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She stared longer still. He did not lie. She sensed it in her guts. That being the worst of it. Or the best. She did not fathom yet. Because, if he did not lie, she had made an excruciatingly bad mistake. But if he did tell the truth, it demonstrated his years away meant something. What, she did not have the slightest idea. Maybe he learned something from it. Oh, sod him! This resulted very blurry indeed! She sighed long and heavy, passing her hand over her brow, and turned to the secretary. She would not be able to continue working though. So she changed direction and stopped before the fire, observing its changeable flames unseeingly. Chest cumbersome, she tried to go get a few hours’ sleep. Tomorrow would be a busy day.
Conrad raked his both hands through his midnight waves as he paced his chamber. Anger mixed with a sense of emptiness towelled him. Her misjudgement twisted his guts tight and left him with a sour taste from it. He began to contemplate this was all for nothing. He had come home to a cold wife, distrustful people and a deserted home. Deserted because the isolation marked his every move. Ok, he had just arrived so to say. Apart from that, her attitudes toward him did not look promising. As he saw it, she exhibited barbwire wrapped around her, making it hard to reach her. He must find a way. Diplomacy did not seem to be working. He would have to be more forthright. He paced his room nervously until tiredness overcame him.
Aurelia knelt on the fluffy humid dirt to check the vegetables. This year would produce plenty of pickled carrots, cucumbers and cabbage. The grey sky promised rain and a cool wind blew the strands of her rosewood tightly tied hair. Her woollen dark blue dress warmed her. Not that her thoughts reeled off very warming. Her concentration levels tended to zero this morning. She tried to keep the events of the last days at bay.
“My lady.” Aurelia lifted her head and saw cook standing by the vegetable garden. “I will help you with this. Things in the kitchen are running smooth for now.”
“Yes, Mrs Tobias.” She smiled the middle-aged cook. “Thank you.”
The cook knelt beside her as they cleaned the weed, rearranging the plants and moistening them. A long time passed with them engrossed in work.
“I…” She started at a point, swallowing nervously. “I don’t have words to say it.?
? She began, eyes downcast. “I am so grateful to Lord Strafford, you know.”
“Grateful, yes?” Aurelia had an amused expression on her face. “Did he help with the stew or something?”
“No, my lady. We were so worried all day and when night came we didn’t know what to do.”
“Indeed.” She commented puzzled, never stopping her work.
“Then Lord Strafford took his horse and found our Bess.” She pressed dirt at an exposed root. “Our relief immense.”
At the information, Aurelia stopped mid act. She did not understand a word. “Mrs Tobias, please, can you tell me the whole story? What happened to Bess?”
The girl lined as the eighth of her children, but a mother would always be a mother, worrying about any of them equally.
“Oh, my lady! Bess went looking for her kitten and we lost her.” She wiped her brow with her hand. “We wanted to call you to see if you knew her whereabouts, but Lord Strafford said you had had a tiring day and went after our Bess himself.”
She talked about the night he absented himself? Goodness gracious!
“Did he find her?” She sat on her heels, all ears.
“Yes, my lady. He took his horse in the cold drizzling night with the men.” Her brow darkened with the dirt when her hand rested on her thighs. “They looked for her for hours! So desperate she got us!” She paused for a moment and resumed. “He found her on the other side of the lake with the kitten and all.”
“It’s good to learn Bess came back safe.” Aurelia looked at the woman perplexed.
“Yes, yes.” She nodded swiftly, sitting on her heels too. “We never expected this from him. He used to be so indifferent.” She shrugged. “But now he helps you, substituted the teacher and never leaves the manor.”
“It is true, Mrs Tobias.”
Her mind blurred and her throat tightened. What self-righteous little prissy she had become! She had not even contemplated asking someone. She had just jumped to conclusions and taken them to be reality.
“You understand there is no love lost between our people and him, Lady Strafford.” Cook said serious. “But he seems to have changed a bit, don’t you agree?
“Maybe, Mrs Tobias, maybe.” An absent reply, finishing her work.
She stood up slowly, said good-bye to cook and decided to take her horse. There was need to go check how the hennery fared. The chicks required tending.
By mid-afternoon, work almost done, her heart held so much heaviness from her guilt she craved a little escape. She walked to the picnic spot by the lake, her favourite place in the world. She sat on the bench there, admiring the placid waters. Normally, when she came there, a contemplation mood set on her, making her look around, realising how she loved Strafford Manor. She had adopted it as her home, despite everything. She loved this land, and she loved the possibility of working and improving it.
Today, though, nothing of this passed her mind, as the grey clouds reflected on the water. Her eyes just stagnated unseeingly on the lake. She would not produce objective thoughts. Nor could she name the whole palette of feelings that coursed inside her. Numb. This was the word for her state of mind at that precise moment. She did not care to clear anything; solely craved the flowing of the palette into a semblance of order. Or would name them afterwards.
Change? Her husband changed? She breathed a bitter laugh in the wind. People like him did not change! They just walked through life from one orgy to another, unthinking. She did not believe for a minute in this. Cook did not see the whole picture, naturally. Even if servants wandered around all day, they did not witness everything. She had learned heart-breaking lessons in those three years. Not to be blown away with little nothings!
She kept on sitting on the bench, blankly for a long time.
Conrad stepped out by the portentous manor’s porch, intending to take his horse for a ride and stopped short. In the distance, he discovered Aurelia sitting by the lake. Her figure so static, not a strand of hair seemed to move. A lone woman, eyes fixed on the lake. A stolid fortitude emanated from her as if she would be able to face any herculean challenge thrown her way. Something swivelled in him. Something deep and undefined. He had this strange urge to go there and take her in his arms. And hold her for a long, long time until they settled into a semblance of truce or that sort of thing. He wished her in peace, he wished himself in peace. A peace that eluded him, especially when he saw her standing up to so much. He resisted the urge to approach her and followed his way to the stable.
