I did hear what the physician said. That my father is too weak to eat safely. That he could easily choke on his food, even if we cut it up into little pieces, like I’d done with the eggs this morning.
The eggs that now douse my skirts.
“But if he doesn’t eat, he’ll die.” The lump in my throat swells. “We can’t just let him starve.”
Guilt pangs in my chest for talking about my father like he’s not in the room with us. But he’s not in the room with us, not really. If he was, he wouldn’t have tolerated Clarissa calling me vile. Instead, his eyes are closed, his head lolled to the side as he leans against his wife. He’s groaning, mumbling words that aren’t words.
My stomach knots, and I have to look away.
“Of course your father is dying, can you not see that?” Clarissa gestures over to my father with her free hand, the one she’s not using to support him. She acts like she’s there for him, but the truth is, she wouldn’t touch him until a servant came in and changed him out of his soiled robes. “Why can’t you just let him die in peace? Instead, you have to be a selfish little brat about it. You’d rather him suffer so you could hold on to him. For what? A few days longer?”
My throat is on fire, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from sobbing. I hate Clarissa, and I hate her sniveling daughters.
“Go make yourself of use and help Bruno clean the stove. And the rest of the kitchen while you’re at it. You stunk up the entire servants’ quarters this morning, and I don’t feel like my dinner tasting of burnt eggs.”
My mouth hangs open. Surely she can’t be serious. “But Father…”
“Get out. You can come back when you’re done.”
My heart stops. Come back when I’m done? What does she mean? Father might not make it through the hour, much less the time it’ll take to scrub the kitchens down.
“But—”
“Out.”
I hesitate, rocking back and forth on my heels. For a moment, my father’s eyes flutter, and I think he might reprimand Clarissa, but then his mouth parts, and it’s only a cough.
There’s that sloshing sound again.
Tears well in my eyes, but I refuse to give Clarissa the satisfaction, so I rush into the hall, slamming the door behind me.
I lean against the wooden doorframe and give myself to the count of ten.
Bruno’s massive shadow hovers over me as I scrub the filthy stove. He knows better than to assist me—at least, overtly. When Clarissa and her daughters moved into my father’s manor, they brought along a few servants of their own to join the staff. At first, Bruno seemed excited about the extra help, but he knows better now.
We have a theory that Clarissa tips her kitchen maids for bringing her ill reports of the rest of the staff.
Still, he whispers suggestions to me. Which soaps best remove grime. How long to let them seep so that the filth falls away from the iron bars.
I’m grateful, but even with Bruno’s tricks, it’s clear this task will take me hours.
I’m not sure my father will make it that long.
Even as the black sludge drips from the oven grates, I see the dark, bloodied mucus smearing his sheets. I hear his cough in every rattle of the iron grates.
By the time I finish my task, grime stains my skirts and my cheeks are just as soiled. But I don’t mind. The oven is clean, and I’m free to return to my father’s side.
I’m at his door, about to burst through, when my stepsister Elegance waltzes out.
She’s two years my senior, with silky brunette hair, smooth, white skin and full lips that never seem to lose their rosy tint.
I fight the urge to pin her to the wall, to ask what she was doing in my father’s room.
She bounces her eyes over my filthy attire in a single fluid motion. “You can’t go in there like that. You’ll give Papa an infection.”
“He’s not your papa,” I hiss, unable to control my tongue. Elegance doesn’t possess a drop of affection for my father, and by the way her pink lips curl, it’s clear she only calls him such to rile me. I make to push past her, but she sidesteps in front of me.
“He’s already ill enough without you making it worse,” she says, her voice so sweet and high that I often wonder if she spends her mornings frantically scribbling down notes as the nightingales sing directly outside her window.
I know that’s where they perch, as the room used to be mine.
“There’s nothing I can do that will make him any worse, and you know that.”
She quirks a perfectly angled brow. “And why do you say that?”
Because he’s dying. But my stepsister already knows this. She just wants me to have to say it aloud.
“Let me make myself clear,” I say, advancing on Elegance. She backs away, clearly less than eager for my grimy clothes to blemish her satin gown. “If you don’t let me through this door, I will kill you. And I’ll take my own sweet time doing it too. That way, you’ll have years of wondering when it’s coming.”
Elegance shudders, and for a moment, I think I might have her truly terrified of me. Perhaps I should coat myself in kitchen grease more often. But then the door behind her opens and out waltzes Clarissa.
“Mother!” Elegance launches herself toward her mother, clinging to her in relief. That nightingale voice—the one that I’m sure Elegance practices to fool potential suitors into thinking she’s older than a mere fourteen—warps into a childish whine, as it always does around her mother. “Blaise said she’s going to…she’s going to…” Elegance sniffles, and she forces her eyelids closed with such intensity, I wonder if she might pop a blood vessel.
A single tear squeezes out.
“She threatened to kill me.”
Her sniffles grate against my ears, but to Clarissa, they might as well be a siren song.
