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Back inside, Baldwin almost immediately fell in line with Aunt Margaret, who hadn’t yet smeared the rest of her make-up across her face. She looked exhausted, her cheeks sagging, her lips pale and undone. She chirped his name. “Baldwin! My goodness. I didn’t know that you’d spend the evening with us.”
“I hope you don’t mind, Auntie,” Baldwin said. He tugged up a playful smile.
“Oh, of course not. Of course not,” Aunt Margaret said. She seemed almost flustered. “I haven’t yet seen Ewan or Marta to know more about the events that transpired last evening. I suppose the three of you will update me over breakfast?”
Baldwin agreed. His heart hammered as he approached the breakfast table. Upstairs, he heard Ewan teasing Marta about something, something he couldn’t fully articulate. The moment he reached the breakfast table, the door burst open in the foyer to reveal Tatiana and her children. The butler looked flabbergasted and said, “We didn’t expect you!” But of course, Tatiana didn’t seem to care. She hurried down the hallway and greeted Baldwin excitedly.
“My husband is away on business yet again, and I just couldn’t manage to sit with them all day again. Besides, Laura has been such a dream with them.”
Baldwin smiled as the boys scampered back towards the far end of the house, far from the steaming breakfast platters. Incredulous, he glanced at Tatiana and said, “Where are they off to?”
“They’ve discovered where Laura’s bedroom is and have taken it upon themselves to find her,” Tatiana said.
Baldwin remembered that he’d seen Laura enter Marta’s bedroom only an hour before. Perhaps she’d already returned to her bedroom in the servants’ quarters. His eyes scanned up towards the staircase to spot Marta and Ewan approaching, both of their faces light and shining, seemingly joyful after a pleasant night’s sleep. Baldwin was momentarily envious about this fact.
“Good morning, Tatiana!” Marta called. She tapped a kiss on her cousin’s cheek. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
“The boys cannot get enough of your maid,” Tatiana said. “The girl is the only thing they talk about. I even caught them exchanging German words with one another the other day. A secret language! I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t know what sort of wretched God gave me two sons.”
“Well, Laura does very little but talk about them,” Marta said. She beamed, then turned her eyes towards Baldwin. Memories of the previous evening seemed to exist in the space between them. She dropped her eyes almost instantly.
Baldwin wondered if whatever lust had brewed between them was now dismissed, due to the awkwardness of his punching the Duke in the stomach.
He wondered if he’d lost his chance.
“Shall we eat, then? The boys will scrounge up whatever they can in the kitchen with Laura, like always,” Tatiana said. “Oh, Mother, there you are…”
Aunt Margaret appeared in the dining room, her face properly put-up, now, only a few moments after Baldwin had first seen her. Aunt Margaret placed a kiss on her daughter’s forehead, an act that resulted in a bright pink blotch across her skin. Immediately, Marta brought a napkin across Tatiana’s forehead and tapped it out. She lent a wink.
“The silence is deafening, my children,” Aunt Margaret said. “I require the news of the evening! I wanted to stay up the rest of the night and catch you when you came in, but, admittedly, your Uncle Everett discovered me fast asleep in the parlour and convinced me to go to bed.”
Marta chuckled. Her eyes flashed towards Ewan, as though she wanted to urge him to tell the story. Baldwin knew that they had to dance around the topic athand if only to assuage Aunt Margaret.
“It was beautiful,” he suddenly said. Even in his own ears, the words sounded false.
“Beautiful, hmm?” Marta asked. “Is that how you would describe it, Ewan?”
“Perhaps,” Ewan said. He mocked her thoughtfulness. “Beautiful and… what is this other word I might use… rich. Yes. Quite rich.”
“Oh, marvellous,” Aunt Margaret returned.
“Quite,” Ewan said, nodding.
“Many guests?” Aunt Margaret asked. She stabbed a fork and knife through a little sausage but kept her eyes on her son.
“Oh, yes. You’d be surprised how many people the Regent can bring to a ball like that,” Ewan said. Again, his words simmered with sarcasm.
At this, his mother stopped her rapid sausage slicing. “Whatever do you mean? Of course a Regent would bring in a wide variety of people. He’s quite important. Or don’t you remember, Ewan?” She cast her eyes towards Tatiana and mumbled, “He really is so forgetful these days. I imagine it’s all that late-night Scotch drinking. Your father lost his memory in the same way. He hardly knows what day it is. And only now, I tried to convince him to come to breakfast … and he told me it wasn’t yet time!”
The table laughed. Ewan stuttered as he explained he was only kidding. “Of course, I understand the importance of a ball like that, Mother. Please don’t worry yourself. You raised a man who understands the world.”
Baldwin considered this expression. Just a moment after he said it, Ewan flashed his eyes towards him: an assertion that, of course, Ewan truly couldn’t comprehend the world, at least not at all times. Baldwin gave a light smile. How complicated it was: Ewan’s clear love for him. A love that he could never match.
“But please. Please! Tell me. Marta, you’ve been entirely too quiet throughout this conversation,” Aunt Margaret said. She slurped up the last bit of sausage and padded the napkin across her lips. “You looked so beautiful when you left. I felt sure that if the Duke didn’t fall in love with you immediately, he should be said to be blind.”
“She did,” Baldwin asserted suddenly. “She looked beautiful.”
Marta’s blue eyes found his immediately. Her cheeks flushed pink. Yet again, Baldwin felt that he’d spoken out of turn. Even Aunt Margaret gave him a curious expression. Moments later, he swallowed and turned his eyes towards his uneaten plate.
