Page 37 of Hazard a Guest
“This particular Imbolc, however, a pilgrim was watching me do it, an older gentleman in a fine coat. I didn’t see him until I’d been at it for a while, not until it was time to settle up because I’d gotten bored. The sharper tried to tally me wrong, to give me a short on tokens, but I’d kept track. I gave him the exact number he owed me, and when he slumped away in a snit after it, the Englishman vanished. I thought he’d gotten bored too.”
She paused for a second, leaning back and blowing out a long breath. “When I got to the pub at nightfall to meet my parents, he was sitting with them. They’d made a deal. For me.”
“What?” said Joe, suddenly jerked out of the reverie of listening to her speak. “Without you there?”
“Well, I still got asked, of course,” she replied with a little smile. “My parents love me enough for that. I don’t think a lot of farm girls would get asked, though, if a wealthy man burst out of the air and asked for them. What’s to ask?”
“Everything,” said Joe grimly.
She blinked at him. “After this story,” she said carefully, “I want to know where you are from, Joe. What corner of Elysium raised you, that this sounds shocking at all?”
“The Midlands,” he answered automatically, seeing immediately that it wasn’t enough. “I … all right. I’ll explain when you’ve finished.”
“Good,” she said with a note of something he couldn’t quite name. “Yes, good.”
It sent another roil of feelings up in his chest, each one hammering at his bones, trying to get out until he had to physically swallow to push them back down. It didn’t matter how much outrage or horror or curiosity he felt, this wasn’t his moment to speak.
“So we married, of course,” she continued, waving her hand as though that much was obvious. “He was so excited to get to know me, to show me all of his businesses and ledgers and accounts. I felt like a new farm hand, but the farm was his empire of coins, not a field of crops, and Joe, I loved it. I felt so important. So wonderfully conspicuous. Because that was the kind of man my husband was, that was his gift: he could see talent and potential. He could see it like you were wearing it on your sleeve in bright red thread.
“And I’ve just had the most horrible revelation. He had the same sort of establishing meeting with Thaddeus Beck. If Beck had been there two years earlier, if he’d been a girl, if my Mr. Withers had still been a widower, he would be where I am. The only difference between Beck and me is that I was luckier. That’s it. That’s all.”
“Ember,” Joe said, struck with what she was saying. “That’s not true.”
“I think it is,” she returned right away, shaking her head like it didn’t even necessarily distress her anymore, after having spoken through it. “I really think it is true, and worse, I’m not sure Mr. Beck knows it. I don’t think he realized it today, the way I did, because I didn’t give him a thing. I’ve only taken it from him. Again.”
He watched her, uncertain if she needed anything from him beyond his ear. He waited; he let the room sit and the fireplace breathe. He let the air settle when he could have disturbed it, until he was certain she wouldn’t mind if he asked questions, until she turned and looked at him with a raise of those russet brows.
“So he used you as … as an accountant?” he clarified, uncertain even now. “Not as a wife?”
“Oh, you mean did he ever …” She trailed off, chuckling. “Of course he did, Joe. He was still a man.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” he protested, though maybe it was.
She only laughed a little more, though it was perhaps a better outcome than any answer might have been. He could see her shoulders softening, feel the release in her fingers, still holding his. “I was given every courtesy that a wife ought to be given,” she told him soothingly. “He was old, but he wasn’t a lecher or a brute or a slavedriver. He respected me, and because of that, I respected him right back.”
“Well,” said Joe with a frown, “I suppose that’s something.”
“The worst thing he ever did to me was the dying,” she added with a thoughtful incline of her head. “That bastard. No warning at all, mind. He just left the room and stopped being alive. It was awful.”
“It sounds awful,” Joe acknowledged, watching her relive it with a helpless distress. “I am sorry.”
“Me too,” she said with a nod. “But it had to happen sometime, didn’t it? Maybe he was lucky too. He never even realized he’d seen the last of his life. Whatever errand he had in progress wassomething wonderfully mundane and free of tension. May we all be so lucky, someday.”
She sighed, releasing his hand and pushing her chair back. She stood for a moment, shaking her arms and fingers out like she was sending all the discomfort and history off her skin.
“Your turn,” she said, tapping her toes. “I want to pace a little.”
He couldn’t help but smile, watching her do exactly that, her boots tapping on the edges of the uncarpeted floor every time she made a round. She was so wonderfully embodied in herself, he thought, watching her prowl, still shaking out her hands. She was so beautifully real.
“Joe!” she said fondly, snapping him out of watching her. “The Midlands?”
“Yes, right,” he agreed, clearing his throat and nodding. “Shropshire. I grew up in a bit of an enclave outside of the main village.”
“An enclave?” She paused for a moment, looking intrigued. “You mean outside of the parish?”
“Just so,” he said, feeling the color creep up his neck. “We had our own … parish of sorts. The Society of Friends.”
“Friends?” She had stopped in earnest now, framed by the fire.
