“Oh, Latin!” Mrs. Hardy exclaimed. “Whydid they afflict us with it in the schoolroom? And why must we continue afflicting students with it?”
“I don’t know why we didn’t think of putting our guests through a series of trials, like Hercules,” Mrs. Durand added. “Certainly, staying at The Grand Palace on the Thames is worth the effort. Although if there is an eating contest, I fear our guest Mr. Delacorte would win every time.”
“Oh,eating!” Aurelie said enthusiastically. And a bit inanely.
She was very tired.
Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand regarded her with little smiles.
She was jabbed suddenly with a little ice pick of alarm: something was moving on the periphery of her vision. Her field of vision in general had seemed to expand since she’d fled. She wondered if this enhanced sense was the sort a squirrel or rabbit or some other prey animal might possess. The legacy of danger.
It turned out to be merely Dot. She was taking the slow gliding steps a courtier might make when carrying a queen’s train, bearing a tea tray in her hands.
She looked as somber and absorbed as a priest swinging a censer.
Aurelie watched her progress, fascinated now.
Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand watched Dot, too. Each of their brows sported faint puzzled furrows.
When Dot arrived at last, she slowly, slowly, very slowly lowered the tray.
Peculiarly Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand seemed to be holding their breaths.
When the tray finally touched the table without a clink Dot leaped back and gave a delighted little clap.
And Aurelie gave a start. She glanced uncertainly at Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand. Ought she to applaud? Was this an English tea ceremony she’d somehow neglected to learn?
“Well done, Dot,” Mrs. Hardy approved, without batting an eye. With alacrity and no other comment, she supplied Aurelie with a scone on a little plate. “Mrs. Gallagher, would you like to pour?”
“Thank you, I shall.”
She realized at once she shouldn’t have offered to do it. Dot had managed to lower the tea tray without a rattle. But when Aurelie lifted the teapot, she noted to her astonishment that her hands were visibly trembling.
The ladies of the house surely noticed.
“Well, we will not be asking you to clean the Augean stables,” said Mrs. Durand when she took up her cup. She said this with clearly full confidence that Aurelie, as an educated lady, knew what the Augean stables were, because such were the nature of assumptions. “It’s merely that we consider the guests who stay with us for any length of time as sort of family. It’s important to us that the atmosphere remain congenial, warm and lively and safe, so we like to have a little conversation with everyone who walks through our doors. It’s our way of ascertaining that any new guests will be happy here and that our current guests continue to peacefully enjoy their stay.”
Said pleasantly. And it seemed quite reasonable.
But it also sounded abitlike a challenge.
And among the new things that Aurelie was learning about herself was that she was more stubborn than she realized, and challenges only made her very badly want to win.
“So you are saying you are very careful not to admit rogues,” she said lightly.
There ensued an interesting, minute little pause.
“We wouldneverwittingly admit a rogue,” Mrs. Durand said vehemently.
“Have you cast anyone into the street for being found wanting?” She was teasing a little.
“Why, yes,” Mrs. Hardy said pleasantly. “Why? Have you uproar in mind, Mrs. Gallagher?”
“I have a long nap and a splash in a wash basin in mind. Perhaps uproar a little later, when I am refreshed.”
Fortunately, they laughed.
Her tension eased just a little more. Not enough to compel her to touch her back to the settee, but still. What a pleasure it was to feel a little more like herself. To laugh and tease and charm, the things that others had seemed to value about her, all of the things she had once valued about herself, too.