“Are the tables all draped? Do we have enough chairs? One, two, three, four…eight on the either side. Sixteen chairs. Excellent! Bella, the willow patterned tea service is in the Kitchen cabinet, rush on and bring them here. Three sets, alright? Good. We have the tea counters there. And the lemonades are placed beneath the apple tree. Girls, I want those roses arranged and…”
The scuttle that Mrs. Hopkins was charging upon everyone had no limits and almost all the maids were dashing across the lawn to the fountain from the Ashleyton manor and back with no breath to expend. The hefty housekeeper wanted all to be perfect. There was no reason why the serving should not be a wonderful one.
The color that nature had put on had amplified greenery to the level of spring beauty. The apple tree were heavy with the ripe fruits and not the hardest gust of the wind could sway it in the least.
Squirrels appeared high on spirit. So did the little sparrows, sprinting on the branches and perching on the vacant chairs.
It was a quixotic sort of day. Romantic sort of day.
Eden’s fingers worked briskly as she dished up the garlic bread chunks on the platter in a vogue design with Maggie at her side. She had not wanted to stay out after the reception event but nor did she feel like giving Lord Adelwood an impression that she was idling around while the other girls worked.
It had been quite about five and forty minutes since all the sixteen guests (Four ladies and twelve gentlemen including his Lordship) had been led into the manor and now, they were to come out any minute here.
As soon as the plate was arranged, Eden asked Maggie to place it on the table and she herself went to the ant-busy Mrs. Hopkins.
The old housekeeper was announcing orders but stopped short the moment her eyes met with Eden’s gaze.
“It’s done, Mrs. Hopkins.” Eden signaled at the now well arranged table.
“Good.” The lady nodded, knowing there was more to come.
“Well….” A bit uneasy now, Eden cleared her throat. “I suppose I should be going now.”
The housekeeper sighed but her eyes were never withdrawn off Eden’s face.
“You do not have to face him Eden if you do not wish to. You were not supposed to be here in the first place.”
Eden fussed with the sleeve of her dress as the lady talked to her.
Mrs. Hopkins was right. She didn’t want to face him.
She was afraid of his mere presence in her range of vision.
“You should have been in your room, sleeping.” Mrs. Hopkins said. “Go. Rest.”
“Fine, then.” She nodded at last. “If I am needed….do call me though.” And bowing a quick curtsey, she turned around and started to stride off toward the cold stoned manor.
She had not reached halfway down the front lane when Maggie suddenly jumped at her side with a wild “Booo!!”
“Maggie, you startled me.” Eden cried shifting a little away from her.
“Yup.” Maggie grinned. “That’s what I intended to do. You walk like you have hell-hounds following you.”
“If hell-hounds ever follow me, I shall run. And not walk.” Eden then noticed the small ceramic pot in Magi’s hand. “And where to with that pot?”
“Oh, this is the jam.” Maggie grumbled. “Mrs. Hopkins said we won’t need it. Though I believe she would have needed it if it was in the kitchen two hundred miles away.”
Eden smiled at her exuberant judgment. Just then, Maggie shot the one question to her she was not ready to answer.
“So, how do you like my Lord Stephen Adelwood?”
The smile fell off Eden’s face. Her pace got quickened.
“Eden..!” Maggie called rushing as fast as Eden. “Tell me.”
“He is….nice.”
“Just nice?”
“He is good.”
“Just good?”
Eden quickened her strides some more but Maggie was no slower. “Yes. What else?”
“Eden, look at me!” and Eden did look at her.
“Seriously?” Maggie inquired with an exaggerated look on her face. “Just good? Don’t you think magnificent is the precise word?”
“I…” Eden had just begun to clarify why magnificent was infact not the right word when she collided into something hard at her front. Someone hard, perhaps, was the right word. “Oh!”
“Easy.” A masculine voice cautioned.
By her side, Maggie was no diverse for she too had managed bump head on into another man.
“Ouch!”
“Oomph! Ughh!”
Eden had hardly backed away from the man she had bumped into and had just been able to mutter her apology when her eyes flew by to Maggie. Or rather, the pot of jam that she had been carrying.
Was it unfortunate that the jar now lay on the floor, broken in two, bleeding jam?
Well, perhaps.
But it was surely more unfortunate that that before falling, that silly little pot had managed to spill most of its content onto the person infront.
“Oh … damn!” she heard Maggie curse under the breath.
The man on whom the jam had been spilled stood as shocked as the other three, gaping down at his partly scarlet patched white shirt. His probably_ expensive_ white shirt, for Eden just realized that she had not seen the man here before and he was probably one of Lord Adelwood’s guests.
“We are so sorry sir.” She stuttered hurriedly on Maggie’s behalf and kicked her partner on the ankle meanwhile to grab her attention. Successfully.
“S-Sorry….Sir.” Maggie stammered as shock left her eyes and fear took over. “I am so sorry I was not looking where was I going and you suddenly came in front and I didn’t realize I had to stop until i_”
Another kick from Eden.
“_ bumped. Into. You.” The girl swallowed. “Sorry.”
The man in front looked up very slowly, right into Maggie’s face. And it gave Eden chills to think what he might say in the next moment. Or shout. Or bark. Complain the master of the manor, maybe. He could have done all that.
He did none of that.
He just chuckled.
A slow, deliberate laugh.
“Sir…?” Maggie was looking at him as if she firmly believed that he had got one screw lose.
“It’s okay. I am fine. Are you alright?” And that was all he had got to ask. After all that happened.
