Venture glanced at Border again. Border, kissing up to his Crested friend. He ought to be preparing for a career in politics, not the Warforce. Accusing him of doing something improper with his master’s daughter was just the sort of thing Border would do. The sort of thing that could ruin not just Venture’s life, but Jade’s. And the perfect way to punish Grant Fieldstone for breaking with tradition. Grant, who’d risked so much for him. He felt sick at the thought.
He turned back to Justice. “What do you want me to do?”
“Call her Miss Fieldstone. Treat her the same way every other manservant in the house treats her. The way you treat her grandmother.”
Venture didn’t move, didn’t pick up his bag as Justice proceeded down the path. When Justice glanced over his shoulder to see if he was coming, he crossed his arms and stood firm.
“When will you be home tonight?”
“Master wants my help going over his accounts. It could be late.” Hopefully. Hours poring over columns of mind-numbing numbers with Grant would be preferable to stretching out by the fire with Justice.
“I expect you to come home as soon as you’re dismissed,” Justice said pointedly.
Venture gritted his teeth. It’s pretty clear what you expect, what you think of me, Justice. He’d had enough of Justice’s expectations. Enough of everyone’s expectations.
Venture jumped up to the driver’s seat of the carriage beside Able, without a word. Able’s smile of greeting faded.
“That bad, was it?”
Venture shook his head. “Justice.”
“That all?”
Venture just let out a long sigh. “He’s not the only one who doesn’t want me in there.”
Able got the horses going and drove off the center grounds, out of town, and Venture thought he’d gotten away with ending the conversation without ever really starting it, until they were headed out of the valley, up the hill.
Able shifted somewhat uncomfortably, and Venture knew something was coming.
“It’s never easy going against the grain, Vent,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “But you’ve got a God-given knack for it.”
Venture cracked a smile. “And they say God is all-wise.”
“Wiser than you and me, that’s for sure.”
Venture knew better than to argue about that, however uncertain he felt at the moment about the truths he’d been taught. Besides, one thought continued to push itself in front of all the others in his head—What am I going to say to Jade? How can breaking her heart be the right thing? How can it be honorable?
Venture and Able arrived just in time to wash up for dinner. The other servants trickled in, and soon the table was crowded with food and covered over with a tangled web of laughter and conversation.
Nine-year-old Bounty, who lived in the Big House’s servants’ quarters with his father, a free servant, cocked his white-blond head at Venture. “You haven’t said anything about your training, Vent. You get kicked out already?”
“Bountiful Baker!” old Herald said. “Where are your manners?” But everyone knew there would be no consequences for Bounty, the youngest of Herald’s children, born to his late wife so late in life.
The others had taken notice of this scrap of conversation, and apparently found it more interesting than their own talk, for they stopped, waiting for his reply.
“I’m doing just fine. Pass the potatoes please, Connie?”
“Master’s anxious to know how you’re doing, Vent,” said Connie, Mrs. Bright’s sixteen-year-old niece. “Almost went to see you himself.”
“That would teach you to be so uppity, wouldn’t it? To have your master come see you train.” Bounty laughed. “I wonder what all those guys would think of you then?”
For that, Mrs. Bright knocked him on the back of the head and reached for his plate in a threatening way. “You keep that up, Bounty, and one of these days when you’re old enough for it to be proper, Vent’s going give you a beating like you’ve never seen! Goodness knows nobody else is giving you what you deserve.” She glared at Herald, who averted his eyes.
“I don’t pretend not to be a servant when I leave this house,” said Venture hotly.
“Bounty, you little fool. Why should Vent care what those boys think of him, as long as they know he’s better than them on the mat? And I’ll bet they all do by now,” Able said.
Venture ducked his head to hide his smile. That was the truth, mostly. He was a better fighter than any boy his age, and just as good as many of the older ones, though he wouldn’t have said so himself. But now that they’d moved on to more intense training without him, now that he’d be busy learning to wield a sword and throw a knife instead, how long would that last? The only hand-to-hand fighting he’d be practicing now would be for the rare chance that he lost his weapons during a confrontation. And Earnest had told him that if that ever happened, then that meant he’d really screwed up.
Venture dug into his potatoes and tried not to think about how Lance and Colt and Nick and the other elites had emerged from their training room at the end of the day, completely drenched in sweat. Exhausted in that satisfying way that he’d probably never feel again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Summer’s Third Month, 655 After the Founding
Venture grasped the freshly split pine with his sweaty hands and tossed it off the chopping block. He placed another sticky hunk on the block. His back ached. His arms ached. He was used to aching. The blisters on his hands, though, those he hadn’t had in a while. He’d been wielding hammer and ax in the hot summer sun twice as much as usual for a week now, and his skin, though tough, had reached its breaking point, splitting along with the latest log.
Grant’s newest dog, a fine Illesian retriever given to him by a silk merchant of that country to sweeten their latest business deal, rose from the shade of a nearby tree to dance in a circle and paw at his feet. Still half a pup, Lightning was sweet, but sticky, too, like a drizzle of honey. She stuck by Venture all day, trailing him, begging him to play. He shook his head at her and pointed back to the tree. She obeyed, and he picked up the ax and prepared to swing it, but put it right down again. His hands were too slippery with sweat and the bloody ooze of his broken blisters; so was the ax.
