Chapter 4.5
Byron returned from his ride in time for dinner, though of course he had fed from one of the horses earlier. He met Edward at the table in the formal dining room regardless as was their habbit and they sat down together at one corner of the huge, dark stained table.
“What have you been up to all afternoon?” The good doctor questioned him conversationally.
“I was riding. Thinking about what to do this spring. I’ve grown bored with just studying on my own again and I’m thinking that perhaps I should find something to do with myself.” Byron answered him.
“I thought that the work you were doing on the orphanage, and caring for Miss Elena was the work that you were looking for?”
Margaret interrupted them before he could answer. She was carrying their dinner plates stiffly as if she’d rather be doing anything else in the world. She gently placed Edward’s plate before him, and then turned and nearly dropped Byron’s plate on his lap.
He glared a warning at her, but she ignored him and stalked out of the room, her proud back tall and full of indignity. When she was gone Byron seemed to deflate as if the iron that held his back up had suddenly melted.
“I’m worried about you, my friend.” Edward spoke when he heard the door to the hall close. “I’m worried that this tension between you two is not getting better. It’s bad for you both. You need to do something.”
“What can I do?” Byron asked him, “Send her away? This has been her home and the home of her family for two generations now. Her parents are buried in my graveyard. Her child was born here. Her husband works for me. If I send her away I’ll be shirking the responsibility for decisions I made and responsibility I took and that’s dishonorable.”
The doctor looked at him seriously.
“You have unrealistic Ideas about honor, Byron. I don’t see why you should suffer over antiquated ideals, especially when I think it doesn’t really benefit her either. She is as miserable being around you as you are being around her. I think you would be doing her a favor.”
“I’ve considered it.” Byron answered, “but I will again.”
Though they didn’t eat with the servants they did eat the same food as the servants at the estate. Byron looked at his plate and decided that Cook was trying to be kind to him. Beef stew was his favorite. It at least was mostly protein, which he imagined his body might get some use out of, and salty. Those flavors he could taste, unlike sweet or sour, which always interested his friend the doctor to no end. Thankfully the advent of Elena and her need for Edwards gentle attentions, would free Byron from the full attention of that inquisitive mind, if for only a few days.
“I’m starving.” The doctor muttered before he dove into his food.
Byron watched him eat, but couldn’t bring himself to start. His mind was too full of thoughts, his chest too full of conflicting emotions to concentrate on the fiction he should be maintaining. True it wasn’t good to become complacent about pretending to be human, but he was feeling indulgent after seeing Margaret tonight. He wondered why she’d brought the food herself, when there was any number of servants who could have done it.
They had in the past made an unspoken pact to try to avoid each other, which wasn’t easy even in a house this big.
“She brought dinner herself just to tweak my nose!” Byron muttered to himself.
Edward looked up at him from his plate, studying his pale friend as if he were an interesting scientific problem. He analyzed Byron’s posture, the way his arms were crossed over his chest, and he was glaring across the room at nothing, as if he could see through the wall to where the servants were eating.
He was at least reasonably sure that wasn’t one of the man’s powers so he took it for what it was, brooding, and he sighed.
“Give me your plate.”
Startled out of his moodiness Byron smiled and exchanged the doctor’s mostly finished plate with his own.
“Why thank you Edward, that’s very kind of you.”
“If you keep being upset like this I’m going to get fat.” His friend muttered, and then started in on the new plate. “I was wondering if you would do me a favor in return?”
“Name it.” Byron offered.
“Cook is about to prepare something for the girl. Why don’t you take it up to her? A visit with someone other than me and the maids might cheer her up a bit. She’s positively melancholy. Its not any good for her.”
Byron smiled at the thought of sitting with the girl, a fact that the doctor duly noted.
“I’d love to,” Byron answered enthusiastically, before he realized what he’d said. “I mean, if you’d like me to, that is.”
