Roderick

A few peaceful weeks pass. I conduct all my business from home. It involves sending letters by express couriers sometimes two or three times a day, but the cost is nothing to a man like me. Especially when it means I can continue to live this peaceful life in the country.

This morning I intend to go for a hunt. I’m having a later start than I would have liked, since I slept in after staying up last night reading. It’s a little after eight o’clock, and I’m washing my face when my door opens with a soft knock. I notice a black gown in the mirror and for some reason I’m a little disappointed to see a smiling maid with red hair wearing it.

“Good morning, Mr. Bentham,” her voice is low and sultry.

“Good morning,” I reply curtly. I start to pull my shirt on and she slides up alongside me with a flirtatious look.

“Do you need help with your buttons?”

I watch her in the mirror. “Are you offering to help me dress?”

“Or to undress, whichever you’d prefer,” she says, running her little nails along my arm. I watch her coldly. Her smile is so fake. The way her eyes keep going to my scar is obvious, but if I ask her about it she’ll act as though it doesn’t exist.

I’ve met so many like her, gold diggers willing to do anything to get their hands on my money. Even condescending, in their minds, to sleep with a hideous brute like me.

“I won’t be needing help today, thank you.”

“Alright. But if you ever need company, just ask for Viola.”

I smirk faintly. “I’ll remember that name.”

I’ll remember to tell Evelyn to fire Viola later, I think as I watch her go. I have no use for such employees, girls more interested in advancing their prospects than simply doing the tasks I pay them for.

A few seconds pass and I hear another knock. I look up in anger at the sound, but the dark head that bobs in the doorway instantly lowers my defenses, and I even catch myself breathing a little sigh of relief to see this maid. The quiet, unassuming one who never once looks up from her task, not to sneer at my appearance, nor to flutter her eyelashes at me.  

“I beg your pardon,” she speaks softly. “I’d assumed you’d be out by now, Mr. Bentham.”

“I slept in.”

“I was just going to grab the laundry, Sir. I can come back later if you’d prefer.”

“You’re not troubling me, carry on.”

She nods politely and goes to collect the hamper. I finish buttoning my shirt only to notice the cravat I wore yesterday sitting on my dressing table. That girl is at the door with the hamper when I call her over. “Wash this too.”

She sets the hamper down and walks over to take it from me, and our fingers brush faintly with the exchange.

“Thank you, Sir,” she murmurs, and leaves the room without ever looking up, once again leaving me staring after her.

What a contrast from my previous visitor, I think, looking briefly down at my fingers. And how ironic. Without standing out at all, she stands out to me more than anyone else.

Shaking my head, I don my tweed jacket a bit roughly, grab my rifle and head outside. I’m in a funny mood. Before I was annoyed with Viola’s flirtations, but now I’m just feeling oddly restless as I hike across my estate.

It’s a gorgeous sunny morning with crisp air and bright fall colors all around. It isn’t my first time out hunting; when I’m not working I spend the majority of my time outdoors. I see plenty of animals and even a few trophy deer, but I’ve yet to take a shot at any of them. It feels almost sacrilegious somehow, the thought of harvesting an animal in such a picturesque setting. Perhaps on a gloomier day, when the forest is shrouded with cloud and the leaves are gray with frost I’ll take one, but not today. It’s too beautiful to kill anything today.

After walking for several hours my grumbling stomach steers me back towards the house. As I crest the final hill I notice the dark haired maid again, taking in the laundry with her back to me.

I’m getting rather good at recognizing her, I think, though I’ve never once seen her face. I stop and watch her work for a minute, taking all my things off the line and heading back inside with a full laundry hamper. She shuts the door behind her, leaving me standing there on the hill with that same restless feeling I noticed earlier. A nagging, frustrating sort of feeling I can’t identify.

Slowly I make my way down the hill and back to the house, but I do not go to lunch. Suddenly I’m no longer hungry…

Over the next few weeks my sense of restlessness only grows. Day by day I become more antsy, uncomfortable in my own house, or is it my own skin?

I begin to catch myself looking for that girl, paying attention without meaning to, memorizing her habits and routines. I start to miss her when someone else comes to build my fires at night. And that annoys me.

 Then one cloudless mid-November morning I wake to find the grass is heavily frosted over, and wisps of fog snake here and there across the fields. I find myself in a particularly dark mood, and so I think I might easily kill an animal today, where otherwise I might have hesitated. Indeed, I think I probably must kill something, or else I’ll go mad with inexplicable frustration.

Downstairs in the dining room my whole body stiffens when I find it’s that girl’s turn to serve me, and immediately my guard is up. It’s her fault, I think. She’s the source of my temper, though I don’t know how, exactly. She is the same as ever, quiet and polite, her face turned to the floor so all I see of her is the back of her neck, and that pale C shaped scar.

I move past her without a word and seat myself deliberately. She moves to serve me. I’m used to being waited on, though for some reason this morning I find myself holding my breath every time her slender arm reaches in front of me.  

After she serves the meal she stands quietly against the wall, awaiting further orders. Stiffly, inelegantly I begin to eat, self-conscious of my scar and the way it affects the movement of my mouth, sometimes making chewing a messy chore. Then I remember she has never once looked at my face, and I grow even more annoyed. What’s the point of minding my appearance when she won’t even look at me?

With heightened aggravation I reach for my water glass, only to find it empty.

“Where’s my water?” I snap at her.

“Sorry? Oh!” she makes a little exclamation of concern and rushes to fetch the pitcher from the other end of the table. “Forgive me, Sir.”

In her rush to correct her mistake, she manages to knock my empty glass over and send it rolling across the table.

“Sorry!” she exclaims again, and in her effort to catch it before it can topple to the floor, she trips.

Without warning a wave of ice water from the pitcher she carries washes over me. Shocked, furious, I’m about to thunder at her when I look up into her frozen, mortified face. And my heart skips a beat.

For the first time, I see her face. Lovely and heart shaped, pale with pink cheeks, her soft crimson lips form a sweet little O that melts my white hot anger away to nothing. Her wide eyes framed with long dark lashes are locked with mine, captivating me completely. They’re the color of wine, I think distantly. Or of blooming roses.

My God, she’s beautiful.

Like this a breathless second passes between us— two at most— then a harsh voice cuts suddenly across the room.

“Thedra Clyde, what on earth have you done?!”