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I have never looked after anybody before. I’m not sure that I know how to do it. Should I be lecturing her about eating her food and keeping her pen to herself? Or should I follow my natural chaotic live-and-let-live instincts and say nothing?
As it turns out, Mrs Crocombe is going to do some of the intervention all on her own. She comes out to see how her meal has been received and is not well pleased to see that my angel has turned her nose up at it.
“You don’t like the food?”
“The food’s lovely. I don’t have much appetite, that’s all.”
“Newlywed nerves,” Mrs Crocombe says, sympathetic. “I should have made you something lighter. Something with chicken, and perhaps rice. You seem to be the jittery type if you don’t mind me saying.”
“You can say what you like,” Elise says. A silent, unspoken sentence follows, one that tells everybody that she doesn’t care what anybody else says. She’s got a natural arrogance and strong-headedness I find very appealing.
Mrs Crocombe clears the table
“Can I go now?” Elise is halfway out of her chair as she asks the question. She’s so impatient.
“No. We need to work out.”
“Ugh. No,” she sighs. “My strengths are indoor-based. Sitting down. I’m not a working out sort of person.”
She’s walking toward the door, as if she intends to go back to the office without my permission. I sit back in my chair, watching her defy me and planning the punishment that will be hers.
Bryn happens to walk in at that moment. He nods at Elise and smiles. He approves of her. She’s a bookish angel who doesn’t seem to cause any kind of trouble as far as he knows. He thinks she’s my victim, snatched from her life against her will and installed in the trunk of the car. She hasn’t even tried and she’s already got him wrapped around her little finger.
“Hello, Elise,” he says.
“Hello, Father Bryn,” she replies, sweet as pie.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Very good. I have discovered the computers you have upstairs, thanks to Cosmos. I’m learning to run demon analysis.”
“Very impressive,” Bryn says with a slightly patronizing tone that is not lost on Elise. I see her eyes narrow slightly, and then a fixed smile establishes itself on her face. I wonder how many times she has used this expression before in her professional life while older men praise her for knowing what a computer is.
Bryn doesn’t notice, because Bryn has already noticed something else. Direview is his ancestral home, and though it may be the seat of the Brotherhood, it is also fully furnished with items belonging entirely to him. That means the fancy long table is his. And so is the equation Elise scratched into it with the tip of her fork not long ago.
He storms over to the table and gives me a furious look, as if I might have developed a taste for scrawling numbers and symbols.
“What the bloody hell happened here?”
Surely, he already knows. Who else would scrawl mathematical notation into the side of a table besides Elise?
“I think it’s time we worked out,” Elise says quickly. “Got to get those reps in before we atrophy.”
“Yes,” I agree. “Time to work out. We’ll be in the dungeon if you need us, Bryn.”
“Crichton better be able to fix this,” he growls. “Or I’ll take it out on you, Cosmos.”
I stand up and walk over to Elise, draping my arm over her shoulders. “You’re welcome to try,” I smile.
Elise
Bryn is quite dangerous looking when he’s angry. There’s something perpetually smoldering about him that concerns me. It’s a different kind of danger than you get with Cosmos. It’s not the kind that dismembers a man alive in a hotel room for daring to try to hurt his wife. It’s the kind that remembers a slight for years, perhaps even generations, before eventually and inexorably seeking revenge. And there’s something else too. Something that I shudder to call mystical, but it is there.
I look up at Bryn, feeling quite guilty for having ruined his property. I thought I was rebelling against Cosmos, but I guess I was just being destructive, and when you’re destructive there’s really no end of consequences.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It was my fault. I’ll pay to repair it.”
“And how will you repair a table from the Elizabethan era?”
“Uhmm…”
I glance up at Cosmos, who does not seem to give even a fraction of a shit.
“If you were my wife, I’d be spanking you over that table,” Bryn says. “Sparing the lash spoils the bride, Cosmos.”
“She’s not your wife, and if you put a finger on her, I will show you the inside of your belly,” Cosmos speaks casually, but entirely seriously.
“Which is why I told you that I hold you responsible.” Bryn nails Cosmos with a dark stare, then turns his gaze back to me. “I’d hoped you’d be a fine addition to Direview, Elise. I think you still can be. Do not allow your husband to be a bad influence.”
