The Madness Prompt 8 + Day 7, Chapter 7 of Lady Graves

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Today I revisited Chapter 2 (shoot me, right?):

“My name is--”
He cocked an eyebrow at her, the same way his dog did. She gripped her long braid, brought it closer to her eye, as if her hair might reveal her name.
“This is not how I braid my hair at night.” That was it--the one revelation that came while examing her hair. “This looks lovely, though. Like a herringbone. You must show me how it’s done.”
He laughed, and she remembered that he had been impertinent and presumptuous with her.
“My name,” she said, with every expectation that it would roll right off her tongue, “is…”

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I've been reading The Brothers Karamazov,

having just revisited Jane Austen's "Emma," thinking "It really must be all right to write like this; people still read these novels today!" -- and so, as of this morning, Chapter 4 now opens like this:

CHAPTER FOUR

To be living alone with a man would be scandalous even for a maid, much less for a lady, but Stangler could see no alternative. When she recovered, nobody need know where she had spent her convalescence.
With every hour he could see how well educated this young woman was--and how much like the young farm hand, Fritz Lanza, with that eagerness to learn and the capacity to do so. Both of them had a rare spark of perception that set them apart from most other people. At thirty-four, Stangler was roughly old enough to be Lanza’s father, and he might be more than twelve years older than Lady Graves. If she were just a maid, he would feel justified in keeping her with him for as long as she was willing. If she were a maid, young Lanza might very well woo her and win her over. He could picture them together on a ship to Ellis Island, pursuing life, liberty, and happiness in a New World with unbounded opportunity.
He did not like this picture, and he did not like himself for being so territorial and possessive. “Finders, keepers” did not apply to human beings, and not even to animal. Someone could lay claim to Emil and assert that a stranger had abused the dog after it strayed onto another property. It would be just like Emil to pursue a squirrel with no thought of trespassing.
If she was indeed a lady, it was imperative that he return her to her former estate. If he could only find out what and where that might be. London was his guess, but without a name, he had all the excuse he needed to keep her until she recovered her memory.
She did not seem troubled or unhappy. Her laughter warmed him like the first blossoms of spring. At times, though, she would look away from a book and sigh, and he could well imagine she yearned for a former life filled with people, whether hers were servants or royalty; either way, she had lived or worked in the society of others.

Another revision here (formerly in chapter 4 but now in 5, but the numbers and scenes will shift again):

She frowned at Lanza’s ill-concealed smirk, then met the doctor’s gaze. “You have never given me your full name and title. I should wonder what your name might be.”
Casting his gaze from the farmhand to the forlorn maiden, he finally replied. “Should anyone come looking for me, it is for your own safety that you know nothing of my history. In some places it may be wise if you do not call Herr Doktor, nor even Klaus, a nickname I never did like. If you are in the habit of using my name, it will be easy to slip up in the presence of those who cannot be trusted. Henceforth, if you would, please, just call me Stangler. The Americans are wont to do this, and you may call it crass, but I rather like it. Stangler, Lanza, and Graves! We sound like a company of lawyers.”
“Stangler.” She peered into his green eyes with the long, dark lashes. “The noble doctor yearns to become a crass American. Somehow it is no surprise to me that you are a fugitive from the law.”
“Unsinn! I am a fugitive from ignorance and tyranny. Never mind the charges against me; they are absurd and indicative of the sad, sorry state of a nation.”

Chapter Six left off here:

Emil was in a crouch, overlooking a ravine. “Don’t let her see,” Lanza said.
“She may have to look” Stangler said. “This may be our missing coachman.”

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(she looks)

... Had the day really been so inviting, so sunny and lovely, when they first set out? Lady Graves pressed her hands to her head, wincing, then felt raindrops falling just in time to mingle with her tears. The moody April weather!

“Let us get her home,” Stangler said. “Some hot tea and a warm, dry bed for you, my dear Graves, while Lanza and I work out the details of the substitute corpse.”

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This may or may not end up as the opening of

Chapter 7

Cold and wet, two men and a lady

peeled off their garments to dry by the fire. Lady Graves was sent to the loft to undress, and for the first time she saw the upper level of the cottage with its exposed wooden rafters, heavenly scents of cedar, sage, lavender and other herbs, and the feather tick on the floor where Stangler had started sleeping. Shivering, she lay down on it and wrapped herself in goose down and a musky scent of man while glancing around for a trunk full of clothing. The sound of raindrops on the roof was louder up here, making her feel all the more sheltered and secure. She was safe, for now. She was alive.