He wiped his messy palms and the ax handle on his pants, then leaned over, peeled the end of his shirt from his body, and brought it to his dripping face. It was too sweat-soaked to do any good. He let go of his shirt and raised his head, and he saw her—Jade—one slender hand on her hip, the other dangling a towel in front of him.
“Miss Fieldstone,” he managed to say, though he bowed his head just as much to avoid looking at her as to give a gesture of respect.
“Here.” She nudged the towel at him, for he still hadn’t taken it.
“Thank you, Miss.”
“Will you stop that?”
“Miss?” he said, as if he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“That! Stop that Miss nonsense. It’s ridiculous.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss.”
“Why are you being like this?”
“Jadie, shh!” Her voice was rising, the way it always did when she got all riled up.
Jade smiled triumphantly. Venture’s shoulders sagged as he realized what he’d just done. He’d called her by her first name only. Worse, her nickname. He’d been trying to do what Justice had told him to do for months. To treat her like his mistress. The very next day after Justice had spoken to him about it, Jade had asked Venture to go riding with her, and he’d crushed her by telling her he didn’t think it was a good idea for them to do those kinds of things anymore.
“Miss,” he corrected himself, “You’re a young lady, and my mistress.”
“There’s no one here. You could call me Jadie if you wanted to.”
“No, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right.”
“It’s not right for you to call me anything else!”
The afternoon sun sparkled on the sweat dr
oplets that speckled her nose. A few curls had escaped her clip and clung to her sticky forehead. As usual, she was barefoot, even on the carpet of wood chips around the chopping block. Tomorrow, she’d be fourteen. Rose’s long battle with Grant about her upbringing had been settled; at fourteen, she’d have to quit going to Beamer’s and start acting like a young lady. Soon enough she’d be in silk slippers and matching dresses, shut away in her sitting room with embroidery in her lap. Soon enough she wouldn’t be the Jade he knew anyway.
He buried his head in the towel and massaged the sweat off so he wouldn’t have to look at her and imagine the Jade-who-wasn’t-Jade anymore.
“Venture! Your hands!” She yanked them from the towel and let it drop into the dust.
“What?”
She held one of his hands in each of hers and turned them over, gaping at the enflamed splinters and the nasty, open blisters.
“They’re covered with blood!”
“Nothing is covered with blood. It’s just a few smudges.”
“You are bleeding!” she reiterated, and the dog joined her, running over and whining anxiously at her side.
“Miss, it’s all right. It’s just some blisters. They’ll go away.”
“Sir, it is not! How can he treat you like this? Now that you’re big enough and strong enough to be of more use, he thinks he can treat you like a beast of burden!”
She was impossible. Grant had provided him with an education, and now with training for a career as a guard, all during the hours a servant ought to have been working for his master. Venture was determined to serve him well whenever he could.
“Able’s sick. You know that. Herald is in town with your father. Someone has to chop the wood. I don’t have a problem with doing my job, so why should you?”
Jade’s eyes blazed green fury at him. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared him down. The look threatened him to apologize or else. He’d endured it many times in the past, but this time it elicited a different response.
“Why don’t you just go back inside where you belong?” He turned his back on her and resumed chopping, harder and louder than before, drowning out the sound of her huffy departure. He’d rather die than complain to his master about his work. He tossed the wood into a wheelbarrow, shaking his head, as though to shake free all thoughts of Jade Fieldstone. But moments later a familiar voice interrupted him.
“Miss Jade said bring you this before you die of heat,” Bounty announced, holding out a large tin cup of water.
So much for trying to think about something else. Venture took it grouchily, asking, “She say anything else?”
Bounty nodded. “She said for me to help you move the wood. She seemed mad. You think I’m in trouble?”
“No,” Venture sighed after taking a long drink.
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s mad at me.”
“What’d you do?”
“Never mind.”
“Something bad?” The kid couldn’t keep the eager smile off his face.
“No.”
“If she’s mad at you, why’d she tell me to come help you?”
“I guess she’s not mad enough to want me dropping dead out here.”
“Were you about to drop dead?” Bounty asked, sounding almost hopeful.
“Do I look like I’m about to drop dead?”
“I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to get it. Just stop yapping and help me get this wood in here.”
Bounty silently helped Venture load the wheelbarrow, but he wasn’t finished bothering Venture yet. With the wheelbarrow full, he clambered on top. He was a heavy boy, the result of too much of Mrs. Bright’s good cooking and too little work on Bounty’s part.
“Come on,” Bounty said. “I’ll bet you can’t push it.”
Venture took another long drink of water, all the while giving Bounty a warning look.
“Could you teach me to fight?” he asked in response to Venture’s silent threat of bodily harm.
“Why?”
Bounty shrugged.
“Well, who do you want to fight?”
“I don’t know. Just, anybody messes with me, I could fight them.”
“Who messes with you?”
“Nobody,” he admitted.
“How about this. Anybody messes with you, you come tell me, and we’ll figure things out.”
