The Duke of Snow and Apples (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ben slapped Frederick on the back, nearly causing him to spit out a mouthful of small beer. “There’s our boy!”

Frederick swallowed carefully, and shifted across the bench to make room for him. The other footman glowed with good humor as he set his near-overflowing plate on the table and sat down.

Even at five thirty in the morning after a rare night of revelry, the servants’ hall where the Lower Five servants ate crackled with noise, conversation, and laughter. Especially at Frederick’s end of table. He seemed to have passed some sort of social test he’d heretofore failed, as ribald jokes, winks, and remarks of astonishment flew back and forth across the table.

“Trust Freddy to play chaste only to show up with the loveliest girl in the room on his arm!” said Gregory, from Frederick’s left.

“How could you tell?” Patricia asked. The still-room maid buttered her bread with a roll of her eyes. “She was wearing a mask.”

“Men just know,” said Gregory.

Frederick just wanted to finish eating his bread and cheese and bacon. Not that the conversation was exactly unpleasant. It felt nice to be included, for once, to be woven into the group instead of remaining the lone dangling thread. Still, the niggling fear that he might unintentionally give Charlotte away kept his tongue from wagging too loosely.

“She
was
the loveliest girl in the room,” he managed. Charlotte saw him as a man, and, he realized, he could be one as well among the Lower Five belowstairs. Just another man who loved a pretty girl. “To me, anyway.”

The assembled women, housemaids all, sighed and laughed, a chorus of wry notes.

Patricia pursed her lips. “This Daisy, she’s a village girl?”

“Yes.” Frederick took a bite of cheese to forestall further questioning.

To no avail. “I’ve never heard of her.”

“She’s not from Charmant.”

“How did you meet, then?”

“She visited.”

“She must have left quite an impression.” A sharp line cut between her eyebrows as her brow furrowed, and rust-colored threads of disapproval gathered about her face. Some of the crowd’s jollity abated.

“Maybe it’s true love.” Tall John’s voice rang from his previously silent corner. “Maybe Freddy can’t bloody well help himself.” A shifting range of tones played over his immobile features—rust as well, but it lightened into compassionate silver, with a glimmer of loyal jonquil.

“If that’s true, then there’s nothing for it,” Patricia said, her dark tones unrelenting, “but there are those closer to home who could have borne a smile or two from you.” She turned her head.

Frederick followed her look, trailing his gaze along the chattering ranks of gardeners, footmen, housemaids, and grooms until it rested on a familiar face framed by red curls and a white cap. Ellie, Patricia’s confidante in the still-room, poked at a congealing bowl of porridge, face blank.

“I’ve never seen her so glum,” Ben said. A sickly heat crawled its slow way up Frederick’s spine. Ellie, she who was all smiles for all people. Never too tired to laugh at others or herself. The still-room maid spooned some porridge into her mouth, slowly, languidly.

“Nor I,” Gregory said.

Heat built at the back of Frederick’s skull. It couldn’t be that. He thought he’d seen it last night, that hint of Gray at the edge of his vision, but he could have imagined it. He could be jumping at shadows.

Ellie, unaware of their scrutiny, lifted the last spoonful of porridge to her mouth just as the charmed bell around her neck rang, summoning her to the still-room. She jumped, and a blob of breakfast landed in her lap. She swore, but in a hushed voice, lacking heat. Brushing at the blotch on her apron, she stood up and made for the servants’ hall exit.

Power welled up behind Frederick’s eyes, transforming his vision. He didn’t want to know, but he needed to. Mingling and intertwining skeins of humor, frustration, boredom, sadness danced through the servants’ hall in front of his eyes, except in one small area, where a familiar, dull emptiness crouched like a stain on a vivid tapestry.

Frederick closed his eyes, and yanked his power back so quickly he might have heard a
snap
somewhere in his mind. When he opened them again, Ellie was gone.

“It’s because of you, you know.” Patricia’s voice stabbed through to Frederick’s core. “She’s always cared for you. At least as long as I’ve known her. Maybe even longer. She got used to getting the brush off from you, but at least you didn’t go sniffing after other girls. I hope what you got with Daisy is real because otherwise you’re missing a fine girl who’s right under your scale-cursed nose!”

