Loving Tales of Lords and Ladies

by Abigail Agar

  It was three stories, but she rarely ever had reason to go beyond the ground and first floors. The second floor was where her mother and father resided along with another set of bedrooms that were often occupied by relatives or important guests.

  Penelope made her way down the hallway, especially careful not to make any noises as she passed by the room where the Duke slept. She wondered what he dreamed of. Did he dream of anything after the doctor’s administrations? Penelope had never liked doctors much, and she liked them much less once she had taken the time to study science.

  Miss Lorraine often said that she had a clever brain, but sometimes Penelope felt her brain could stand to be a bit less clever. She sometimes wondered what it would be like to just want the trivial things that other women her age admired. Those lovely new dresses that everyone adored or perhaps a husband to keep happy.

  It was not that Penelope did not want children. She walked along the hallway and thought of a house filled with children. What house it was she could not say, but she wanted that house. Unfortunately, children meant men, and men meant grief. The world was a cruel place that tore women asunder, and Penelope expected no less from it.

  Downstairs, she padded softly in her slippers through the rooms and hallways towards the kitchen. Once there she set about warming some of the milk to help her sleep. She was just lighting the stove when she heard a voice behind her. “What are you about now?”

  Penelope jumped and turned guiltily towards the cook. Cook was an older woman, with her hair always pulled back and pinned. Even now, freshly roused from her bed, the woman’s hair was pinned up to perfection. Penelope guessed that she must sleep that way.

  “So, cat got your tongue?” Cook asked. All Penelope had ever called the woman was Cook, but her name was actually Margaret. Penelope knew that because she had heard others call the woman by the name. But she dared not do so.

  Penelope gave the woman a sheepish smile. “I could not sleep.”

  “And you thought you’d come into the kitchen to warm some milk? More like burn some milk,” Cook grumbled. “Move, let me.”

  Penelope obliged the woman and quickly got out of her way. Cook was gruff, but Penelope had known her since she was a little girl. Cook also would not let Lord Winchester boss her around, and Penelope admired that about the woman. Short, stocky, but filled with fire, Cook never took anything off anyone. She would just as soon hit the King himself with her rolling pin as to take a sharp word from him.

  Penelope sat on a stool and watched the woman work busily to warm the milk. Cook added spices to it, and Penelope watched with interest. A wonderful aroma wafted over as Cook took the pot off the stove. She sat it on the table in front of Penelope and then set out two mugs. “I might need a bit myself,” Cook explained with a wink as she filled the mugs with the warm white liquid.

  Cook nudged a mug towards Penelope who eagerly picked it up. Penelope cupped her hands around the mug and sipped the liquid. She made a noise of appreciation. “How do you always make it taste so good?”

  “Practice,” Cook said simply as she sipped her own mug of milk. “A pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg makes it better, and my mother swore on its ability to help her sleep. I find it helps me too.”

  Penelope smiled. The spicy flavour of the milk drink and its warmth going down her throat made her relax. They sat there for a long while sipping their milk until Penelope could hold back a yawn no longer.

  Cook gave her a smile. “I think it is off to bed with you. I am not surprised that you have had a hard time sleeping. You’ve been through a shock.”

  “I feel so tired now that I could sleep through a battle,” Penelope said as she stretched her arms over her head.

  Cook nodded. “Feeling like nodding off myself. Go on with you.”

  Penelope gave Cook a wave and headed back up to her room. The walk back did not lessen the warm fuzzy feeling that the milk had given her. She went straight to her bed and collapsed into the soft blankets.

  Rolling into them she drifted off to sleep not worried about men or marriage. There was plenty of worrying that she could do tomorrow.

  Chapter 4

  The dreams lay heavily upon Jules. There were words and voices all around. The forest was dim and dark, and he wondered where the stones had gone? Had they fallen away and he with them? Perhaps that was what he felt when the angel stood before him.

  Now the forest stretched quiet and still. He turned around and pondered that he felt nothing. The wound in his side was still there, the blood still on his cheek, but he felt nothing beyond a numbing cold.

  He took a tentative step forward, and the earth lay still and flat. Jules sighed with relief. No more did the rocks roll up in waves beneath him. He felt no pain or fatigue. Was this death?

  Had the angel caught him and brought him here? The angel was gone, and she had taken the light with her. Jules looked around, but the trees that edged the clearing he was in seemed to all resemble each other, creating a wall of likeness that halted his steps.

  Dread welled up in Jules that he had never felt. Was he asleep? Was he dead? Where were his parents? This was his punishment then for not finding them the truth. Jules nodded as if that was right and just.

  There was movement. No, Jules corrected. Nothing moved. Everything moved. Pain seared through him as if he had been burned alive, and he cried for it.

