The flames flickered as the door opened and a whoosh of cold air burst in, and a dark shape appeared at the threshold of the cottage.
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Lady Graves is my NaNoWriMo novel in progress.
Chapter One begins here: Lady Graves - ch. 1 - NaNoWriMo 2018 - freewritemadness: Day One
Day 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The silhouette shook itself,
shedding rainwater like a wet dog, and crossed into the cottage. A short, stout person shook off a cloak and a large, wide-brimmed hat and hung them on the wall hooks without even looking to see where those might be. Off with the boots, and over to the fire this person walked. Siegfried, in classic feline form, had already zoomed under the bed, while Emil proceeded to boing-boing-boing a warm welcome to the apparent intruder.
“Emil,” a woman’s voice proclaimed. “You have not changed. Klaus, you are full of surprises, but so am I. April showers bring May flowers, and sometimes a rain-drenched traveler at your door.”
“Helga.” Stangler hurried into his breeches and tossed a dry pair to Lady Graves. “I hope the witch-burning crews haven’t driven you here early this year?”
“No, just the weather. Munich will be rained out on May Day; my bones are never wrong.” She fixed her gaze on the young lady rising from Stangler’s bed. “Schöne Grüße, Fraulein. I am Baroness Helga von Greifswald.”
“Schön Sie zu treffen. I am Lady...Graves.” She looked to Stangler for a cue as to whether this woman was to be trusted with her actual name.
“Allow me to introduce my English patient--Lady Evelyn. This will be a long story.” He moved to the stove and lit the flame for a kettle of tea.“The baroness--”
“Just call me Helga. I’ve had enough of titles, arranged marriages, petty princes, potentates, exploited peasants, morganatic marriages, talk of children as issue, and landed estates.”
Stangler laughed. “I’m trying to woo this lovely fellow fugitive to America with me, so please do not expound on the advantages of being a spinster for life.”
The short, stout woman smiled coyly. “I may have refused to marry, but who’s to say I refused every advantage that marriage might offer?”
Lady Evelyn failed to suppress a little gasp of surprise. Stangler leaned in, his lips brushing her ear, his arm circling her shoulders. “Don’t listen to her,” he said softly. Goosebumps raced down her back and forced her grasp a warm teacup in both hands.
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18-Nov-2018
How very odd this Baroness Helga von Greifswald seemed! It soon unfolded that she, not Herr Doktor, owned the stone cottage that had come to feel like home. In the overly large rooms of Everleigh’s stately home, space was never lacking but intimacy was. The walls were close enough to catch the dancing shadows and lights cast by the fire, and in that flickering glow, the baroness seemed all the more exotic. Her face was plain and pleasant, her figure rounded and quick, but her comportment was more like a soldier’s than a lady’s. Others had tried to force her into a role she found herself unfit for, from infancy, and she would fight to the death before she’d consent to the prim and proper and narrowly defined role of lady, wife, mother, and member of a social order. Helga was a woodswoman, more of a wild child than Evelyn had ever purported to be. As unyielding as granite, she seemed certain to do things her own way regardless of the expectations of others. She was unapologetic about her opinions, judgments, and questions, nor did she seem the list concerned about her blustery, unexpected arrival in the middle of the night.
Still, Helga--as she insisted the young lady address the elder--came across as someone whose court one would most want to be in. Evelyn had known grander, more elegant ladies who occupied higher stations in life, women of manners, discretion, and tact, but she felt a flush of admiration for the way this baroness expressed her quick wit and rapier-sharp assessments without apology.
Her admiration shifted to irritation when the baroness disapproved of Evelyn’s mission to recover her identity. “No good can possibly come of your going to Lindenstein,” she said. “You should thank Gott in Himmel you escaped that marriage, and don’t concern yourself with whether the maid is succeeding in her ruse. You could expose her and get her beheaded, and then what, it’s your turn to marry the prince? Another very likely scenario is that you might expose yourself and get yourself killed for good this time, and you might get dear Klaus killed as well. If it’s justice you seek at Lindenstein, you won’t find it. You’ll only face more treachery and bloodshed.”
Well. That was that.
According to Helga, anyway.
“This maid posing as a lady will likely reveal herself anyway,” Stangler said, “whether in writing letters to your family in England, or failing to avert a visit from them, or encountering people who know you. How long can she keep up the pretense of being someone else?”
Evelyn folded her arms. “If I don’t go, I will never know.”
“It isn’t worth the risk,” Helga said.
“She has my pearl earrings and my Sweet Sixteen gown, which I had planned to let out and wear again, and all my books. She has my Shakespeare! She has my Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Blake!
Helga snorted. “More gowns can be sewn; more books can be bought, but your life cannot be.”
“Well, why did Stangler and Lanza bother to plant a substitute corpse in my place? If I never show my face at Lindenstein, there was no need for that subterfuge. Any day now, the constable should find the bodies of the coachman and the maid. I passed myself off as a boy only yesterday at the inn where I was last seen alive as Lady Evelyn, and I could pass unnoticed in the court of the pretender. I cannot just let this go. I have to see this through!”
“To what end?” Helga shook her head. “You might satisfy your curiosity, but then what? I don’t imagine you will say ‘Oh, look, the little maid has become a princess; let us leave now and be done with the matter.’”
Evelyn stood. “Very well. Thank you so very much for sharing your wisdom, and pardon my failure to concede to it. I shall go sleep in the loft and leave you to your usual bed, Frau Helga, and bid you a good night, what is left of it. Thank you for opening your home to the doctor and for welcoming me as well.” In fact, she hadn’t exactly welcomed Evelyn at all, and that was her point.
“I will take the loft, young lady, and you can make room for the doctor down here.” Helga nodded toward the recently vacated bed. “And we will resume this discussion in the morning.”
If it wasn’t her amnesia, it was the mercurial April rains, and if it wasn’t the rain it was the stubbornness of an old eccentric ex-socialite blocking her path to Lindenstein.
She crawled under the feather tick and didn’t even try to listen to the subdued voices of Stangler and his benefactor, the spinster aunt of his dead wife, the actual owner of the cottage. “It just never came up,” Stangler had said when she expressed surprise at the revelation. The cottage was not his, though he would likely inherit it someday. Helga seemed hardy enough to outlive Stangler and any “issue” he might engender.
The walls danced, the fire crackled, Siegfried sneaked out from his hiding place and tucked himself at Evelyn’s feet, Emil grunted and ran in his sleep, and those voices continued into the night, lulling her like the raindrops on the window panes, and she dreamed of a great bear blocking her at the gates of Lindenstein.
Briton Riviere, 'Beyond Man's Footsteps' exhibited 1894 source;
End of Day 18
word count 1270 for both days