It didn’t help that she had been distracted by her talents. The light reflecting off the silver plate and making rainbows in the chandelier made her fingers pulse with energy. She clenched her fingers around her fork, she sat on her other hand, she did everything she could to manage the sparks, but to no avail.
“For goodness sakes, Tesara, will you stop wriggling!” Alinesse snapped, clearly at her wits’ end with her bothersome daughter.
Tesara remembered her face flaming with embarrassment, as everyone’s attention turned toward her.
“Wool-gathering again,” Uncle Samwell snorted. “Don’t know where she gets it from; changeling child. She’s not a Balinchard.”
I wonder, Tesara thought. I wonder what would have happened if Uncle had not so casually exposed her that night? He had used her, mocked her to make himself look bigger to his friend. It had been cruel, thoughtless, childish – in short, it had been an Uncle Samwell sort of thing to do. She didn’t remember much about that night but she remembered the anger and the shame. She was angry at her uncle and her mother and father, who didn’t stand up for her, and ashamed that she had been exposed in front of Parr, a stranger.
It was too much. She had jumped up, spilling her water glass, candlelight catching the crystal with little explosions of brightness.
“Leave me alone! I hate you! I hate all of you!”
Chapter Sixteen
“What on earth are you doing?”
Tesara jumped at Poll’s accusing tone. “I–” She started. The housemaid had come in to the dining room and was staring at Tesara.
Poll sighed. She gave Tesara a level look. “I can’t do it all, you know. Mrs Aristet needs both of us to get the house ready, or the master will be displeased.”
“I’m sorry,” Tesara said, meekly. “I just sat for a minute. I’ll do it now, I promise. And what next – upstairs?” She suddenly wanted very much to see her old bedroom, even at the same time dreading what changes might have been made to it.
“Just come find me and I’ll tell you what next to do.”
Poll disappeared back out the door, and Tesara sighed with relief. She got up and began sweeping.
The work was hard enough to be absorbing, and mindless enough to allow Tesara to notice all the changes, and even more unsettling, where things had not changed at all. As she and Poll dusted and swept and polished and mopped, struggling with large water buckets and heavy string mops, she was distracted by the changes. The stairways carpet, for instance, was new; the banister was polished to a fare-thee-well, but the little worn area at the bottom from where she and Yvienne used to slide down it in their bloomers showed through the polish.
“I don’t know why we have to clean the bedrooms,” Poll said, huffing and puffing as they struggled with stuffing a duvet in one of the guest bedrooms. “No one stays over.”
“We might go faster if we divide up the work,” Tesara suggested. She swept back her hair from her forehead, making a face at how grimy her hands had become. “I can take the front bedrooms.”
Poll gave her a look as if she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t find Tesara on one of the beds having a lie-down, after her false step in the dining room. But the desire to get through the work overcame her, and she finally allowed grudgingly, “All right. I’ll take the carpet sweeper over the hall.” Poll left her to it.
I don’t want to do this. But she knew that this was what she had come for – to see her old room, and to see what had become of it, and to remind herself what had become of her. The new owner had repainted the walls a creamy blue with white molding. The fireplace was unlit and unlaid, the hearth swept clean. The bed was piled high with thick blankets, the curtains pulled back for air. She had never had curtains on her bed. Tesara looked around. There was her cupboard. She opened the door and peeked inside. It was scrupulously bare of any clothing or toys and smelled of dust. There was no remnant of her past She swiped at it with her feather duster in case anyone came in to see what she was doing, and closed it up again.
The window seat still had its same embroidered cushion, threadbare and faded from the sun. She dropped her dust mop and dust rags and sat down on it, feeling the warmth of the sun, the glazing keeping out most of the brisk sea wind. She half-laughed, imagining what Poll would say, were she to pop in on Tesara, once more being shockingly un-housemaid-like.
She drew up her knees in the thick, ill-fitting dress, and propped her chin on them, looking out the window. She had loved this view. She could see over the Crescent and down over the city, out over the harbor of green and blue, the spiky masts of merchant ships poking into the sky. The air was so clear she could see the smudge of the lighthouse at Nag’s Head. There were the distant mountains on the other side of the harbor, and there, dots near the horizon, were the Dolphin Islands.
It was from here, when she was twelve, that she had destroyed her family and its fortunes. The night of the dinner party.
Chapter Seventeen
She had run from the dining room, brushing past Albero, the footman. Tesara caught a glimpse of his round-eyed expression. She slammed the door to her room and flung herself onto the bed, closing her hands into fists underneath her. She didn’t cry, though her throat ached with the lump in it and her eyes burned. It wasn’t fair. The words thrummed to the beat of her heart. It wasn’t fair. She and Uncle were friends. He always took her side. He had