Horror rose in him in a boiling wave. The Gray. He’d seen it. He’d summoned it. Ellie—she’d tried to ask a dance of him at the masquerade, but that tiny glimmer of jealousy, green as mold, in Charlotte had made him cry off. He’d wanted Ellie to go away. He’d made her go away.

Only a glimpse—maybe I only thought I saw it.
How quick he was to try and excuse himself, to find some reason to think this time would be different. To convince himself it wasn’t his fault.

“Are you even listening?” asked Patricia.

“No.” He rose from the table, broke eye contact, and walked away, mentally as well as physically cutting himself away from the warmth of the group. He couldn’t control warmth. He didn’t deserve it.

Frost. Ice. Rivers in winter.
Even behind his rebuilt wall of cold, a warm beat of hope continued to pulse
maybe
s,
perhaps
es, and
it couldn’t be
s. He struggled through the rest of the day while helping to erase all traces of celebration from the Old Hall. He tried to sort through his memories, of the times he’d used his magic, and of the times he’d talked with Ellie.

A bitter laugh squirmed in the back of his throat, but he refused to release it. How many days had it taken to lose nearly all his constraints? When had
just this once
when comforting a girl with an apple melted into
only too easy
with a woman in a scarlet gown? And when had
that
turned into
why wouldn’t I?
whenever Charlotte walked into the room with a coy look that demanded he explore her colors to see what lilac laughter lurked behind her eyes? How did all that tie into how he’d hurt Ellie?

As he passed the kitchen, he nearly collided with Ben and a heavily laden tea tray. Ben veered, his innate servant’s balance kicking in at the last minute to help him steady the tray before he spilled anything. He wobbled a bit on his feet, making the china rattle. High color glossed his cheeks.

Frederick gaped, relieved at the momentary distraction from his own problems. “Blessings, Ben, are you drunk already? We haven’t even served dinner yet.”

“I’m not drunk.” The other footman retained the use of consonants, at least. A good sign. “One of the waiters Mr. Lutter hired left out a bottle of Elbodge whiskey from last night. Twelve years old. They was servin’ that upstairs!” He harrumphed. “Don’t look at me like that, Freddy. Who’s to say Gelvers doesn’t use his precious wine-cellar keys to take a nip now and then, eh?”

“Gelvers has the head for it,” Frederick said. “You don’t.”

Ben’s enhanced confidence wavered. “I’m not that sozzed, am I?”

“Enough to get caught out if you serve tea like that. You’re as red as a russet.” Frederick sighed. “Here, give me that. Take over for me in the Old Hall.”

“Add that to the ever-growin’ list of how much I owe you.” Ben deepened from russet to beetroot as he relinquished the weight of the tray. “Even with a pretty girl like Daisy, you’re still steady Freddy.”

If only they knew
. He accepted the tea tray. “Where is this going?”

“Yellow drawing-room.”

Frederick reached the drawing room to find most of the house party guests and Dowagers present. Charlotte sat pinned between the Duke of Snowmont and Sylvia on a settee meant for only two. Relief kindled in her eyes in the brief moment she looked at him, then she just as quickly bent her head back to the book of Marshford’s plays that most of the guests in the room seemed to be studying.

Sylvia looked up to ask her great-aunt a question, and in the process her eyes passed over Frederick. He froze, knowing he’d have to put the heavy silver tray down at some point if he wanted to make any sort of escape. However, Sylvia turned to Viscount Elban and murmured something amusing. Frederick relaxed and crossed the room to lay the tea tray on a table next to Lady Balrumple.

The elderly viscountess shut her book with a snap. “You, sir, are the villainous footman!”

Frederick barked his shin against the table, setting down the tray hard enough to make every teacup clink in protest.

“I thought
I
was the villainous footman,” Mr. Colton said, flipping through his pages.

“No, you’re the priest who marries Lady Fiona and the Ratcatcher,” said Lady Balrumple. “I’ve decided Lord Noxley should play the villainous footman.”

“Naturally,” Noxley drawled. “Better a footman than a Ratcatcher.”

Sylvia sniffed. “His Grace the duke is the Ratcatcher.”

“Yes, quite,” said Snowmont.

Frederick jerked at the bland, familiar tone of the duke’s voice. He’d avoided paying too much attention to the duke. However distantly they were related, the current Snowmont brought Frederick’s past far too close to comfort, and with it the risk of exposure. Indulging any interest in him had seemed like tempting fate.

