Obsidian Throne: Villainess's Husband-Chapter 35 - 14 Part I: A Perfectly Normal Morning

Chapter 35: Chapter 14 Part I: A Perfectly Normal Morning

The problem with brown hair was that it had to come out eventually.

Vivienne had known this when Eleanor put it in. Had accepted it as a temporary inconvenience, a practical necessity, the minor cost of walking into a commoner institution without being recognised as the Lady of Eiswald. She had filed it under manageable and moved on.

She had not thought carefully enough about the removal process.

It required a basin. Warm water. A specific solution Eleanor had prepared the night before that smelled faintly of herbs and something sharper underneath. It required Vivienne to lean over said basin in the upstairs corridor outside the washroom because the washroom itself was occupied by a delivery of linens that Marta had organised with her usual precise efficiency and had not yet moved, and the corridor was the next best option, and Eleanor had assessed the situation and decided the corridor was adequate and that was the end of the discussion.

It also, apparently, required approximately forty minutes.

"Hold still," Eleanor said.

"I am holding still," Vivienne said, from her position bent over the basin with her hair in Eleanor’s hands and the solution running down the back of her neck in a way that was cold and irritating and would have been undignified even if she were not doing it in a corridor.

"You are holding still the way you hold still during the fourth sword form," Eleanor said. "Which is to say you are moving constantly and have convinced yourself otherwise."

Vivienne held still.

The solution worked slowly. The brown came out in stages — not dramatically, not all at once, but the way things came out when you had put them in properly and they did not want to leave. Eleanor worked with the focused unhurried efficiency she applied to everything, and Vivienne watched the basin water change colour and thought about the Arcana and the fireplace and the twenty-two cards and the specific way he had said that’s what we have and—

Footsteps in the corridor.

She knew the footsteps.

She had learned the footsteps in the same involuntary way she had learned the quality of his attention and the specific weights of his silences and approximately forty-seven other things about him that she had not intended to learn and could not now unlearn.

’No,’ she thought. ’Not now. Not in a corridor with a basin and solution running down my neck and my hair half brown and half red and—’

Alistair turned the corner.

He stopped.

She was bent over a basin in the upstairs corridor with her hair in approximately two different colours and a solution that smelled of herbs dripping steadily onto the floor and Eleanor standing behind her with both hands full of red and brown and the expression of someone who had assessed the situation and found it unremarkable.

He looked at the basin.

At Eleanor.

At Vivienne.

At the specific ratio of brown to red currently occupying the same head.

"The dye," he said.

"Yes," Eleanor said. Without looking up.

"It’s coming out," he said.

"Observant," Vivienne said, into the basin.

A pause.

She could feel him looking at her. The specific directional quality of his attention, which she had learned to feel the way you felt weather and which was currently aimed at the top of her head with what she could only describe as the focused interest of a man who had just encountered something he had not filed yet and was deciding how to file it.

"How long," he said.

"Forty minutes," Eleanor said.

"From now or total."

"From when we started. Twenty minutes remaining."

Another pause.

’Go away,’ Vivienne thought. ’You have the entire manor. There are many corridors. Go and be in one of the other ones.’

"Hm," he said.

He did not go away.

She heard him lean against the wall. The specific sound of a coat settling against stone, hands going into pockets, the quality of someone who had decided this was where he was going to be for the next twenty minutes and was comfortable with that decision.

"You don’t need to watch," she said.

"I’m not watching," he said. "I’m standing in a corridor."

"You’re watching." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

"The corridor has other things in it besides you."

She looked at the corridor from her bent-over position. It contained a basin, Eleanor, herself, and him.

"What other things," she said.

A pause.

"The wall is interesting," he said.

Eleanor’s hands continued their work with complete composure.

Vivienne looked at the basin water and made a decision about what she was and was not going to say and settled on saying nothing and simply existing in this corridor with the solution and the basin and the man who found the wall interesting for the remaining twenty minutes.

