"No. No one has said anything. No one has seen."
It took a moment for those words to sink in.
"You... Wait, you dine alone?"
"With Coira. But she din—she does not ea—dine with me."
"Every night?"
Belle simply nodded.
Guilt wracked Henry's chest. An image of Belle sitting in the giant dining hall alone flooded his mind. Even with the woman's distaste over recent events, he had mistakenly thought that propriety would override Lady Henderson's personal feelings. Etiquette dictated that the family dined together.
He would not have left her to her evening repasts if he had known she would be alone!
Annoyance rankled in Henry's gut. Perhaps the fine lady did not consider Belle warranting either filial kindness or general politeness. A country urchin who would not be able to tell whether she was being insulted or not by her stepmother's absence.
The unfazed look upon Belle's face confirmed the assumption but only served to infuriate Henry further.
Belle might not have realized the offense against her, but he did.
And in light of her effort that afternoon, toiling over her letters, he felt unfeasibly angry on her behalf.
"I will dine with you," he told her. "We will use it as a learning experience so that you may perhaps dine with your father, should his health allow."
"With Mama, too?"
Henry's smile was taut.
"Perhaps." He had already explained that, while they could send letters to her mother and assure her of Belle's well-being, it was not exactly possible to bring her to the castle until she had been announced as the laird's daughter. The mother of an illegitimate and unclaimed child would be fodder for barbed remarks and cruel comments, and Belle had gradually come to understand this. It still did not stop her, nevertheless, from dreaming of the near future when she could bring her mother to the castle.
A future that Henry was now determined to see come to fruition.
10
When the materials for their lesson had been packed away, and they had relocated to the dining hall, Henry could not stem his curiosity.
"You seem close," he said to Belle, as a servant filled their wine cups. "Your mother and yourself."
Belle began to shrug but corrected the gesture quickly. She sat up straighter and nodded her head with dignity. Even poised, however, there was a bright sparkle of rebellion in her eye. It said: “I am playing your etiquette game only because I choose to.”
"Ah suppose we are," she hedged. "Though she does half drive me up the wall most days."
"By doing what?"
The question was like popping a hole in a water skin. After days of regal quiet and carefully chosen words, Belle let loose in a torrent of chatter that was so natural and sweet that Henry hadn't the heart to interrupt.
"Oh, she's just a silly old nag sometimes," Belle complained, her hands flying everywhere as she spoke. "Ah cannae do anything right for her. If ah wash the clothes real well, she says ah'm taking too long. If ah'm in the fields, ah'm being lazy. Ah sweep the house, and still she damn then takes the broom and does it again!"
Henry tried to hide his smile behind the rim of his cup as he sipped the burgundy within.
"She sounds like a normal mother to me."
"Aye! So she says! Yet, it doesnae stop it being damn near infuriating when ah break my back scrubbing floors so she won't have to, and then she does it all the same. Ma doesnae seem to notice that she's growing old, even though she never stops remindingmeof it. Tells me ah don't do enough to help, and then when ah help, she dinnae want it. I ken nothing of that woman."
"But you love her still?"
Belle blinked at him across the table as if the question were ludicrous.