Elena was sitting in the lounge next to the bed when he knocked on the door. As Byron stepped inside he found himself memorizing her. The way her loose amber hair fell over her cheeks, the curls softening the lines of her face that were too thin from the repeated illnesses. The way her eyelashes fluttered as she read the large volume in her lap and her lips sat slightly parted.
With one hand she turned pages, her fingers balled around a handkerchief that she blotted her nose with occasionally while she rested her head on the other, her elbow against the arm of the chair.
When he realized he as staring, he roused himself and moved to place the tray on the little table in front of her.
“Thank you.” She said mechanically without looking up, but when he just stood there, she did finally glance up, giving a little jump in surprise when she realized it was he.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Murphy!” She repeated more enthusiastically and dropped her book, which of course promptly closed. “Damn, I just lost my place!”
Her response was gratifying, though he had to smile at the mild curse.
“You’re welcome.” He answered, bending to pick up the book and hand it back to her.
She seemed to realize what she had said, and she blushed.
“Not exactly a ladylike thing to say was it?” She asked.
“I suppose not.” He answered, smiling at her with that sense of fondness that was overwhelming him.
She caught her breath when their eyes met and she saw how they twinkled madly with his mirth when he smiled. Her heart beat that much faster, and he sat down on the edge of the bed across from her.
“You didn’t have to bring this yourself.” She told him, picking up the tray and settling it in her lap.
“I’m aware of that.” He laughed a little, and the low chuckle made her want to squirm. “But I thought I’d visit with you for a while, if that’s alright with your Ladyship.” His accent heightened with the old fashioned mode of address and he gave another of those little bows.
“Stop teasing me!” She plead, but she couldn’t help the laughter and decided to get into the game. “I’ll send you to the headsman!”
It started out as a chuckle but he laughed at her laughing. They made eye contact again, trying to be serious and stop laughing, but that made it even worse. It was one of those moments where two people who are very intense somehow spark the humor in one another and just can’t stop laughing.
Unfortunately it made her cough and she went into a fit of it. He grabbed her and held her until it passed. His eyes were now serious again and she hated that her illness had brought that wonderful moment between them to an end.
“What did you bring me to eat, Servant?” She questioned, trying to get him back into the game. His reaction was immediate and he let her go to lean back indolently on her bed.
“I don’t have any idea, My Lady.” He responded, his grin threatening to turn into a laugh again. “Open the cover and see.”
It was more beef stew and Elena noticed Byron making a little face at it.
“What’s wrong with it?” She questioned.
“Nothing,” he assured her, “That’s what we had for dinner. You know how sometimes when you’ve just eaten something it ceases to smell good to you? That’s all.”
He had remembered something like that when he was a child anyway and he hoped the lie was convincing. He should have known what was inside the container, as he’s smelled it all the way from the kitchen, but he had stopped noticing such things once in a while. And the food had been a means to an end of getting to see Elena and nothing further had occurred to him as being important about it.
She forked one of the pieces of meat suspiciously and tasted it. He watched every nuance of her expression as the experimental subjective look turned to pleasure.
“Oh this is quite good, actually.” She told him, “Thank you.”
“So what have you been reading?” He questioned.
She finished the bite and handed him her book, which he’d failed to examine as he picked it up before.
“Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam.” He wasn’t sure what to say. “I wouldn’t have picked this out for you myself. An Elegy is hardly appropriate reading for a beautiful girl.”
She said nothing, but blushed at the complement, pretending to be engrossed in her food. He paged through to number 39 and read aloud.
“Old warder of these buried bones,
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But sorrow - fixed upon the dead,
And darkening the graves of men -
What whispered from her lying lips?
They gloom is kindled on the tips,
And passes into gloom again.”
He lingered over the text a moment before he looked over at her. There were unshed tears in her eyes. He felt for her thoughts and she was thinking of herself in that graveyard, the visitor striking the tree to make the pollen fall down upon the grave to adorn her monument.
“Read something Else Elena.” He sat up and handed it to her and looked into her eyes.