The remaining twenty minutes were, in several respects, the longest of her three years in Eiswald.

When her hair was finally, fully, unambiguously red again she straightened up and looked at him.

He looked at her hair.

Something moved in his expression.

She was not going to examine what it was.

"Twenty-two minutes," Eleanor said, wrapping a towel around Vivienne’s shoulders with the brisk efficiency of someone concluding a task. "Slightly longer than estimated. The brown was well-set."

"It was a good dye job," Alistair said.

"Thank you," Eleanor said.

"The red is better," he said.

He said this the way he said everything — flat, certain, unremarkable, the tone of someone stating a fact that required no elaboration and was not performing anything. Then he pushed off the wall and walked back down the corridor in the direction he had come from, hands in pockets, the coat settling back into its usual arrangement.

Vivienne stood in the corridor with the towel around her shoulders and watched him go.

’The red is better,’ she thought.

She was not going to examine that either.

She had a list now. It was getting long.

⁕ ⁕ ⁕

Petra had revised her theory.

This was reported to Eleanor by the second footman, Aldric, who had heard it from the kitchen maid, who had heard it from the housemaid who shared a room with Petra, who had apparently spent the better part of three evenings developing it and had presented the revised version to the kitchen after dinner the previous night with the specific enthusiastic confidence of someone who had done their research.

Eleanor received this information from Aldric in the east wing corridor while she was carrying the morning correspondence, listened to the complete summary without any change in her expression, thanked him for the information, and went to find Marta.

Marta was in the linen cupboard.

"Petra has a new theory," Eleanor said.

Marta did not turn around.

"I am aware," she said, in the tone of a woman who had been aware for some time and had been hoping the subject would not be raised.

"I thought you should know I know," Eleanor said.

"I appreciate that," Marta said. Still not turning around. Still organising linens with the focused precision of someone giving the linens her complete professional attention.

"She has incorporated several new data points," Eleanor said.

"Yes," Marta said.

"The Guild trip."

"Yes."

"The brown hair."

"Yes."

"The mask."

Marta was quiet for a moment.

"She has a name for the mask," she said.

"I heard," Eleanor said.

"She got it from one of the market vendors who apparently saw it on the road to Kalfren." Marta finally turned around. Her expression was the expression of a woman with fifteen years of professional composure and a deep personal commitment to maintaining it. "The vendor described it as — and I am quoting directly — the grinning face of something that has never needed to smile because it has never needed anything."

Eleanor said nothing.

"Petra found that," Marta said carefully, "romantic."

A pause.

"Of course she did," Eleanor said.

"The current theory," Marta said, with the specific tone of someone about to deliver information they have not asked for and do not want, "is that Zero and Anne are engaged nobles travelling incognito, that the Personal Aide is a — I believe the exact phrasing was — ’devoted guardian who has loved him since childhood and carries that love silently and with great dignity,’ and that Lady Vivienne is—"

She stopped.

"Is," Eleanor said.

"—slowly melting the heart of a man who has never allowed himself to feel anything because he has always been too powerful and too alone and too—" Marta paused. "There were several more adjectives. I stopped writing them down after the fourth."

Eleanor looked at the linen cupboard.

"The acoustics near the linen cupboard," she said.

"Are very poor," Marta confirmed. "Yes."

A pause.

"Is any of it," Marta said, with the careful precision of a woman choosing her words extremely deliberately, "inaccurate."

Eleanor considered the question with the same precision she applied to everything.

"The guardian part is slightly reductive," she said.

Marta nodded once, with the expression of someone who had received an answer that was technically a non-answer and had decided it was all the answer she was going to get and that was probably for the best.

"I’ll speak to Petra about discretion," she said.

"Don’t," Eleanor said. "She’ll just move the theorising somewhere with worse acoustics and we’ll lose the intelligence."

Marta looked at her.

Eleanor looked back with complete composure.

"Very well," Marta said, after a moment.

She turned back to the linens.

Eleanor took the morning correspondence and went to the study.

Continued in Part II —