Steelhands - Jaida Jones [34]
The cat—Kerchief—appeared at my feet again, winding around my ankles. I didn’t reach down to pet him, and managed not to trip over him, though he followed me all the way from the empty workroom and down the winding halls, yowling at me when I let myself out.
THREE
LAURE
“We are going out tonight,” Toverre said, “and I need you with me. I can’t do this alone, Laure. That’s final.”
If he’d just said Please, Laurence, that would have done it for me. An I need you got me every time, but That’s final always sounded too much like orders for my liking. I wanted to help him, I really did, but I knew the moment I agreed to it he was going to tell me I couldn’t go in what I was wearing, and whether he knew it or not, that was always something of a slight. I knew how to dress myself the same as anyone else, but we couldn’t all have an eye for what color went with what fabric like some people. Truth be told, it didn’t seem like all that useful a skill to me anyway. More like it made a person crazy, trying to match things all the time.
Just look at what it had done to Toverre.
Not to mention, it was bitter damn cold—another reason why I was opting for warmth over coordination—and we had reading to do. Knowing Toverre, though, he’d probably done all his reading three weeks in advance, underlined the good parts, and reread them twice already. He did stuff like that.
I wasn’t so lucky. I liked to savor what I was reading, except for the boring books, which I didn’t like to read at all. The assignments we had for the strategy of war class weren’t bad, and I didn’t mind doing them first, but some of the history books could put a girl to sleep as soon as she cracked open the cover.
That was why I’d been putting those off as long as possible, standing in front of the mirror instead to try to see whether arranging my skirts just so would hide the fact that I was wearing trousers beneath them and woolen socks beneath that. It wasn’t that I believed Toverre about making the women and possibly some of the men faint in the streets at the sight of me—the Thremedon women kept their legs covered, too, I wagered, though probably with something fancier than a pair of heavy riding pants—but I thought maybe if Toverre didn’t have to look at it, he wouldn’t have that much cause for complaint.
It was a long shot, but my da had always said that a fool’s hope was better than no hope at all.
Yet no matter what I did, the skirts weren’t quite long enough to hide the rumple of fabric where I’d tucked my trouser legs into the tops of my boots. A small detail, maybe, but one I could be sure Toverre would notice right away. And he wouldn’t stop complaining until I did something about it.
A knock at the door and me rushing to answer it messed up all my arranging anyway. Being left out in the hall too long gave Toverre the urge to clean it—something I knew from the last time I’d opened the door only to find him staring fanatically at dust on the wall sconce.
Only it wasn’t Toverre at my door, but a large package, wrapped in brown paper and tied around the middle with a length of twine. I stared at it for a moment, not understanding what was going on, until Toverre gave a huff from behind it and shifted his weight impatiently.
“Aren’t you going to let me in? There’s a stain on this rug that wasn’t here the night before, and that means it’s fresh. I do sometimes wonder whether we’re living with humans or animals. Father’s prize pigs were cleaner than this.”
“Do come in,” I told him, stepping back so that he could make it past me with his heavy burden. “What’s that?”
I knew he wouldn’t tell me—one of the few things Toverre enjoyed more than cleanliness was a good surprise—but that never stopped me from hoping he might slip up one of these days.
“It’s for you,” Toverre said, which wasn’t an answer at all. He deposited the package