“Its comforting.” She answered him, and put the tray away to the side of the little table, then curling up again. Holding the volume like a lifeline to her chest.
“Did you finish?” He glanced away at the food on the tray and stood.
“I don’t eat that much when I’m sick.” She explained. “I get hungry then I’m full after just a few bites. The doctor says I should eat more but I can’t bring myself to do it.”
“I understand.” He nodded. “You should get some rest.”
He slipped by her and picked up the tray. He was part of the way to the door when she spoke again.
“Stay with me, Byron.”
She called him by his first name and the intimacy of it struck him. He turned to look at her and found her sitting on the edge of her bed, her face drawn down into sorrowing lines.
He put the tray down on the table and sat down beside her, wrapping a comforting arm around her. She leaned her head against his chest and sighed. Her emotions washed over him.
“You miss Howard’s place don’t you?”
She nodded. “Don’t you ever miss your home, Byron?”
“This is my home Elena, what do you mean?”
“I mean when you left England.”
Understanding dawned on him.
“You mean my accent, do I still have one after all these years?”
She nodded and he smiled, warming to the subject.
“I didn’t miss England so much when I left. I left because I wanted to be somewhere different, to be someone different. I also had Edward with me so it was like I had someone from home along for the ride, as you Americans say it.”
“I’d love to see England.” She sighed, “All my favorite writers are English, and there are castles!”
“Ah, you become sick of castles after a while. But if you wish it, I will take you there someday.”
“I’d like that.” She answered, “I hope I can live long enough to do it.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
“Elena, I will do everything I can to help you.”
“I know, Byron, thank you.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek lightly, “But you’re only human. There are some things you can’t stop.”
He looked into her sad eyes, felt the burning place on his cheek where her lips had touched him and was moved. There were more things under the stars than humans, little did she know, but the price was often too high to pay.
“Come, lets get you into bed,”
He stood and helped her under the covers, she was paler now than she had been and he worried over her. He turned off the light by her bed, took the tray and made it to the door.
“Good night, My Lady.”
“Pleasant Dreams, Lord Byron.”
“What have you been up to all afternoon?” The good doctor questioned him conversationally.
“I was riding. Thinking about what to do this spring. I’ve grown bored with just studying on my own again and I’m thinking that perhaps I should find something to do with myself.” Byron answered him.
“I thought that the work you were doing on the orphanage, and caring for Miss Elena was the work that you were looking for?”
Margaret interrupted them before he could answer. She was carrying their dinner plates stiffly as if she’d rather be doing anything else in the world. She gently placed Edward’s plate before him, and then turned and nearly dropped Byron’s plate on his lap.
He glared a warning at her, but she ignored him and stalked out of the room, her proud back tall and full of indignity. When she was gone Byron seemed to deflate as if the iron that held his back up had suddenly melted.
“I’m worried about you, my friend.” Edward spoke when he heard the door to the hall close. “I’m worried that this tension between you two is not getting better. It’s bad for you both. You need to do something.”
“What can I do?” Byron asked him, “Send her away? This has been her home and the home of her family for two generations now. Her parents are buried in my graveyard. Her child was born here. Her husband works for me. If I send her away I’ll be shirking the responsibility for decisions I made and responsibility I took and that’s dishonorable.”
The doctor looked at him seriously.
“You have unrealistic Ideas about honor, Byron. I don’t see why you should suffer over antiquated ideals, especially when I think it doesn’t really benefit her either. She is as miserable being around you as you are being around her. I think you would be doing her a favor.”
“I’ve considered it.” Byron answered, “but I will again.”
Though they didn’t eat with the servants they did eat the same food as the servants at the estate. Byron looked at his plate and decided that Cook was trying to be kind to him. Beef stew was his favorite. It at least was mostly protein, which he imagined his body might get some use out of, and salty. Those flavors he could taste, unlike sweet or sour, which always interested his friend the doctor to no end. Thankfully the advent of Elena and her need for Edwards gentle attentions, would free Byron from the full attention of that inquisitive mind, if for only a few days.
