Chapter Text
It was late evening in the Spring, unusually warm air heralding an early start to summer and the hopes of a bountiful harvest. Mildred was in the back garden of her family home dressed only in her shift and a shawl. She’d just finished washing up to get ready for bed and decided to take a few peaceful moments to check on her rabbits. Ulysses the buck and Penelope the doe were a bonded pair of prize-winning longhaired bunnies that had been a birthday gift to Mildred from her parents the year before.
“Hello darlings,” Mildred cooed at them as she approached their enclosure. Ulysses jumped and flipped in excitement as she stepped through the gate and closed behind her. Penelope kept to the sawdust bedding in the corner, but flopped over and relaxed. Mildred had brought some dried apples for them as a treat.
She sat down on a little wooden stool and began portioning out the apples. Ulysses greedily tore his share out of Mildred’s grip and rapidly ground them down with his sharp little teeth. Penelope was equally as enthusiastic for the fruit but moved more slowly and carefully. Mildred had to reach out further to her to make sure that her doe got a fair amount before Ulysses had a chance to steal it.
“You sir are far too chaotic for brushing at the moment. You shall have to wait your turn.” Mildred said with all the authority of a queen at only nineteen years of age. She mused that she sounded a great deal like her mother when she used the tone, though she would never let it slip out in human company. Ulysses replied by starting to run laps around the enclosure.
With the dried apple long gone, she carefully coaxed Penelope toward her and slipped her hands around the rabbit’s slight body to lift her into Mildred’s lap. She was alarmed to find that Penelope’s abdomen felt rounder. It was firm as well. Mildred wasn’t ignorant. She knew exactly what her pets had been up to - exactly what the breeder had told her would happen eventually. Mildred snorted as she watched Ulysses turn and get distracted by a piece of straw that had become stuck to his ear. “Not such a gentleman afterall, hmm?”
Hazel would be thrilled when Mildred told her she was going to have baby bunnies. They’d discussed only a few months ago that Hazel’s students might enjoy learning in depth about animals and Hazel intended to ask at the manor about having a field tour of the stables with the children. Perhaps the school could adopt one of the kits as a classroom pet.
It was best not to get too ahead of herself. Mildred sobered. She wouldn’t know how big the litter would be and how many would survive for some weeks.
“In the meantime, Miss Penelope, your winter coat is going to make a mess if we don’t look after it soon.”
For the next half-hour Mildred brushed the long, silky fibers of wool and carefully picked the brush after every fifth or so stroke so that she could collect the shed into a linen bag for spinning. Ulysses eventually wore himself down enough to notice that he was not getting brushed and began thumping his hind feet in jealous frustration. “I shouldn’t have spoiled you with sweets before I groomed you.” She lamented as she carefully set Penelope back down on her bedding.
Ulysses clawed and bounced his way up Mildred’s shift and settled into her lap on his own. The buck managed to keep calm long enough for Mildred to work the majority of his winter blow-out from his hide. There were still a few spots along his rear end that she couldn’t get to because he’d decided that he was finished with being still and needed to continue with his rounds of the den.
Mildred collected her bag of wool and hung the brush back up on its peg in the corner. Before she bid the pair goodnight she ensured their water was freshened up and she laid out some new hay for them to eat. She went back into the house through the kitchen door after she stopped at the pump to wash her hands and arms again.
She was on her way to say good night to her mother and father when she was startled by the sound of their raised voices coming from the downstairs bedroom. She stopped completely. Her parents had quarreled before, mostly over something silly that her father had said. There was always an underlying affection in his tone, even when they disagreed.
Mildred slipped past their door and headed toward the stairs. She shouldn’t eavesdrop - and then she heard her mother say her name.
“Mildred is already nineteen, Bertram! It’s past time for her to begin looking at her prospects.”
“Exactly! She’s nineteen! There is no reason to rush her off. You didn’t marry until you were in your thirties.”
“Things were different for me. I had a position-”
“Yes, right. While my daughter lacks the same level of status you so graciously sacrificed, you feel some urgency to get her married off before an arbitrary expiration date.”