The duke shifted in his seat, rubbing against Charlotte, whose face puckered with discomfort. Snowmont continued reading from their shared volume, his face bearing neither the sneer of intentional rudeness nor the careless smile of the oblivious. However much Charlotte’s sister wanted to engineer a match between her and the duke, it wasn’t enough to overcome the aristocrat’s apathy.

Certainty lodged its cold fingers into the back of Frederick’s brain. If
he’d
been the one sandwiched that close to Charlotte, he wouldn’t have been able to keep his hands off her. He wouldn’t have been able to read his lines without her hand on his arm, or utter a word unless he was certain she was listening. He’d have had to read his lines with a particularly heavy edition of Marshford’s plays laid across his lap. How could any man take a single look at that woman and believe it enough? No sane man could.

Before he could think, before he could prepare himself for the type of answers he might find, he released his power, with a flourish of desperation. Colors coalesced and merged, everywhere except for the Gray. The Gray that was Snowmont with all of his sentiment leeched away.

The Gray itself wasn’t a true color, like silver or pearl or the shade of a dove’s wing. The Gray was absence. Emptiness. Staring at Snowmont through the haze of his magic was like gazing at a tear in the world, a tear in Snowmont’s very being that had let all of his emotions leak out.

This was what came of abandoning his cold place. When he’d walked in on Charlotte and Snowmont the day before, he’d allowed his anger and jealousy free to run riot in his heart instead of withering them in the bud—and look what they had done. Look what he had done.

This puppet, this empty sack, sat amid the gaily chattering people who passed it cups of tea and cheerful remarks. No one could see the dearth of his colors except for Frederick. Only Frederick lived in the world of colors—Frederick and those he briefly let in. How could anyone else be responsible?

“Freddy!” Lady Balrumple’s voice started Frederick back to himself. Her hands perched over the tea tray, dipping to arrange cups on saucers and distribute cream and sugar, taking everything well in hand. “You may go now.”

Frederick forced himself to nod and walk out of the room, but as soon as he left the threshold he broke into a run. Snowmont’s slack face rose in his mind, combined and mirrored with the faces of the others he had hurt, their identical smooth expressions merging one into the other.
Snowmont, Farnsby, Ellie. Mother.
Nausea swelled in his throat.

…

Frederick must not have a head for wine
. Out of the corner of her eye, Charlotte watched him march from the room, his face pale with a distinct greenish cast.
I don’t believe I saw him drink more than two glasses last night
.

She returned to the task of awaiting her part for the amateur theatrical, repressing her smile on the outside while letting it spread freely within. Joy grew outward from her heart at the sight of Frederick, as tenacious and fertile as a vine. It sent unfurling tendrils upward until she feared everyone must see the shining leaves of it behind her eyes, even as roots, tangled and knotted as much with confusion as passion, tightened around her chest.

She hadn’t thought it possible to feel elated and frightened at once—that someone could see through the silliness of her and find it lovely, and how painful it would be to uproot herself when the party was over. She couldn’t focus on the words of the play anymore. Why was she wasting her time sitting on uncomfortably crowded furniture reading silly plays when she could be with Frederick?

Sylvia jabbed her with an elbow, dragging her attention back to the present. “Aunt Hildy’s talking to you.”

“What? Hmm?”

“You’re going to be Fiona, darling,” said Lady Balrumple.

“Oh. Wonderful.”
I get to marry the Ratcatcher
. A blush suffused her face and beside her, Sylvia scowled and looked like she was about to mutter something before she remembered that ladies didn’t speak under their breath.

After all the parts had been given out, the guests split into groups to go over certain scenes. Charlotte ended up in the conservatory with the duke, Sylvia, Augusta, and Sir Bertram. Snowmont read his lines as the dashing Ratcatcher as if reciting a tailor’s bill, while Sylvia—cast as the loyal maid who helped the poorly matched couple elope—experimented with polite ways to speak while gritting her teeth with disapproval.

Sir Bertram played Fiona’s father, Lord Firkon, who sought to run his vermin-chasing son-in-law through with a sword before the honeymoon. He rattled off a long soliloquy about a daughter’s duties with barely more inflection than Snowmont’s—his flat style of reading missing the double entendres that riddled the piece.