Angeline arrived back at the manor some hour later, shivering, wet, and miserable with indecision. She slipped through the servant’s entrance, leaving a trail of rainwater behind her as she made her way to the servant’s quarters, her skirt dragging across the floor.
Another hour later, dry and reasonably warm but still plagued with the offer André had given her, she sat down on the thin, hard mattress strewn across the floor that served as her bed and took out the letter.
On the other side of town, the man that had offered her a saving grace sat in the dining room of a grandiose home, a spoil of his rich English heritage. Not eating food, but sitting in a chair with his back to a wall of paintings and facing a wall of towering windows. Through them his property of green, dusty rolling hills and forest.
She stared at the address, fingers tightening slightly around the edges of the damp, slightly crinkled slip of paper. Footsteps coming from outside sent her scrambling to hide it. She ended up shoving it beneath her meagre mattress on the floor, quickly turning to grab a moth-eaten towel in an attempt to pretend she'd been drying her hair.
André drew his hand across his cat's cinder grey fur, eyes blank, a thousand miles away on the wings of a free thought.
The door creaked open, revealing a scrawny figure with matted brown hair and large doe eyes. Angeline breathed a sigh of relief. Theresa. "Hey," she greeted quietly, returning the town to its original position. The woman gave her a small smile, making her way over to a flimsy mattress of her own. "Hey. Messenger duty? You should change into something warmer."