Mildred felt a weight settle into her core. They were fighting about her.
“She is connected to nobility and she is young, well tempered and pretty. Why shouldn’t she take advantage of these things? There’s a nobleman in Wyrmstead who is rumoured to be looking for a bride. He already has a young daughter, but Mildred is good with children.”
Mildred drew her shawl tighter around her shoulders and clutched the edges tight in her fist. The air around her had felt warm and inviting until now. Now it felt heavy. Suffocating.
“Rachel! I’m not pawning my only daughter off to some puffed-up lord looking for a nursemaid! You speak of her as though she were a thoroughbred mare!”
There was a deafening silence that followed. Never once in Mildred’s life could she remember her father being angry. Actually angry.
“I have deferred to your judgement in every way in regards to her upbringing,” her father said, his voice was quieter now but still had an edge that sounded alien to Mildred’s ears. “Even when I felt it was unfair, to remove her from school. To isolate her from her peers, except those you deemed acceptable.”
“All that I have done for her-”
“She has been allowed so little freedom, Rachel. I will not stand down on this.”
“Then what is the alternative?! What plan do you have?!”
“My plan is to let my child think for herself for once in her blessed life!”
Mildred heard the familiar creak of her father’s closet door opening. He was going to get his overcoat and likely head out to smoke his pipe and calm down. She turned and rushed up the stairs before he could come out of the room and find her standing at the door.
In the interest of keeping out of the way Mildred roused herself from bed as soon as the rooster began its ritual cries the very next morning. She hadn’t slept well. She’d kept her ears tuned to the main floor of the house, listening for any more sounds of discontent. There had been none once her father came back from smoking his pipe and she finally drifted off fitfully for what only seemed like a few minutes.
She dressed simply - a walking skirt and a shirtwaist that would be perfectly acceptable to wear while running errands, and not uncomfortable for a day spent at home. She found her favourite knitted shawl in the chest at the end of her bed and draped it over her shoulders. Her hair was a disaster from not having been properly braided the night before. It took her longer than usual to sort it out and she knew her mother would have something to say about it regardless. Mildred preferred to have it down or loosely tied. The knots and pins her mother liked gave Mildred headaches.
She wasn’t surprised to find the kitchen empty when she came downstairs. The maid wouldn’t arrive for a few hours yet to do her usual chores. Tea was the first order of business. She set to work with starting a cooking fire and retrieving water from the pump outside. If Rachel had her way they would employ a full-time staff including a cook and a scullery to take care of such mundane domestic tasks, but that was a battle that Bertram had won. He negotiated down to a single maid for general housework and taught Mildred how to safely start a fire.
She was measuring out dried leaves into the teapot when her father strolled in from the sitting room dressed in his pajamas and still wearing his overcoat. His wire-framed spectacles sat on top of his head. His left cheek dimpled as he smiled at her through his charcoal grey moustache. She smelled night air and stale pipe smoke as he leaned down and planted a kiss on the top of her head, like he had done every morning her entire life.
“Mama won’t be pleased that you wore that on the settee,” she said, setting out two teacups on the breakfast table.
“It will be a pleasant distraction for her, I think.” He had a cheeky grin. His voice was rough and gravelly and he began to cough a little while Mildred poured him a cup of tea. He declined his usual splash of milk and took a teaspoon of honey in it instead. “You’re up rather early. Do you have important young lady tasks planned for today?”
Mildred couldn’t help herself and responded, “is the importance relative to the tasks or the young lady?”
“Both I imagine, as a task for an important young lady is important by default.”
“Then no.” She silently stirred milk into her own teacup as her mother had taught her to do. “Though you did provide me with some beautiful silk samples that I could hoop to embroider. I don’t have any other engagements that I know of.”
Bertram took a careful sip of his tea. “I have some business at the big house this morning. Perhaps I could persuade you to keep me company?”
He didn’t have business at the manor that Mildred could recall. She studied him for a moment. He gave no hint that he was upset or lingering on the argument from the night before. She decided to feign ignorance and follow his lead. “I am persuaded. Though I think we both need to change.”