  “Is it cold?” a feminine voice asked. Jules whipped around but saw no one. He could not speak. He could not bring forth sound. Fear stood with him in the dark forest and stole his voice.

  Jules sank to the ground. For a long while, he sat in the dark with the night. Then he felt the world move. It swayed and bounced. The pain made Jules’ mouth open in agony, but no sound came out. The forest had stolen his voice, and he had nothing but the pain.

  Where am I? Jules thought the question so hard that perhaps someone would hear it. Perhaps the angel would hear his prayers if he just prayed hard enough. Was there not enough forgiveness in all of Heaven to save him?

  He did not know what his folly could have been that damned him to this particular corner of darkness, but Jules recanted it. He threw it into the fire, and he hoped it burned away. There was a movement then.

  The fog crept out from between the trees. He eyed it with trepidation. It moved like a thing of spirit and intellect. It moved as if it knew his fear and manifested it.

  “You are bleeding,” a familiar voice said.

  Jules’ head snapped to the side, and he saw his mother. Her long dark hair was braided, and she looked as she had when Jules was no more than seven in years. “Mother,” Jules tried to whisper, but no sound came.

  She eyed him with pity. Oh, if she could have eyed him with any measure of sympathy or comfort, but no there was only pity. She was the mourners at the funeral and his old friends he met in the streets. Pity was all that echoed back to him, and Jules drowned in it.

  Jules looked away for it was all that the forest had left him to do. He had no voice to speak with. Only his body listened, and the very earth trembled when he dared to defy the forest. He knew that he would die as surely as he knew that this was not Heaven.

  There was a carriage, a rumbling carriage. Jules could not tell if he were in it or outside of it. The images and sensations blurred, and he moved his lips. There were voices, and they were near, but he could not see their owners. His eyes were sewn shut by the forest and the dark.

  Back in the clearing of the forest, Jules gasped at the pain. He gasped at the sounds and the agony that tore his mind apart. He wanted to rest. He wanted to sleep. He… Jules marvelled that he even would take death.

  Someone was talking, but their words were not for Jules. He could not understand them. They seemed foreign, and when they hit his ears, he heard only noise. Jules covered his ears in a vain attempt to stop the sound, but it did nothing as if his hands were not real and solid enough to block the noise.

  Where am I? Jules asked in his mind yet again. And again, there was
no answer. He closed his eyes, but he still saw the forest. His body was a thing of smoke and shadow.

  The fog that crept through the forest licked along his outstretched legs. He could not feel it. He could not feel the grass wet with cold dew beneath him. He could not feel even his hand upon his skin, Jules realised.

  All that Jules felt was cold, except when the world was shaken. When the world shook, Jules felt fire and pain so pure that he cried with it. Light and sound were echoes in his mind, and he could not reach them.

  Jules gasped and wondered if he breathed. He could not feel his lungs take in the air, nor the relief of it. Something was pulling and tugging him, but it was not of his design. Jules could not see what touched him. What he saw never touched him.

  “You should have died,” Thomas said suddenly. He was so close that Jules fell back away from the man. His appearance before Jules so suddenly made him scream out wordlessly. “Why did you think you were better than them? You deserved to die more than they did.”

  Jules shook his head. He moved his mouth to deny what Thomas said, but the forest allowed him no reprieve. Thomas sneered at him. The man seemed to blur and reshape himself. Jules cried out wordlessly, noiselessly at the sight. Thomas faded, and Lord Portland took his place.

  The man smiled at Jules and held out his hand. “Let me help you,” Lord Portland said. “You cannot do this alone. What happened when you tried?”

  Jules closed his eyes, but he still saw the man. Tears slid out of the corner of Jules’ eyes. Lord Portland clucked his tongue. “Poor Jules,” the man said. “Everyone knows you murdered your parents.”

  Jules shook his head. He did not murder them. He did not.

  Lord Portland said, “Well, someone did, and we all know that you bribed the court to say you were innocent. Look at you.”

  Jules found his eyes looking down at his hands. They were covered in blood. The blood was not his own, and he knew it as sure as he knew anything. “No,” Jules whispered.

  He blinked his eyes open. There was noise. There were lights. “Light,” Jules whispered in a hoarse voice. The pain seared through him, and he could not even scream as the agony seemed to press down on his lungs.

  “Your Grace,” a man’s voice said. “Doctor, he is awake.”

  A man came into view as if he were standing over Jules somehow. The forest was gone. He was in a room. Jules panted as the pain subsided.

  “Rest, Your Grace,” the man said in a kind tone. He held Jules’ gaze. There was something near Jules’ face. There was an odd smell, and then Jules’ eyelids grew heavy.