“I’m starving.” The doctor muttered before he dove into his food.
Byron watched him eat, but couldn’t bring himself to start. His mind was too full of thoughts, his chest too full of conflicting emotions to concentrate on the fiction he should be maintaining. True it wasn’t good to become complacent about pretending to be human, but he was feeling indulgent after seeing Margaret tonight. He wondered why she’d brought the food herself, when there was any number of servants who could have done it.
They had in the past made an unspoken pact to try to avoid each other, which wasn’t easy even in a house this big.
“She brought dinner herself just to tweak my nose!” Byron muttered to himself.
Edward looked up at him from his plate, studying his pale friend as if he were an interesting scientific problem. He analyzed Byron’s posture, the way his arms were crossed over his chest, and he was glaring across the room at nothing, as if he could see through the wall to where the servants were eating.
He was at least reasonably sure that wasn’t one of the man’s powers so he took it for what it was, brooding, and he sighed.
“Give me your plate.”
Startled out of his moodiness Byron smiled and exchanged the doctor’s mostly finished plate with his own.
“Why thank you Edward, that’s very kind of you.”
“If you keep being upset like this I’m going to get fat.” His friend muttered, and then started in on the new plate. “I was wondering if you would do me a favor in return?”
“Name it.” Byron offered.
“Cook is about to prepare something for the girl. Why don’t you take it up to her? A visit with someone other than me and the maids might cheer her up a bit. She’s positively melancholy. Its not any good for her.”
Byron smiled at the thought of sitting with the girl, a fact that the doctor duly noted.
“I’d love to,” Byron answered enthusiastically, before he realized what he’d said. “I mean, if you’d like me to, that is.”
Elena was sitting in the lounge next to the bed when he knocked on the door. As Byron stepped inside he found himself memorizing her. The way her loose amber hair fell over her cheeks, the curls softening the lines of her face that were too thin from the repeated illnesses. The way her eyelashes fluttered as she read the large volume in her lap and her lips sat slightly parted.
With one hand she turned pages, her fingers balled around a handkerchief that she blotted her nose with occasionally while she rested her head on the other, her elbow against the arm of the chair.
When he realized he as staring, he roused himself and moved to place the tray on the little table in front of her.
“Thank you.” She said mechanically without looking up, but when he just stood there, she did finally glance up, giving a little jump in surprise when she realized it was he.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Murphy!” She repeated more enthusiastically and dropped her book, which of course promptly closed. “Damn, I just lost my place!”
Her response was gratifying, though he had to smile at the mild curse.
“You’re welcome.” He answered, bending to pick up the book and hand it back to her.
She seemed to realize what she had said, and she blushed.
“Not exactly a ladylike thing to say was it?” She asked.
“I suppose not.” He answered, smiling at her with that sense of fondness that was overwhelming him.
She caught her breath when their eyes met and she saw how they twinkled madly with his mirth when he smiled. Her heart beat that much faster, and he sat down on the edge of the bed across from her.
“You didn’t have to bring this yourself.” She told him, picking up the tray and settling it in her lap.
“I’m aware of that.” He laughed a little, and the low chuckle made her want to squirm. “But I thought I’d visit with you for a while, if that’s alright with your Ladyship.” His accent heightened with the old fashioned mode of address and he gave another of those little bows.
“Stop teasing me!” She plead, but she couldn’t help the laughter and decided to get into the game. “I’ll send you to the headsman!”
It started out as a chuckle but he laughed at her laughing. They made eye contact again, trying to be serious and stop laughing, but that made it even worse. It was one of those moments where two people who are very intense somehow spark the humor in one another and just can’t stop laughing.
Unfortunately it made her cough and she went into a fit of it. He grabbed her and held her until it passed. His eyes were now serious again and she hated that her illness had brought that wonderful moment between them to an end.
