Aristocrat | ✓

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

     "How have you been?" I asked, even though I could see it. Her wrinkles were deeper, and her hands were already scarred from working on the farms this summer.

     "I've been well," she answered anyway, giving me a dimpled smile before looking at my clothes. "My, these look expensive..." she trailed, and I felt a bit embarrassed, forgetting that the tailoring of the clothes sent to be from the Count was as high fashion as they could come.

     "Come on, it's time to greet your father," my mother said, tugging my arm so that I followed her to the cottage. I went in with her, glad that the animals had been sent out since spring, and supply storage had moved outside since the start of summer, so I wasn't met with a crow exec common room that smelled of chicken poop. Instead, my father was on a rocking chair with my dark-haired brother on his lap.

     "Manfred," he said without shock in his tone. My sisters must have told him I was here when bringing in the bags I'd brought with me.

     "So pretty!" Isabella said from the other end of the room, making me look over without replying to my father. She was holding up an embroidered length of cloth. My mother walked over to her, making her leave the bag and its contents alone.

     "The Lord must really fancy you." I looked back at my father at the sound of his voice. I stared at him with parted lips, unsure of what to say. Ever since the incident, I had with Alistair he'd been watching me—making me uncomfortable with his suggestions that I was engaging in buggery. It made me uncomfortable. I understood that felt I was less of a man because I had been too ill to learn skills that he had wanted me to. I had fainting spells where I found it hard to breathe if I did something too strenuous. It didn't help that 'fainting spells' was a noted 'woman's disease comparable to, or accompanying, hysteria.

     For the most part, I had brushed a lot of my father's suspicions away because I was innocent, but with Lord Evenus, I was not.

     I didn't reply to him and instead made to go grab my brother, but my father held him close, refusing to let him go. I pretend that it didn't happen before excusing myself so that I could go to the bedroom. I sat on the floor, staring at the door as I listened to my family talk to each other about the presents the Lord had sent with me. My mother saying something about making clothes and selling them off, and my father suggested sending them back with me.

     "We shouldn't accept things with those intentions." I'm not sure anyone else understood what my father meant, but I knew he was talking about intents of courting. He must think the Lord was courting me as one did with a woman. I bit down on my bottom lip before looking down at my fingers. That's what the Lord was doing in a sense. Or would I be like a mistress, since he embraced me too?

     Shaking my head, I put my bag away before taking a nap on the mat laid out on the floor. Isabella shook me awake to come and have dinner. Bread and some spreading—very far from the expensive meats and vegetables I had grown used to in the castle.

     "Your face is so bright now. Did you even go outside when you were in the castle?" Mathilda asked, biting into a piece of bread.

     I nodded. "I rode a horse sometimes, and I learned how to hold a gun." A part of me was saying these things so that my father could hear them. I wanted him to stop thinking of me the way he did. I wanted to show him that I had learned how to do the things he wanted me to when I was awake. He didn't even know how to ride a horse, and he was too poor to afford a gun, so in some ways, I was a man in ways he could never be.

     "You rode a horse?" my younger brother asked me, and I nodded, watching his face lit up.

     "You touched a gun?" It was Mathilda who said this, and I nodded in her direction before turning to my food.

     There was silence amongst the adults as my sisters and younger brother spoke about the horse I had ridden.

     "You should thank the Lord when you go back to the castle," my mother said, looking at me from across the table. She had taken off a scarf, and her shoulder-length brown hair was cupped around her face. "Also, I should cut your hair before you leave. It's so long now."

     I nodded. That was true. Marie had helped me snip at it at some point, but it was longer than my parents were used to seeing it.

     "I'm sure the Lord makes him keep his hair that way," my father said, making my mother raise a confused brow at him. He didn't explain his words, so my mother ignored him, but I couldn't. I understood what he meant—what he was implying. The implication that the 'woman' in a male-male pairing had to be feminine.

     Long hair equaled womanly.

     I wanted to throw up.

     My face grew warm, and my chest felt heavy. I wasn't sure what part upset me more. The fact that he was poking at my love for men, or the fact that he was implying that I was being a woman mimic. I got up, deciding to take a walk outside for a bit. My father's eyes followed me as I left through the front door. I let out the breath I was holding when I got outside, before wandering to the back of the house to rest my back on its walls as I stared up at the stairs.

     At this time in the castle so would be going up to Lord Evenus' room with my lamp to check on him. I hugged my shoulders, wondering if the Lord was having night terrors now.

     "Have a dreamless sleep," I muttered under my breath. I knew he couldn't hear me, and I hadn't even been brave enough to request it from God for him, but I remembered a sermon about speaking things into existence so I took comfort in that, telling myself that the Lord was safe and fast asleep.