Page 31 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
For once, she looked at him with something akin to gratitude. A commonality, he thought, that neither of them had known they shared. “Suppose I suggested to someone that if they only gave it their best effort, they might simply alight into the air and take flight with the birds,” she said tartly.
Thomas chuckled. “An impossibility, regardless.”
“It’s the same for me,” she said, and that glitter within her eyes became the glassy sheen of encroaching tears. “It shouldn’t be. I know it shouldn’t. Have you any idea how aggravating, how demoralizing it can be to see someone half your age—younger even—complete a task with such ease, and yet be unable to do the same?” She gave a little sniff, scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. “Juliet devotes an hour of her time thrice a week to practicing the pianoforte. I might manage to plunk out a few notes before my mind wanders away from me.” As if the act itself were a labor Sisyphean in its difficulty, which he supposed to her, it must be. “I know I should do these things. I want to do them—at least, I want towantto do them.”
But it did not render them any more possible, or any less frustrating. He knew it all better than most; knew that same frustration, that anxiety…that self-deprecation. They had always had this much in common. He had just never allowed himself to know her well enough to learn it. He had held her to the very same standards which he had found unfair himself when his father had inflicted them upon him.
“I understand,” he said, and he thought that at last, he truly did. Understandher. Perhaps he even understood himself betterthan he once had, like a key had been turned in a lock somewhere in the darkened recesses of his mind, and all those bits of himself he’d tucked away at Father’s insistence had at last come tumbling back out. Not pretty; not elegant. But real.
Hell. He’d spent so long judging Mercy for things beyond her control, for all the prejudices and criticisms his father had crammed into his head over the years, that he’d never once stopped to consider that it might be possible tolikeher. Even to admire her, after a fashion.
Perhaps it was time to let it go at last. His resentments, unearned as they had been. The small and petty part of him that had so fiercely clung to his preconceived notions of her, steadfastly refusing to change. Even Father’s voice there at the back of his mind, which existed only to flagellate him with his own inadequacies.
Perhaps it was time to be a man of his own making, rather than a mouse of his father’s.
Chapter Twelve
Sleep had not come easily to Mercy, which was not in itself an unusual phenomenon. She had lain awake far longer than had been reasonable, her mind replaying fragments of last evening’s conversation, striving to determine, in retrospect, whether she had made a mistake in confessing her difficulties to Thomas. Attempting, in her mind’s eye, to recreate and read his facial expressions in the service of divining his thoughts, his true feelings.
There might have been an hour or two in which she had dozed off, in the darkest hours of the night, though still she had awoken again before the sun had bothered to makes its presence known outside the house. It had seemed only prudent to occupy her brain with some useful bit of work instead of agonizing over what had already happened, and so she had shrugged into her dressing gown and slipped off to the library to sketch while the rest of the household slept.
In the intense focus of her art, she had not realized how far the morning had advanced until she could no longer ignore the slant of the sun through the window directly into her eyes. Her stomach cramped with hunger as she managed to pull her attention away from the pages at last, and she squinted toward the clock upon the mantel.
“Blast,” she muttered beneath her breath. Somehow it hadgone past ten already. If she were lucky, breakfast might have been held over for her—but she’d certainly have to wash up and dress before she went down to it. Her hands had gone a bit grey from the graphite in her pencil. But the quarter of an hour that making herself presentable would no doubt require would almost certainly see her miss breakfast altogether.
She sighed as her stomach gave another gurgle of protest. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’d been reduced to bread and cheese after missing a meal. It would definitely not be the last.
The library door opened before Mercy could rise to leave, and a maid bustled in with a tray carefully balanced upon one hand as she let herself into the room. The scent of poached eggs, buttery toast, and freshly-steeped tea drifted through the air.
Her stomach made an embarrassingly loud sound, which clawed greedily through the otherwise silent library. “Is that…breakfast?” she asked, her brows pinching in confusion.
“Yes, miss,” the maid said. “Shall I put it upon the desk for you?”
“Please.” But why had it arrived? “And thank you,” she added. “How did you know? I forgot the time entirely. I was certain breakfast would have passed already.”
“Oh, it has, miss,” the maid said cheerfully. “But his lordship took all of us aside this morning and said that if you hadn’t come down for breakfast before ten, we were to take a tray to you, wherever you happened to be. And as you’re usually in the library, it didn’t take long at all to find you.”
“His lordship?” Mercy blinked, perplexed. “His lordshiptold you to do so?”
“Yes, miss. He said it was proper important for you to have a good meal in the morning, even if you don’t come down for one yourself. If you don’t want it, though, miss—”
“No!” The stridence in her voice gave both of them pause, butat least it had distracted from another terrible sound of protest from her empty belly. “That is, I do want it, thank you. I was just…surprised.” That Thomas had thought to arrange for it, whether or not she had bothered to come down for it. Whether or not she hadrememberedto come down for it, more like.
And that was why, she realized. Because she’d confessed to exactly this—to losing track of time and missing meals and more. Only he had taken pains to ensure that she did not miss them, even if she hadn’t come down for them.
Perhaps it had not been a mistake to confide in him after all, she thought as she took a seat at the desk and lifted her silverware to slice off a bite of egg.
“I’ll come collect the tray later, miss,” the maid said. “Have you given any thought to what you’ll wear to the garden party today?”
“The garden party?” Mercy echoed blankly, her fork frozen over the plate. Oh, no—the garden party. The baroness had mentioned it at last evening’s ball, but Mercy had been woolgathering in her boredom, half-listening at best. She’d forgotten it entirely since, hadn’t even the faintest idea of when it was meant to begin. So many events to which the baroness had received invitations had been evening ones; she’d given no thought at all to any that might occupy the daylight hours. “Blast,” she said, shoveling another forkful of eggs into her mouth in her haste to finish her breakfast. Perhaps she was already late, or at the very least dreadfully behind schedule. “I haven’t, but I’ll just—”
“It’s not until afternoon, miss,” the maid interjected. “You’ve plenty of time for breakfast. If an hour is enough time to prepare yourself, someone will draw you a bath in advance and find you when it’s time.Wheneverit’s time,” she stressed. “The staff has got your social schedule.”
Mercy wilted with relief, managing to swallow down amouthful of dry toast crumbs with a long swallow of tea. “An hour is perfect,” she said. And then paused, considered. “His lordship’s instructions?”
“Yes, miss,” the maid said. “I’m given to understand that he’s asked her ladyship to keep the staff informed as to which events she plans to attend. Shall I have a selection of gowns brought out for you?”
What did one wear to a garden party? Mercy had never been invited to one.“I think I’ll ask the girls their opinion,” she said. “But thank you, nonetheless.”