“What did you bring me to eat, Servant?” She questioned, trying to get him back into the game. His reaction was immediate and he let her go to lean back indolently on her bed.
“I don’t have any idea, My Lady.” He responded, his grin threatening to turn into a laugh again. “Open the cover and see.”
It was more beef stew and Elena noticed Byron making a little face at it.
“What’s wrong with it?” She questioned.
“Nothing,” he assured her, “That’s what we had for dinner. You know how sometimes when you’ve just eaten something it ceases to smell good to you? That’s all.”
He had remembered something like that when he was a child anyway and he hoped the lie was convincing. He should have known what was inside the container, as he’s smelled it all the way from the kitchen, but he had stopped noticing such things once in a while. And the food had been a means to an end of getting to see Elena and nothing further had occurred to him as being important about it.
She forked one of the pieces of meat suspiciously and tasted it. He watched every nuance of her expression as the experimental subjective look turned to pleasure.
“Oh this is quite good, actually.” She told him, “Thank you.”
“So what have you been reading?” He questioned.
She finished the bite and handed him her book, which he’d failed to examine as he picked it up before.
“Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam.” He wasn’t sure what to say. “I wouldn’t have picked this out for you myself. An Elegy is hardly appropriate reading for a beautiful girl.”
She said nothing, but blushed at the complement, pretending to be engrossed in her food. He paged through to number 39 and read aloud.
“Old warder of these buried bones,
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But sorrow - fixed upon the dead,
And darkening the graves of men -
What whispered from her lying lips?
They gloom is kindled on the tips,
And passes into gloom again.”
He lingered over the text a moment before he looked over at her. There were unshed tears in her eyes. He felt for her thoughts and she was thinking of herself in that graveyard, the visitor striking the tree to make the pollen fall down upon the grave to adorn her monument.
“Read something Else Elena.” He sat up and handed it to her and looked into her eyes.
“Its comforting.” She answered him, and put the tray away to the side of the little table, then curling up again. Holding the volume like a lifeline to her chest.
“Did you finish?” He glanced away at the food on the tray and stood.
“I don’t eat that much when I’m sick.” She explained. “I get hungry then I’m full after just a few bites. The doctor says I should eat more but I can’t bring myself to do it.”
“I understand.” He nodded. “You should get some rest.”
He slipped by her and picked up the tray. He was part of the way to the door when she spoke again.
“Stay with me, Byron.”
She called him by his first name and the intimacy of it struck him. He turned to look at her and found her sitting on the edge of her bed, her face drawn down into sorrowing lines.
He put the tray down on the table and sat down beside her, wrapping a comforting arm around her. She leaned her head against his chest and sighed. Her emotions washed over him.
“You miss Howard’s place don’t you?”
She nodded. “Don’t you ever miss your home, Byron?”
“This is my home Elena, what do you mean?”
“I mean when you left England.”
Understanding dawned on him.
“You mean my accent, do I still have one after all these years?”
She nodded and he smiled, warming to the subject.
“I didn’t miss England so much when I left. I left because I wanted to be somewhere different, to be someone different. I also had Edward with me so it was like I had someone from home along for the ride, as you Americans say it.”
“I’d love to see England.” She sighed, “All my favorite writers are English, and there are castles!”
“Ah, you become sick of castles after a while. But if you wish it, I will take you there someday.”
“I’d like that.” She answered, “I hope I can live long enough to do it.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
“Elena, I will do everything I can to help you.”
“I know, Byron, thank you.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek lightly, “But you’re only human. There are some things you can’t stop.”
He looked into her sad eyes, felt the burning place on his cheek where her lips had touched him and was moved. There were more things under the stars than humans, little did she know, but the price was often too high to pay.
“Come, lets get you into bed,”
He stood and helped her under the covers, she was paler now than she had been and he worried over her. He turned off the light by her bed, took the tray and made it to the door.
“Good night, My Lady.”
“Pleasant Dreams, Lord Byron.”