Bounty spewed a curse at him as thanks for the offer, and Venture’s already dark blue eyes turned to midnight. He grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and hoisted it up as fast and hard as he could, flinging Bounty’s chubby body a good two feet up in the air before he fell to the ground with a crunch and was subsequently pummeled with firewood.
“Ow!” Bounty scowled up at him, and began to swear again, rubbing his elbow, looking shocked.
Bounty mouthed off to him weekly, at the least. And always before, Venture had dished out a lecture on how he would never get anywhere in life until he learned to watch his mouth, a warning about what would happen if Mistress Rose heard him talking like that, or, at the worst, he’d made some sort of empty threat involving a bar of soap. Unfortunately, the kid was too young for him to teach him a lesson with his fists.
Venture shoved several pieces of wood out of the way and stepped toward Bounty, surprised at himself, half wanting to laugh and half sorry. With one bloody hand he pulled the boy up by his dirty shirt collar and set him down a few feet clear of the mess.
“Anything broken?”
“No, dung-hole!”
“Good. Then you can take care of this.” No longer sorry at all, he gestured at the scattered wood, turned, and strode toward the house.
“What? Where’re you going?” Bounty protested in a high-pitched whine.
“Inside,” Vent said casually, without a backward glance. “Don’t fill the wheelbarrow too full. You won’t be able to push it.”
A stream of insults followed him as he left the outbuildings behind, but along with them came the gratifying thunk, thunk, thunk of firewood filling the groaning wheelbarrow.
Venture lifted his face to the still, cloudless sky. It must be getting close to supper time. He wondered what Mrs. Bright was making. Maybe she’d give him a nice bowl of cold water to soak his hands in. Maybe she’d even have some ice to spare.
He meandered through the gateless opening in the stone walls of the service courtyard and ducked under the rows of dishtowels and nightgowns standing on the clotheslines, stiff and dry in the windless heat. Lightning trotted hopefully behind as he passed the two large bake ovens and reached the little washroom connected to the kitchen at the back of the house.
“You stay here, girl. No dogs in the house. I’ll bring you something tasty after supper.”
He opened the small wooden servants’ door and stepped through, remembering the day he’d first been able to reach the top of the frame with his fingertips. Another year, and he’d have to duck. The stone floor of the dim, windowless room was so invitingly cool, he yanked his boots off immediately just to feel it under his feet. He placed them under the iron hooks where the servants hung their extra clothes and aprons.
Around him were shelves of laundry and cleaning supplies and a table for folding and ironing. Inside a stone trough there was the water pump, and on a shelf above, fresh towels and soap—his favorite things to see at the end of a hard, hot day.
He pulled off his filthy, dripping shirt and scrubbed up, though the soap stung his hands and made him wince nearly to the point of tears. Then he pumped water over his head until it was thoroughly soaked, and toweled off just enough not to drip, so that he didn’t lose all of the cool wetness. He grabbed the clean shirt he’d hung on his hook early that morning and tugged it over his head as he stepped up into the open kitchen doorway. A curtain of stifling heat billowed at him as he entered.
“Mrs. Bright, have you got any—”
There was no plump, aproned woman humming over the supper pots. Instead there was Jade,
sweating at the fire, a long wooden spoon held up to her lips.
“Miss.” Venture bowed, and he must have looked quite displeased to see her there, for Jade made an extra effort to seem not to care.
“Needs more salt, I think.” She tossed some in.
Jade kept her eyes on the pots, while he glanced from her to the washroom doorway, his internal debate made obvious by the uncomfortable, indecisive shifting of his feet. Would it be worth foregoing something that smelled absolutely delicious for supper, and settling for bread and cheese at home, just to avoid being stuck in the kitchen alone with Jade?
She turned to him with one hand on her hip, the other wielding the drippy spoon. “Well, Vent, aren’t you going to sit down?”
“Um, Miss, where’s Mrs. Bright?”
“She’ll be back in a minute, I’m sure. She’s teaching me how to make her wine sauce. I think I’ve almost got it, too,” Jade babbled with false cheerfulness, no longer looking at him.
“Oh. That’s good.”
Recently Jade had taken up cooking as a sort of hobby. Under Rose’s supervision, she’d begun taking her turn planning and supervising the meals several times a week, preparing to run her own household one day. Jade, however, wasn’t content to plan and delegate. She couldn’t seem to keep herself from dabbling in the actual work of meal preparation and even clean-up. In the face of Rose’s reprimands, she’d declared openly that she intended to learn to cook. Jade had convinced her father that it would be nice to cook for her husband herself sometimes. Hadn’t her own mother liked to do the same on occasion? But Venture doubted that Jade was in the habit of thinking about what sort of wife she’d like to be. More likely she was bored and lonely and preferred old Mrs. Bright to the girls of Society.
“You got done earlier than I expected today.”
“Bounty’s finishing up for me,” Venture mumbled.
“Bounty? Chopping wood?”
“No, no. I wouldn’t give that kid an ax. He’s just bringing it in.”
She turned to him abruptly, her exasperation breaking through her feigned calm. “For goodness sake, sit down!”
Venture Untamed (The Venture Books) Page 6