Page 65 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

“No; that was an observation. The advice is that order begets order. Presently, you are so far beyond disorder that I’m not certain there’s even a word for it. So let’s put you back in order, and perhaps you will begin to feel ordered once more. And once you feel ordered…well, I would still like to visit the book shop, though the ices might not suit the weather. It does look like we’re in for a downpour sooner or later.”

“I can’t leave the house,” Kate said, snatching for the pillow as Rebecca lifted it away from her face. “Elliot—”

“Is not a concern,” Rebecca said. “I sent him home. He looked worse than you, if you can fathom it.” She hesitated a moment, her fingers wrapped around the edge of the counterpane. “In the interest of honesty, I’m not certain how long it will hold him at bay. But if you like, I’ll send him off again should it become necessary.”

“Why?” Kate said as she struggled upright once more. “You’re Elliot’s friend.”

“True,” Rebecca said as she perched at the edge of the bed. “But I really have wanted to meet you for—oh, just so many years. So I would like to think I’m your friend as well. Am I?”

Kate swallowed hard, shoving her tangled hair out of her eyes. “I don’t think I know much of anything right now.”

“That’s fair enough,” Rebecca said, with a soft smile. Pleasant, understanding, magnanimous. “I don’t know that I would, either, in your position. Rather a lot to think through, yes?” She patted Kate’s knee with one hand; a gentle, encouraging gesture. “So a bath first, I think. And we’ll begin putting you back in order, hmm?”

Kate dragged herself to the edge of the bed to dangle her legs over the side as Rebecca moved about the room, first giving a great tug to the bell pull to summon the staff, and then busying herself with tidying up the clutter that Kate had left lying about. And there was something vaguely comforting about the assembling of order about her, even if she still felt a bit too ragged, a bit too rough. Like a floppy rag doll that had been carelessly tossed aside.

“You don’t even have to talk if you don’t wish to,” Rebecca assured her from the dressing room, as the serving staff set up a bathing tub in the corner of the room and began to fill it with water.

But that was the problem. She did want to talk. She just wasn’t certain what she wished to say, and to whom. There were a hundred different thoughts all tangled up in her head, and a dozen different feelings racing through her veins and clawing at her heart, making her run hot and cold.

Rebecca emerged with two gowns, which she held up for Kate’s inspection. “Which one?” she asked. “Blue or pink? A point will do, if you prefer.”

Kate offered a half-hearted shrug. “Blue, I suppose.”

“Perfect. Blue suits you.” Rebecca laid it out upon the bed, and then began to paw through the dresser drawers in search of undergarments to accompany it, and—if Kate were honest with herself—it was a bit of a relief to have this particular task taken care of on her behalf. One more thought, one more decision, with which she did not have to contend.

The servants set up a folding screen around the bathing tub and filed out of the room, leaving them in privacy, and to Kate’s relief, the quiet that descended upon the room did not feel half so heavy as it had only some minutes earlier.

“Go on,” Rebecca said with an insistent little flutter of her hands. “Get in. Just hang your nightclothes over the screen. Would you care for tea?”

“No, thank you,” Kate said as she pushed herself off of the bed and meandered toward the corner of the room, slipping behind the screen. “I think I would prefer a very, very large glass of wine.” She stripped out of her nightclothes and draped them over the screen. Steam rose from the surface of the tub in delicate whorls, and the scent of roses from a liberal sprinkling of bath oil bloomed in the air.

Everything was neatly arranged; toweling folded beside the tub, soap set out on tiny dishes, pitchers of clean water left for rinsing. Order. It did feel tidy and orderly and soothing. She stepped into the tub and sank down as deeply as possible.

Lovely. Soothing. Rebecca had been on to something.

A few minutes passed in silence as she soaked and breathed in the clean, sweet fragrance of the soap. There were the soft sounds of Rebecca rummaging around through drawers, no doubt compiling the perfect ensemble to wear once Kate had been properly bathed. Kate raked soap through the mess of her snarled hair, striving to pick apart the knotted strands with her fingers.

“Here.” Rebecca’s hand came around the screen, cradling a glass. “Your wine.”

Somehow, Kate managed to dredge up a rusty laugh. “I didn’t really mean it,” she said, though she reached out and took it anyway.

“If ever there was a situation that called for a surfeit of wine,” Rebecca said, “I imagine this would be it. You won’t be drinking alone; I have got one, too. One must take advantage of a duke’s wine cellar whenever one has got the opportunity, you know.”

Another laugh sneaked out of Kate’s throat, and it sounded—better. Cleaner, just as she felt now, soaking in the bath. Not quite as strangled as the first. Not quite as awkward and self-conscious. She settled back against the rim of the tub and took a deep drink of her wine. Tense muscles began to relax, soothed by the heat and steam. The whole world, which had felt a bit sharper and more dangerous these last few hours, felt just a little softer.

“How are you feeling?” Rebecca asked. Gently, Kate thought. Carefully. As a friend would tentatively broach a sensitive subject. At an angle, leaving room for interpretation.

“Quite stupid,” Kate admitted, sinking deeper in the bath. Another drink of wine, and she held out one hand before her. Too often just lately her fingers had been stained with graphite. Too often they had cramped from all the writing she had been doing within the notebook Elliot had given her. And for what? Nothing!

Rebecca offered, “I don’t think you to be stupid at all.”

Another drink, and another. Kate hunched her shoulders, bowing her head over her glass. “All this time, I had no idea. And he—he had me interviewing ladies as prospective brides,” she said. “He gave me a damned notebook to put them in to determine which he ought to marry, and it made me so—so—” A vicious little sound wrenched itself from her lungs. “I don’t know,” she concluded weakly.

“Don’t you?” Rebecca ventured softly. “Don’t you know?”

Jealous. Yes, all right, she had been jealous. Eaten up with it, though it had taken her some good time to recognize it for what it had been. To recognize what it had meant. To realize that the cherished friendship that she had always held so close to her heart had taken on romantic tones.

Her glass was nearly empty, now. Kate finished it off, set it aside, and reached for a pitcher of clean water to rinse the soap from her hair. And she said, quietly, “I haven’t let myself think of things like love, like marriage, since before my father died. There was always something left to do, some bill in want of paying—the butcher, or the miller. There was always bread in want of baking, yarn in want of spinning, herbs in want of drying. Before I knew it, I had watched all my friends in the village marry and have families of their own. Before I knew it, I was an old maid already.”