“How so?” Had he finally discovered that working wasn’t such a terrible thing after all?
“He saved the chestnut lady’s little daughter from a carriage that almost ran her over, and as a thank you, she gave him the whole basket. May I have one?” Hector didn’t wait for an answer and helped himself to one.
The Duke made no comment, but quietly peeled a chestnut and popped it into his mouth.
The man really was a mystery.
Then there was the episode when she’d struggled to hang up the sheets in the courtyard. The wind kept blowing the wet cloth into her face, and it was a chore to attach it to the string hanging in the yard.
When her neighbour called, she’d left them in the basket to hang them up later.
When she returned, all the sheets were gently flapping in the breeze.
No one had done it.
Hector and Les were out playing with their kite, Theo napping, and Mona was practising her viola. The Duke, whose bedroom window overlooked the yard and who might have observed her struggling with the sheets, said nothing when she demanded at suppertime who it had been.
A duke? Hang up laundry? Lena shook her head. What nonsense. He would never stoop so low as to hang laundry. It was unheard of.
“Maybe it was aWichtelmännchen, Mama,” Hector said as he slathered a piece of black bread with butter and bit into it. Those little mythical creatures who did good deeds in the house when no one was looking.
Since it couldn’t have been the Duke, it must have been those little helpers, indeed.
Yes, things had shifted quite drastically with the Duke. He no longer missed breakfasts or suppers and now he was around the house far more often than Lena would have preferred. He seemed to fill every room he entered, and she found it nearly impossible to focus on her tasks whenever he was near. The memory of the kissstill lingered between them, yet neither of them ever mentioned it. Sometimes she wondered if she had imagined it altogether.
It was most maddening, indeed.
Then there was Theo.
He deposited a container in the middle of the table while they were having dinner.
It was a glass jar with a suspicious brown liquid in it and a shrivelled object floating eerily inside.
Everyone screeched.
Even the Duke dropped his spoon into his soup with a splash. “By all the saints.”
Lena nearly dropped the soup tureen she’d been holding and only held on to it at the last moment.
“Theseus Arenheim, what is this hideous thing that you have planted in front of us?”
“A hand.” He smirked. “From a corpse.”
Hector mimicked the motion of vomiting into his soup bowl.
Les pushed his spectacles further up his nose and leaned forwards to study the body part with interest. “Famos. Did you cut it off yourself?”
“Theo, that is the most revolting thing I have ever seen in my entire life!” Mona exclaimed. “Take it away at once!”
“Why? What’s so revolting about a hand? Most of us have one.” Theo lifted his hand as if playing an imaginary violin. “Do you know how many veins we have in our hands? Hundreds,” he announced with satisfaction, without waiting for an answer. “A complex network of deep and superficial veins. This particularspecimen, a donation, I might add, allows us to study it in great detail. We had the most interesting anatomy lesson with Professor Barth today. I am almost convinced that I want to specialise in this field myself.”
“What other body parts did you study?” Les asked.
“Legs.” Theo grinned. “It was a male leg, in case it matters.”
“I wonder, if it had been a female leg, if it would have come complete with stockings on,” Mona mused aloud. “Would you have had to take them off before cutting into it, I wonder? Considering you are all men, I mean.”
“Harmonia!” Lena groaned. Not only was the topic of conversation scandalously inappropriate, but they were talking about undressing a woman’s legs. Whether it was a corpse’s or a living woman’s leg, with or without stockings, it simply wasn’t the thing to discuss at supper. What must the Duke think? Not to mention the children’s behaviour…