Are you alright?
“Yes...Ehem…Yes.” Maggie nodded reluctantly. “I…I am alright. I am sorry though I…”
“Oh never mind this.” He shook his head gesturing at his Jam-ridden shirt. “I can always change.”
“I will help you Sir.” Maggie offered with a cautious step toward him. “I can help you wash it off. You may change.”
“Sure.” He nodded. “Do lead me.”
And so much said, the two left.
That was when Eden suddenly became wary of the eyes that were studying her very intently. Genuine to say, that was when she realized the presence of the man she had bumped into and ignored outright for the first time.
That was when she realized that there was always a someone else.
She looked up at him for the first time.
Cautious blue eyes met hers.
“I apologize, Sir.” She mumbled bowing down.
The man said nothing but his eyes remained still there. On her.
Such silence always worried her, so Eden decided to plot a simple escape. She looked up in his rapt eyes and cleared her throat, “May I help you to the serving sir?”
Her voice appeared to have managed to drag his eyes off her eyes as his lashes stuttered. “Yes.” He mumbled with a breathless air. “Yes. You may.”
***
Mrs. Hopkins was surprised to see Eden back so soon, back at all for that matter, to a place from where she had fled but on noticing the presence of the noble gentleman by her side, she nodded understandingly at her and helped her seat down the man.
“It seems that I am here the earliest.” The man commented, as he relaxed in his chain. It appeared that he was just remarking this fact upon himself. To the vacant wind that drew by his cheeks. To the remote clouds that were remotely floating in the sky. But not to Eden. Not to her. Thus, Eden kept quiet as she stood beside.
For a while it went like that. Quiet. Peaceful.
But then, he suddenly looked up at Eden. “Your name miss..?”
“Eden, sir. Eden Henley.”
“Eden.” He nodded to himself.
Again….the abstract no nothing kind of loud silence.
“May I make you a cup of tea, Sir?”
He nodded and hefted a loud sigh.
Eden arranged the necessaries and started making beverage but the tranquil demeanor of the man pulled her attention and she could not contain herself anymore.
“Forgive me...Are you unwell, Sir?”
He remained impassive of her question, looking away, staring at the vast green slopes of the farther Ashleytonian estate. Eden had nearly considered that he didn’t want to talk to her until he said that and she realized that he wanted to talk to her of thing more than the general dialogues.
“I wish I had not come here.” He said, still looking afar.
“Ashleyton is not up to your mark?” She queried and this time, his eyes snapped back to her.
A smile crept up his lips.
His very first.
“No.” he mumbled. “Quite on the contrary, I find it to be one of the most splendid places across the English land. And I believe, that happens to be the reason why it makes me contrite being here.”
“I do not understand you, Mr.…Sir.”
“Ah!” He took off his hat and placed it on the table. “I am Andreas Edwin.”
“Well_ what of Ashleyton makes you thus rueful Mr. Edwin?” Eden asked, placing the ready tea in front of him.
He stared down at his tea with a strange emptiness in his silent sincere face. That told Eden, something was not going good in his life.
“I…..lost my wife two months ago.” She saw him swallow the pain that had smudged the edges of his voice. “Two months might be enough time to forget a death; it’s not enough to forget the memories of that death. Of that life it has raided.”
A dry apple leaf floated and glided down across the table carried in by the breeze. Eden took it between her fingers by its thin brown stipule.
It was so very dry. So very crushable.
Twisted out of shape.
With no green left on it. No sign that it had life in it. Once.
“There is nothing, nothing that ever fails to remind me of her.” He continued as the racket and hubbub of other maids started to die down around Eden.
A vacant inertness filled her mind.
“I miss her when the wind blows. I miss her when it doesn’t. I feel absolutely at loss sometimes. And sometimes, I don’t feel the way.” He took a shallow sip from his cup while Eden stared at rolling dry leaf in her hand. “Not a fig fails to remind me of what I have lost. My wife. My lover. A friend. The mother of my child. My…my everything. A women flies several kites at the once.
“Yes.” Eden mumbled numbly. “She does.”
“And not sixty days after her death, after her going away….I am here.” He placed the cup back onto the saucer as his hand curled into a tight, painful fist. “I am here. Where I had first met her. In Ashleyton. There is a chestnut tree behind this manor. That was my first encounter with her.”
The leaf in her hand stopped rolling. She glanced up at his face. He looked up at her too.
“She lived here?” she asked.
“She was a maid here.” He whispered his blue gaze piercing right through her. “Why do you remind me of her?”
A plate clattered somewhere and they both were jolted out of their joint reverence.
Looking around, it unnerved Eden to realize that all the guest had already arrived and were seated all around the table being served and serviced by the number of maids.
Had she been so lost?
Flustered, she grazed her eyes at everyone to see if anyone realized her unsettlement, if anyone could hear the sudden wild hammering of her heart.
She found no one interested enough.
Except for, one pair of sea green magnificent eyes, from end of the table.
Lord Stephen Richard Adelwood’s gaze.
Her husband’s gaze.
That twin green eyes were sharp in concentration, all its intensities focus at her. It disturbed her, the strength of his mere look.
And he was looking at her. Still.
Eden hurriedly looked down. The dry leaf in her hand was crushed now.
“I must excuse, Mr. Edwin.” She said, curtseying.
“It was a pleasure.” He nodded, with a smile.
She smiled back at him and walked away from the table.
She didn’t look back at where lord Adelwood sat knowing that she couldn’t bear it at all.