He Dropped Three Women in One Night, Then We Took His Estate novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: One Stove

Wife and mistress share the only working stove and a list of chalked house rules; at midnight the ward climbs the garden wall in her nightgown with a satchel of copies.

The dower house at Larkmoor had one stove that worked, and Calista put both of them in front of it.

The mistress sat on the bench with her scarlet skirts steaming and her bare feet in a basin of hot water.

The wife stood at the table cutting bread.

Neither of them had said a word for ten minutes.

"This is the worst house I have ever been thrown into," Ottilie said at last.

"You were not thrown into it. You were let in."

"I'm very grateful," Ottilie said, in the voice she used on the stage for lines she did not mean.

Calista put the bread down harder than she meant to.

"Why did you come here?"

"Because it was the nearest door that wasn't his."

Ottilie lifted her chin.

"I would have gone to the village inn, but the innkeeper's wife hates me."

"She saw me in the Swan's second-row seat once and thought I was looking at her husband."

"Were you?" Calista asked.

"He's the size of a barrel," Ottilie said. "I was looking at the exit."

Calista almost laughed, and caught it, and swallowed it.

It was the first funny thing anyone had said to her in a week.

It came from the one person in the world she had decided to hate.

She cut another slice instead.

"You'll sleep on the kitchen bench," she said. "Tomorrow we find you a bed."

"Tomorrow I find myself a coach to Corbel," Ottilie said. "I have nineteen players and a lease that ends in a week."

"You have a lease that ended tonight, in front of four hundred people."

"Aldric ended my invitation to his table. The playhouse lease is a paper, and papers have dates."

Ottilie's jaw set. "I have never in my life let a man take my theatre."

Calista looked at her properly then.

She was larger than Calista and louder, with black curls pinned up in a hurry and a face that had been made for lamplight.

She was shaking a little, very finely, in the shoulders.

She was twenty-eight years old and she was trying not to cry in front of the wife.

Calista found a blanket in the press and dropped it on the bench.

"The roof leaks over the east bed," she said. "Don't sleep there."

"Thank you."

"I'm not being kind. I'm being practical."

"I can tell," Ottilie said. "It's very restful."

Calista took the chalk off the mantel.

The stove had a black iron door, and in her mother's day the cook had chalked the day's bread on it.

She wrote three lines on the black iron.

One: nobody is turned out of this house.

Two: no secrets about money.

Three: the cook of the day is not criticized.

"What is that?" Ottilie asked.

"The rules."

"Whose?"

"Mine. It's my house." Calista put the chalk down. "If you're staying, you obey them. If you're not, there's the door."

Ottilie read them twice.

"The third is a joke," Ottilie said.

"It is not."

"Have you tasted your own cooking?" Ottilie asked.

"I've never had to cook," Calista said. "I kept the books."

"Then we are going to die of hunger," Ottilie said, "and I'll have to read these rules to the coroner."

A knock came at the back door, so soft that Calista thought it was the wind.

Then it came again, three small taps.

She took the poker from the hearth, and Ottilie, to her surprise, picked up the bread knife.

The door opened.

A girl in a nightgown and a man's overcoat stood on the step, with snow in her blond braid and her bare feet blue.

She was holding a leather satchel against her chest with both arms.

It was Elowen Tarn, the ward, who was supposed to be asleep in Voltraine Hall waiting to be married.

"I came over the garden wall," said Elowen.

Her teeth were chattering.

"I'm so sorry," Elowen said. "The gate is locked, and I saw a light."

She looked at Calista.

"I don't know you, not really, Lady Calista. You were only ever kind to me in corridors."

"But he let the Earl's coachman into the house, and the coachman has a rope."

Calista pulled her inside and shut the door.

Ottilie had already dropped the knife and was dragging the girl's feet into the basin with her own.

"Warm," Ottilie said. "Do you have anything on under that coat?"

"A nightgown."

"I once played a maid in a play with less. Sit."

Calista put the poker back on its hook.

She noticed that her own hands were steadier than they had been all night.

"Did he lock you in?" she asked.

"No." Elowen swallowed. "He didn't even look up when I left. He was signing papers for the Princess's carriage."

She held out the satchel.

It was packed tight with folded papers, each one tied with a ribbon and marked in a round schoolgirl hand.

"I kept copies," said Elowen. "Of everything he ever made me sign. I didn't know what else to take."

Calista looked at the stove door, and the three lines of chalk, and the two women at the bench.

She picked up the chalk again.

Under the third line she wrote: a ward is not a bride until she says so.

"Please," Elowen whispered. "I have nowhere else."

Calista put a third cup on the table.

"Sit down," she said. "The bread's terrible. The tea is worse."

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