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“I will order dinner. Shall I have a tray brought to you here?”
Silence pressed between us until she finally responded. “No.”
No? Hmm. “Do you intend to come down to the taproom?”
“No.”
I stared at the wooden door, as if it held the answers I sought. She could not mean to skip the meal entirely? I knew her purse was thin and her stomach empty, for I’d heard the rumble myself a handful of times in the last leg of our journey. Thea had always been slender, but the thinness of her body and hollowness in her cheeks when I had found her in the Fullers’ garden had surprised me some. Mother will not be pleased to see Thea so reduced.
“You need to eat,” I called.
Footsteps crossed toward the door, and she unbolted it before swinging it open. Her brow furrowed, and she’d removed her cap, revealing the crown of dark plaits that circled her head. “I am not hungry.”
“Your stomach has been arguing differently.”
“I require privacy, Benedict. You offered it to me only a moment ago.”
“Ah, but I do not wish to encroach upon that. I only request that you allow me to order a tray to your room.”
She folded her arms over her chest and tilted her head to the side. “It’s not like you to care.”
“I don’t,” I said, regretting the words the moment they touched my lips. Why could we not hold one decent conversation? Everything she said was incendiary and gave me the unaccountable urge to fight back. Though I would admit my own part in this—I was not blameless. I said the only thing that might reach her understanding. “My mother would care. She would be horrified to know I allowed you to pass the night without dinner, and I would not be doing my job as a gentleman if I allowed it.”
The little line disappeared between her eyebrows when she raised them in challenge. “Your mother will never learn about the majority of what has taken place on this journey, Ben, or she would have an apoplexy. We can also refrain from informing her that I was too ill—” She caught herself and quickly redirected. “That I skipped dinner one time.”
“You are ill?”
“No.”
“You only just said moments ago—”
“Notillin the way you are thinking.” She ran a hand over her brow. “It is nothing.”
The letters she received, had one of them contained bad news? Had the note from her admirer bothered her more than she’d let on? Surely the reason she felt unwell had something to do with that. I could grant her a little grace in this instance and drop the matter.
“Besides,” she continued. “What would the servant think when he or she is directed to deliver a tray to a servant boy?”
She had a good point. I would need to think of something else. “Very well. I’ll leave you in peace, Thea.”
“Thank you.” Thea closed the door swiftly and left me in the corridor, staring after it. I would never come to count this woman as a friend, but must we be such bitter rivals? It was exhausting.
“I will take the bed tonight,” she said through the closed door.
A hint of a smile tugged at my lips, and I was inordinately grateful she could not see it.
“For the sake of my safety,” she continued.
I stepped closer and spoke near the door, lowering my voice so the other occupants of the inn did not overhear. “Of course. I wouldn’t dream otherwise.” Though I could safely promise that I would not fall on her again. I would hug the opposite side of the mattress if it killed me, had I needed to sleep above her again. How I’d managed to hover so close above her in a bed so large last night was a mystery unto itself. It was as though Thea was possessed of a string to my chest that drew me toward her always, without my control or her desire.
I took myself downstairs and ordered dinner to be brought to me at one of the long, wooden tables in the taproom. A large group of travelers appeared to be eating their dinners as well, all of them men, and the smell of roasted meat and yeasty bread filled my senses.
Thea had come to us at Chelton so young and fresh from rejection all those years ago. I had done my best to be the friend I had thought she needed at the time, the friend my mother requested that I be to her goddaughter. But our easy camaraderie had only lasted a few weeks. A shift in our relationship was born after a midsummer’s festival, its cause a complete mystery to me, and neither of us had learned how to act differently since. It was as though paint had been poured over our relationship—black in discord and misunderstanding—and we could not find the turpentine to scrub it clean.
A serving girl set a plate before me and I tucked into my dinner, allowing my mind the luxury of wandering over my memories of Thea. One of the things that irked me was how I never knew what had changed her mind about me—what had happened at the festival to take the charming girl with a cherubic smile and fill her eyes with disgust. I had attempted to ask her once, but was met with the resistance of a draft horse and the stubbornness of a mule.
I tore a chunk from the roll and shoved it in my mouth, chewing with more zeal than the bread warranted. Thea made it increasingly difficult to be kind to her, but the more irritating thing was that I knew I would take a plate of food up to her, regardless of her obstinance. She needed to eat, even if she was too fraught with nerves to do so in a crowded dining room. I ate the remainder of my dinner and flagged down the serving girl.
“I need a plate of food for my servant. I will take it up to him.”