  Jules shook his head and whispered, “No. Do not make me sleep, please. Do not send me back there.”

  The next instant, Jules blinked, and he was in the forest again. Tears slid down his cheeks. He had been free, and the bittersweet of the momentary release made the nothingness of the forest all the more focused. Jules sank down into despair and refused to take note of the forest. He did not look up at passing wooden boots or familiar voices.

  This was all there was, and Jules resigned himself to it. Jules drew in a breath he could not feel. He looked up at the sky where no stars shone. The forest had him and would never let go.

  ***

  The sun was entirely too bright. That was the only thought that entered Jules’ brain as he blinked and put up his hand to ward off the vile light that sought to slice right through his head with the pain it caused. He groaned and grumbled at the sunlight, but it did not falter.

  Feeling that the sun was not going to give an inch, Jules attempted to roll over and sit up to get away from the rays of light. He made it so far as the rolling over was concerned, then lay against the pillows and bit down on the pain that seared through his right side as if hot coals were under his skin. The pain subsided little by little until it was almost bearable. Jules lay still fearing to even breathe too deeply.

  There was tightness around his head, and Jules gingerly reached up with his left hand to touch his head. Under his hands, he felt gauze. He groaned and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Light burst behind his eyes, and it felt as if someone had taken the bellows to the coals under his skin as the heat erupted in his side.

  Jules cursed and willed himself to be still. The pain nearly caused him to topple over, but he remained sitting by sheer will alone. Jules noted more bandages around his waist. So last night had not just been a horrible nightmare.

  A frown settled on Jules’ face. Where was he? This was not his home, nor was it a room he recognised. He looked around for a bell or something that he could use to call a servant. Perhaps they could tell him where he was.

  Seeing nothing, Jules sighed. There was nothing for it; he would have to try to make his way out of the room. Jules looked around again, this time trying to spy the rest of his clothing but saw nothing. “Where have they taken my clothes?”

  Jules sucked in a breath and held it as he pushed himself up to stand. The pain was better now that he expected it; he forced himself to move through the burning pain and looked around the room as best as he could. The room was clearly a guest room and not one that saw much use by the sparseness of it.

  His coat was nowhere to be found. The burning pain at least kept the chill of the morning away while Jules falteringly made his way around the room in only the bandages and his trousers. Jules sighed. There was blood on his trousers, and he feared for the state of the rest of his clothing. It was all replaceable, but Jules was loathed to lose his coat.

  Snippets of the night before came to Jules as he looked around for anything that might be used to store clothing. He had been pursuing Lord Portland but had lost the man. Or had he?

  Jules pressed his lips together as he thought about the person who had attacked him in the alley. He had felt sure that it had been someone of a low station, but it would not have been hard for Lord Portland to have disguised himself, especially in the dark alley.

  Jules pulled open a cabinet and saw a shirt lying within it as if it had been placed there as an afterthought. It was not his shirt, but it looked close enough to his size. He grasped the shirt and eyed it distrustfully. There were no coat or pants to go with it, but it would do if he could find his boots.

  “Disguise or not, I let myself get into that situation, and I lost him,” Jules whispered. “What a fool,” Jules chided himself. Jules’ hand clenched around the white shirt. “He will not get away from me again. If I see him, I will get my answers.”

  As Jules looked at the shirt, he heard footsteps that seemed to be getting closer to his door. He slipped the shirt on as quickly as he could. He did not quite manage to button it all the way up before the door opened without even so much as a knock.

  A young woman and a servant carrying a tray came into the room and stopped as if they were as surprised to see him as he was to see them. The young woman’s mouth fell open and then quickly snapped shut. Jules clasped his shirt together as best he could as he swayed slightly from his exertions.

  “I did not know you were awake,” the young lady said. Her speech, despite her obvious surprise, was eloquent and soothing. Jules decided the young lady must be a daughter of some noble to have such a good bearing about her. Her face looked familiar, but Jules could not quite place it.

  Jules said, “Yes, so I see.”

  The servant looked altogether uncomfortable at the situation, but the young lady carried on as if this was perfectly normal. “Gretchen, set the Duke’s food down there on the side table. Thank you.”

  The servant did as she was asked and then straightened. “Miss, you really ought not to be in here when His Grace is so undressed,” the older woman said gently to the young lady.

  “He is our guest,” the young lady reminded the servant who looked at the younger woman as if she was like this often.

  Jules looked at the young lady then. He had seen her somewhere before, at the party perhaps. Yes, she had been there last night. The young woman’s beauty caught him, and he marvelled as she lifted her han
d to place a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hair looked like spun gold, and Jules remembered then that he had seen the young woman with her mother.