He rapped his knuckles lightly on the tablecloth and chuckled. “Right you are! We mustn't outshine Her Ladyship in our finery. You get the toast started and I’ll fetch us some eggs.”
Mildred changed out of her town clothes and into a pale cornflower-blue linen dress that she’d sewn over the winter. It was light and airy with bell-shaped sleeves that reached her elbows. She’d gotten a little creative with the cuffs and added an edging of tiny rabbits done in white silk thread that one would easily mistake for leaves or flowers unless they looked closely. She resigned herself to twisting her hair up into something more presentable since they might be seeing the Lord and Lady of Soulford.
In truth Mildred hoped that she’d get to see little Felicity while her father conducted his business. It’d been some months since she’d last visited with her young cousin and she missed her.
She met her father in the foyer and found him coiffed and dressed in his favourite brown coat. He had his walking stick and hat tucked carefully under his arm.
“Are we not taking the cart, Papa?” Mildred asked as she slipped her knitted shawl back on.
“Lovely work, Milly.” He gave her a once-over and nodded with approval. “I’ve decided that since this business of mine is very urgent we should walk at a leisurely pace to the manor. We don’t want to waste any time. Your eyebrows are doing that thing again, dear-heart.”
“It can’t be helped. I have honest eyebrows.”
“Well…” Bertram turned his hat over and placed it at a jaunty angle atop his balding head. “I suppose we're each entitled to one fatal flaw.”
A leisurely pace is what they kept. Mildred’s father was a remarkably tall man whose limbs still seemed slightly too long for his body. He carried himself well despite this, though his shoulders had begun to slump a little with age. One of his natural steps was equal to two of Mildred’s but years of taking walks together had trained him to shorten his stride.
Mildred maintained the façade of having no knowledge of her parents arguing as her father casually asked her opinion on Soulford.
“I’m comfortable here,” she answered honestly.
She saw her father’s moustache twitch slightly at that. She couldn’t read his expression. “You’re a good girl, Milly.”
His words, the way he said them, gave her a painful twang in her chest.
“What about… what about your options?”
The question would have thrown her off had her mind not already been putting her through the paces on that front for the last twelve hours. Yesterday’s Mildred would have asked him what options were available, or what her mother thought. “... let my child think for herself for once…”
The only person with whom she had come close to having this conversation was Hazel. The two of them had been on the way to the square to get some fruit last autumn when they walked by a large group of men splitting logs for firewood. Hazel lamented that the attractive ones were already married or had a litany of bad habits that she absolutely could not overlook. “That’s the trouble with working with children. They tell you absolutely EVERYTHING about their older siblings, their cousins and uncles. And as you know, children aren’t prone to malicious exaggeration.” The way she spoke made it seem like there were absolutely no eligible bachelors in all of Soulford. For her part Mildred had struggled with keeping her eyes on the path ahead of her and not on the exposed forearms and open collar of the young Ulfmaster who had been helping with the logs.
Mildred gave her head a good shake and squeezed her father’s arm. She had to tell him what she’d heard the night before. She wouldn’t insult his sincerity by acting ignorant. “Is this in regards to what you and mama were arguing about?”
He let out a long breath through his nose. “That simplifies things, yes.”
What she wanted, if she didn’t think too much about it, was what she had. She had a comfortable home and a loving family and plenty of things to amuse herself with. Mildred wanted for nothing. Marriage and children were of interest, but not immediately so. In the novels she read the heroines always had a yearning for something bigger and better. Love beyond mortal comprehension, adventure and all that. Mildred enjoyed the stories but couldn’t bring herself to relate to that sense of yearning.
“If you’re calculating an answer, dear-heart, remove mine and your mother’s opinions from the equation. I want honesty, not diplomacy.”
“I don’t want to be idle,” was her compulsive, honest reply. “I could give you more specifics in time but I haven’t thought about it enough.”
Her father absolutely beamed at her as he patted her hand. “That’s enough for now. That’s plenty.”