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When I’m almost to the bakery, I take out the baubles. There is a blue one shaped like a fish. It’s quite fetching. Jordy will adore it. He’s always so generous about saving food for me and Gram, I want to give him the painted, blue fish. My belly tingles at the prospect. I’ve never given Jordy a gift before, and it’s long overdue.
I’m almost to the door of the bakery. I can see Jordy through the opened door, his muscular arms lifting a long tray of bread for cooling. I watch the line of his jaw and admire the dusting of beard gracing it. He has a firm grip on the tray, his strides are steady and sure. He’s always so serious, and yet he has a gentleness that makes me swoon in its glow. I hold up the bauble, wishing I had something to put it in that he could open. I try to yank the fish back when someone snatches it from my grasp.
Treena.
“What do we have here, match girl?” Treena turns the fish over in her hands. “Looks like a crudely-made bauble to me.”
“Then give it back,” I say.
Her smile is wicked, like it’s painted over a menacing scowl and is having trouble hiding it. “Give it back? Do you not sell the baubles, you wretch? Maybe I wish to buy it.”
“It’s not for sell,” I reply.Even if I were starving, I wouldn’t sell Jordy’s fish to you.But I don’t say it. Instead, I’m left standing in front of her like a statue, waiting for her to give the bauble back to me. Why does she entertain these intrigues? She is a young woman of means. She could be doing something productive instead of mocking and assaulting people. I will never understand the well-to-do.
She narrows her eyes on me. “Not for sell, you say? Everything is for sell, match girl. I would think you’d know that reality better than most.” She tosses a mahogany curl over her shoulder and stares me in the face, her icy eyes bluer than the fish ornament in her hands. Eyes that lovely shouldn’t inflict such cruelty.
“Give it back to me,” I say more forcibly this time. “It is mine, unless you regard yourself a thief.”
Her porcelain cheeks flame red. It’s hard to tell if she is embarrassed or enraged. Either way, I brace for her wrath.
“Are you suggesting that I am a thief, you pathetic little tripe?”
I step closer to Treena, not allowing her eyes to leave my face. “I hardly have need to suggest it when you ripped my belonging from my hands. Is that not the work of a thief?”
Treena tosses the bauble on the ground behind her and stands in my path when I move to retrieve it. “Do not ever call me a thief again, or you’ll live to regret it. That is a promise, match girl.”
“Milla,” Jordy calls out when he steps outside. “Is everything all right?”
Treena looks from Jordy to me, a twisted smile dancing on her lips. She assesses my dress and then runs a hand along the plunging neckline on hers.
She elevates her voice, ensuring Jordy will hear. “Such a shame you have to wear that plain attire, Milla. And the way you are forced to bind yourself.” She leans over as if trying to look down the front of my dress. “Is there even a bosom in there, or does God in His infinite wisdom know better than to waste an ample bosom on a peasant? Then you would simply find yourself employed in the brothel, no?”
I glance at Jordy. His jaw is clenched, and he tightens the grip on the broom he’s holding. There’s no question why my cheeks are now streaked with the crimson I feel crawling over them. I couldn’t be more humiliated. But embarrassed or no, I will not be silent.
“Well, in all fairness, between the two of us, you are the one who is dressed like she works in the brothel. Maybe she who casts the first stone shouldn’t have her cleavage struggling to remain inside her bodice,MistressTreena.”
Jordy chuckles and resumes sweeping the piece of street in front of the bakery, shaking his head as he works.
“You will regret your remarks, match girl.”
“And you still resemble yours,” I say.
Treena turns to leave, crushing the fish bauble under her healed boot, and my soul along with it. I can’t stop the tears that glass the rims of my eyes. Why is she so cruel, and life right along with her? I wanted to give the fish to Jordy, wanted to give him something to show what his generosity means to me. Whathemeans to me. And Treena crushed it to dust.
“So, she of sharp tongue and a wit to match, are you coming inside?” Jordy asks, holding the bakery door open for me.
It is sweet of Jordy to pretend that Treena didn’t truly best me. She may be terrible, but she’s right. I am a peasant, and nothing more. I can’t face him now, not like this. My feelings are too raw and hurt to hide.
“I need to take my leave for now, Jordy, but I will be back before the sun sets. I still need bread.”
“All right,” he replies. “I’ll see you later, then?”
“You will.”
I watch Jordy until he’s back inside. I turn and pick up the remnants of the fish, anger filling me like oil in a jar. Treena is of an affluent family, one she can trace back to her great-great-great grandparents and beyond. She is vile, and horrible, and miserable…
And validated.
And I am not.
