He graduates from pressing ribbons to scrubbing shirts, from laundry at the fringe of the main house to washing floors and windows in the parlor. The first time someone puts a knife in his hand to skin a potato, he thinks: 'It's only been a few days,' and 'How far could I get with this?' Not very. Maybe that's the point. Or maybe the women in the kitchen are just short handed with Bes taken ill and his are just the convenient hands. So he does what he's meant to: skins potatoes without question and makes easy conversation with the women for what feels like (is) days on end.
Two things are readily apparent: the women are eager to press him with questions and are as shrewd as hawks by necessity. "A man must take with him into the world below an indestructible faith in truth and justice, lest coming upon villainy he do irremediable wrongs to others and suffer worse himself," is what he's in the middle of clumsily half-quoting by request when Mrs Oglethorpe finds her way to the kitchen in the heat of the day. She asks 'What was that, James? It was very lovely.' Charlotte, who claims to not grasp Plato, answers without hesitation, 'It's the Bible, mistress.'
When Mrs Oglethorpe is gone again, James fixes the young woman with a sideways look across the bucket they're both shedding pinwheels of potato skin into. "What part of the bible was that again?"
"Something from the gospel of Luke, I'd imagine," she says. He tells the whole thing to Thomas in the evening, pressing a kiss to the other man's fingers and chuckling against his knuckles.
The following day, he and three women are mending things on the step in the sun and watching as one of the horses is hitched to the cart when Oglethorpe himself steps out to meet it. He pauses when he spots them, asking to inspect the shirt James is patching. "You sailors are all so very industrious." Then-- "Tomorrow I should think you're well enough to go back to proper work though."
Then he's off to climb into the cart alongside the driver in a flurry of coat tails, hat perched neatly on his rigorously powdered wig. James stitches in silence as the sound of the cart's wheels grind away, away, away--
Annie takes the shirt from him. "The very bottom left drawer in the study's desk. Be real quick. Just take one or two," she hisses at him. "Mind that you're quiet," spits Hannah. Bettina says nothing at all, though her hands have paused in their works. She stares at him, dark eyes fixed.
Tick, tick, tick.
In theory, the small measure of candlelight afforded the convict slave quarters in the evening isn't meant to be read by. In theory, he doesn't have in his possession two letters out of two dozen written by Abigail Ashe. In theory, he doesn't give them to Thomas that night. In theory, nothing at all has changed.
no subject
He graduates from pressing ribbons to scrubbing shirts, from laundry at the fringe of the main house to washing floors and windows in the parlor. The first time someone puts a knife in his hand to skin a potato, he thinks: 'It's only been a few days,' and 'How far could I get with this?' Not very. Maybe that's the point. Or maybe the women in the kitchen are just short handed with Bes taken ill and his are just the convenient hands. So he does what he's meant to: skins potatoes without question and makes easy conversation with the women for what feels like (is) days on end.
Two things are readily apparent: the women are eager to press him with questions and are as shrewd as hawks by necessity. "A man must take with him into the world below an indestructible faith in truth and justice, lest coming upon villainy he do irremediable wrongs to others and suffer worse himself," is what he's in the middle of clumsily half-quoting by request when Mrs Oglethorpe finds her way to the kitchen in the heat of the day. She asks 'What was that, James? It was very lovely.' Charlotte, who claims to not grasp Plato, answers without hesitation, 'It's the Bible, mistress.'
When Mrs Oglethorpe is gone again, James fixes the young woman with a sideways look across the bucket they're both shedding pinwheels of potato skin into. "What part of the bible was that again?"
"Something from the gospel of Luke, I'd imagine," she says. He tells the whole thing to Thomas in the evening, pressing a kiss to the other man's fingers and chuckling against his knuckles.
The following day, he and three women are mending things on the step in the sun and watching as one of the horses is hitched to the cart when Oglethorpe himself steps out to meet it. He pauses when he spots them, asking to inspect the shirt James is patching. "You sailors are all so very industrious." Then-- "Tomorrow I should think you're well enough to go back to proper work though."
Then he's off to climb into the cart alongside the driver in a flurry of coat tails, hat perched neatly on his rigorously powdered wig. James stitches in silence as the sound of the cart's wheels grind away, away, away--
Annie takes the shirt from him. "The very bottom left drawer in the study's desk. Be real quick. Just take one or two," she hisses at him. "Mind that you're quiet," spits Hannah. Bettina says nothing at all, though her hands have paused in their works. She stares at him, dark eyes fixed.
Tick, tick, tick.
In theory, the small measure of candlelight afforded the convict slave quarters in the evening isn't meant to be read by. In theory, he doesn't have in his possession two letters out of two dozen written by Abigail Ashe. In theory, he doesn't give them to Thomas that night. In theory, nothing at all has changed.
"It would appear to be the same clock," he says.