“Bernard, I’m sorry, but I have more important things to worry about right now than traipsing around Princes Street Gardens, pretending to be interested in whatever you have to say.” It was far crueler than she’d meant, but the words bypassed her brain and came right out of her mouth.
Bernard looked as if he had been slapped. He stood with his mouth open like a trout for a few moments before he smacked his lips together. “I assume I’ll see you at the ball, of course?” he said finally. The Almonts’ Ball was an annual affair in Edinburgh, a chance for Lord Almont to show off his latest art acquisitions and for everyone else to show off their most expensive gowns.
“Certainly, Bernard,” Hazel said glumly.
“Well then, it appears we have nothing more to discuss. I bid you good day, then, Cousin.” He left with a flick of his blue coat and left a blinking Charles to close the door after he was gone.
“Ughh. Finally!” Hazel said, throwing the lilies onto a side table and ripping off her shoes and stockings. She massaged her massacred foot. “I’ll need a hot bath to get this glass out. I’m sorry again for the mess, I’ll tidy it as soon as I’m, well, whole again. Honestly, the nerve of him, barging in without warning, acting like I committed some sin for not wanting to promenade with him. What is a ‘promenade,’ anyway? Just walking slower than any natural human gait so you can show off a new outfit to people distracted by how badly they want to show off their new outfits. It’s a pointless exercise in self-absorption that doesn’t even work because everyone involved is too self-absorbed to provide the admiration their fellows are in such desperate need of. And as if Bernard would need to be circling around the Gardens like a show pony to get people to notice his clothes; I swear, one could see that blue jacket from Glasgow. Ooof, just got it there.” Hazel withdrew a particularly barbarous shard of glass from her foot with her fingernails. “Charles, bring me a basin, will you? I should dispose of these bits of glass before they find their way into my other foot.”
Charles, who had been dutifully standing by the door, obliged. Iona approached, chewing the cuticle of her thumb. “If I may, miss? It’s possible that you were a bit, well, harsh with him.”
Hazel wet her thumb and ran it along a red stain on her leg. It came off. Good. Just dried blood then, and just a little scratch. “Harsh? He’s a man, isn’t he? He has the entire world at his feet. I think he can handle my turning down a promenade.”
“He is your betrothed, though,” her maid said to the floor.
“Not yet. Much as my mother wishes it were the case so she could get rid of me once and for all.”
Iona swallowed and twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “Perhaps, then, you should be sweeter to him, to ensure—”
“Oh, Iona, please. I will have my entire life to be sweet to him if he wants it. Can’t I have a single afternoon of mourning my future?”
Charles returned with the basin, and the three of them moved back to Hazel’s bedroom to begin the slow work of undoing the damage she had wreaked in her frustration. “Seems a pity,” Charles said, picking up a beetle that had fallen from its casing. “To throw these fine things away.”
Hazel plucked the beetle from his fingers and held it up to the light. The beetle was black, but where the afternoon sun hit it, it almost glowed an iridescent blue. “We won’t throw them away, Charles. Let’s just sweep up the glass and put the specimens back. I’ll replate them tomorrow.”
“Very good.”
Hazel watched Charles as he worked with the broom. And then she watched Iona watching Charles, and something close to benevolence rose like a tide in her chest. “You know,” she said, “Bernard wasn’t actually wrong about it being a lovely day to promenade. I can tidy the rest of this up myself. Why don’t the two of you go down to the Gardens? Take one of the carriages.”
The two servants stared at Hazel with astonishment.
“To the Princes Street Gardens, miss?” Charles asked.
“Together?” Iona asked.
“Absolutely,” Hazel said firmly. “Now, it’s chilly, be sure to take a jacket and scarf—but the sun is out, and heaven knows how rare that is in this part of the world.”
Iona’s face flipped between terror and delight. The effect was close to the look of an adorable but deranged woodland creature. “Are you sure you can manage on your own? Without me?”
“Iona, not to diminish your impeccable service, but I can absolutely manage an afternoon without you. I might take a walk down the ravine.”