh, her shoulders lifting. “Dead by their hand, or any other, does it matter?”

He leaned forward, his stare on her so piercing, it sent shivers up her spine that spread across her shoulders. “It actually does matter, Izzie. It matters quite a bit to me.”

Her breath stopped in her throat.

For he actually looked like he was telling the truth.