Page 20 of The Marquis' Game of Seduction
Then, Rose crept toward the kitchen. She’d had several of her meetings with Judith there at that tiny table in the back of the kitchen, the one that was ordinarily overheated due to the intensity of the kitchen fires. But as she eased her head through the doorway to peer into the room, Rose found only Anna—the young servant who was approximately her age, who, in all the chaos, Rose was surprised to find she’d forgotten about. View of Anna’s beautiful smile, her curly hair and her easy demeanor, filled her with happiness so deep, that Rose actually forgot what she was up to.
“My goodness! Anna,” Rose cried. She popped fully into the kitchen and raced toward the girl. When she reached the little table, however, Rose stopped short, realising that perhaps—perhaps she didn’t yet know Anna well enough to go in for such a wild hug. She swallowed and drew her hand into the air and gave a tentative wave—one that very much resembled the little wave the little girl Margaret in the picture was giving the cartoon version of Duncan.
“Rose!” Anna returned good-naturedly. “It’s remarkable to see you. I’ve hardly been able to catch a break today. I feel like my bones might give out if I stand. Won’t you join me here? That is, if you’re not too busy doing something else.”
Rose collapsed at the table across from Anna. “I didn’t realise how much I wanted to sit down,” she said. “Duncan has been running me ragged with all this hide and go seek. Of course, I love it—and I shouldn’t complain. But it’s a lot of running and chasing and crouching and… And perhaps, at 24, I’m just not equipped to treat my body so badly anymore.”
“I know what you mean,” Anna said. She reached across the table and actually squeezed Rose’s hand, which felt so stunningly friendly that Rose didn’t know precisely what to do with it.
“Tell me, Anna. What have you done today?” Rose asked. She felt a bit too earnest as she asked it, and Anna was clearly embarrassed—clearly unaccustomed to anyone asking her how she was or what she was up to.
Anna shrugged a bit and said, “There’s been a lot of scrubbing on my hands and knees. A spill of the mop bucket made me backtrack a few hours of work. I really could have killed myself when that happened. I normally pride myself on my ability to get things done quickly and move along. But today seems different. Perhaps there’s something wrong with the stars.”
“I know what you mean,” Rose whispered, for she’d also been having the strangest evening, night, and day afterwards. “It’s like I can’t pinpoint the strangeness in the air, but it’s certainly there and it’s coloring everything. I never thought I was a superstitious person, but…”
“Oh, I’m superstitious,” Anna affirmed. “And why not? There are loads of things at play that we can’t understand or see. When you walk through the forest, it’s not like you understand the law of the outside world—how the squirrels speak to one another, or even how the trees communicate. I imagine that those things exist beneath us all the time. And there’s no way we can fully pay attention to them, because we would drive ourselves crazy with it. Don’t you think?”
Rose had never considered this in precisely this way. “I truly like what you’re saying,” she whispered. “Like it gives the power over to the earth. To God. Something else, besides our own chaotic minds. I would love to lean on that idea right now.”
Anna grinned. “Then you must. At twenty-four years old, we’re already facing the rest of our lives—don’t you think? So we must set down the laws that we like for ourselves, the ones that we’ll abide by as we grow older, rather than anything else. We must become the masters of ourselves, since it’s probably assured that we won’t marry.”
Rose thought about this. She gazed into Anna’s eyes and felt hopelessness behind them, something that she’d seen frequently in the eyes of the orphans she’d grown up with. She knew that Anna had been at the Kensington Estate since she was seventeen years old—and Rose wondered if all those years in the darkness and confusion of that place had got to her.
“Why don’t we go for a walk?” Rose asked. “It’s still a beautiful autumn day, and it’s no use keeping ourselves trapped in here like animals. We deserve to see the world, before it closes itself off to us. Don’t you think?”
It took some real coaxing, but finally, Rose was able to drag Anna out into the open. Anna blinked around her, her shoes scuffling over the little stones on the path in the garden.
“Does Judith not allow you much time out of doors?” Rose asked. She surprised herself with her forwardness, yet decided that there simply wasn’t time to pussyfoot around such topics—not when she felt she needed to be of some help to the girl.
“Oh, it’s just that I ordinarily have so much to do,” Anna whispered. “I wake very early in the morning. Sometime around four. And by the time I have a moment to myself, all I want to do is crash once more into my bed. It’s a wretched way to live, perhaps, but I don’t believe in complaining. I’m very grateful to this job for giving me a place to stay all these years. Without it, I would surely be dead on the streets.”
Just then, Anna stopped short in front of the rose garden. Her eyes traced over the still-vibrant flowers, which cupped the air with tender petals. Rose tipped her elbow into Anna’s thin arm and whispered, “Do you want to go in? I don’t mind sitting there for a moment, if you don’t.”
“I’ve always longed to sit in the rose garden,” Anna whispered. “Ordinarily, I’m just racing past it—on my way to yet another problem, hoping to find a solution. And yet…”
“Come along!” Rose said. She gripped Anna’s hand and drew her in through the iron gate. Once within the garden, she inhaled the stunning, thick scent of over one hundred roses. Their thorns pecked out ominously, catching the last of the autumn sun, and their petals glowed with oranges and yellows and pinks and purples and whites.
Anna could hardly catch her breath. She dropped Rose’s hand and traced a line around the edge of the garden. It seemed she was saying a private hello to every single one of the roses—and the effect was charming. Rose crossed her arms over her breasts and watched until Anna returned to their original place in the garden. Her cheeks were flushed.
“We should really find more time to get you out of that mansion,” Rose said. She furrowed her brow, briefly afraid that she was speaking out of turn—yet no less sure of her belief. “I don’t think it’s doing proper things to my brain. And I dare say after so many years…”
Anna nodded. Her face was stoic, her cheeks slack. “I know it’s not healthy to remain there. But I don’t know what else to do.” She swallowed. “I have only you to speak to, it seems. I hope that doesn’t change.”
“It won’t,” Rose affirmed.
Then, the girls wrapped one another in a hug—the kind of hug you give a friend you’ve known for years, rather than mere days. During the hug, Rose traced back to her conversation with Duncan and felt, with a strange twist of her gut, that she was delivering quite a few promises just then. She prayed that she was able to keep her word.
When the girls padded back toward the house, Anna yanked her head around. Rose followed her eyes all the way back toward the little crooked stone tower.
“Judith told me to avoid that place,” Rose whispered. “It kind of gives me the creeps, knowing what happened with that fallen stone. Imagine it. What a wretched way to get hurt. Something falling on you from the sky.”
Anna swallowed and nodded. Then, she snaked her arm through Rose’s and began to mutter out the rest of her tasks for the day. She suddenly seemed almost outside of herself, like she was simply a collection of her remaining tasks. Rose wished they could live forever in the rose garden, free from the demands of their strange world. But the show had to go on.
Chapter 11
The following days created a kind of rhythm, one Rose was grateful for in the wake of so much confusion. She’d never been able to find Judith on that fateful day when Duncan had drawn the little girl, had never been able to demand what was actually going on—and by the next day, she’d convinced herself not to bring it up quite yet. It was obvious that Colin and Judith didn’t wish to believe her, for whatever drawn-out and strange reason.
If there really was a girl in the mansion, it was clear that she didn’t wish to be found yet—and if she was found by another member of the staff, then nobody could refute the fact that she existed. It wasn’t a foolproof plan; in fact, it made Rose largely uncomfortable (especially when she awoke at night in the midst of terrors, thinking of the little girl alone in that enormous, shadowed house). However, she felt it was her only mode forward.