Reginald dangled over a ravine, battered by wind and rain, devoured by buzzards.

Vee was her maid, her lady in waiting. She was born to Hannah, their cook, not even half a year after Evelyn was born. Young Lady Evelyn had spent far too much time in the kitchen watching Hannah make magic out of ugly slabs of raw meat and smelly onions. With or without Vee, she would sneak out to the stables and befriend the horses--and the men who tamed them. The colts, unbroken and high in spirit, were her favorites. Reginald’s father, old Archibald, had credited her with making their work easier, taking the wildness out of the colts just enough so that they would tolerate the men who were out to harness them and control them.

Princess Caroline Matilda was her inspiration, though she’d died years before at the age of twenty-four. The princess would dress as a man and ride like one too, scandalizing the court. At fifteen she had married her cousin, the king of Denmark. Lady Evelyn was almost a princess herself. Her grandmother, the sister of a king, had left Germany to marry an English prince.

That was why she knew a little German.

Lady Evelyn, Lady Graves, the English patient--by whatever name, was born a lady--and Vee was her maid but also her constant companion from infancy. Hannah was more like a mother to her than her own mother, who had arranged to have them all sent off to Germany. To Lindenstein. Prince Hal was a giant of a man who’d lost two wives to the travails of childbirth, and Lady Evelyn was hard pressed to play the part of a lady when she loved running wild in the woods and riding horses bareback--but when was a real lady with all the papers to prove it, descended from the courts of Lindenstein. Her grandma had read to her The Nibelugenlied in English until little Evelyn could almost recite it herself, then in German, so that the legend of Seigfried was more a part of her than the classics of Shakespeare. Silly Romeo was a spineless dullard compared to the magnificent Seigfried.

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The memories came in like an avalanche

at first, but Evelyn shut them down. Tears rained onto Stangler’s bed but she could do nothing to rein them in. Sobs convulsed her body.

“There, now.” A familiar voice, a whiff of hot tea, and a hand on her shoulder accomplished what her own will power could not.

Stangler knelt beside her. He waited for her tears to subside then helped her sit up and handed her the tea, then turned his back and rummaged through the trunk for some dry clothes. He handed her some pants, a shirt, and a cord to hold up the loose garments. The shirt bore his musky scent. He looked away as she dressed, then knelt again, fingering her damp hair, sectioning it into thirds.

How could she have found him so irritating, when his actions were always so tender? His speech could be rude and laced with disapproval that reminded her of her father, but Stangler's little fits of tyranny never lasted long. He was a healer, a gentleman and a scholar, not an autocrat. If he irritated her at times, it was to be expected, given her traumatic injuries and precarious situation.

“I started remembering things,” she said. This was more urgent than any apology she might owe him.

“Ach. This is sehr gut, ja?”

"Good, yes, but--"

She sniffed, and he handed her a kerchief.

The man was ever so patient, unlike her mother and cousins and lady friends, plying her with questions and barely allowing her to answer one before accosting her with another. She finished her tea and kept the warm cup in her hands.

“My grandmother was a princess of Lindenstein.”

“How very surprised I am...not,” he replied. He braided her hair, quick and easy, and secured the end with a ribbon of leather.

“My father…”

The tears started all over again. Papa! The commanding lord of Everly who had time for her brothers and sister but none for her. The name Evelyn was squandered on her; it was her younger sister Emma who modeled all the virtues of a lady, who married well and made her father proud.

“Twenty-one.” She sniffed. “I am a maid after all. An old maid. Or I would have been, had Prince Hal not condescended to marry the wayward English lady who embarrassed her family.” Another sob ripped from her breast, and Stangler drew her head to his shoulder.

She was betrothed to a prince.

The thought of young Lanza winning over the bright young maid was dreadful enough; the prospect of restoring Lady Evelyn to her German prince was even worse.

“But wait!” A thought struck him. “Lanza said the innkeeper told him Lady Evelyn had reported her maid Vee and the coachman missing, along with her money. We have found the coachman, God rest his soul, and we found you, left for dead in a lonely wood. If you should arrive at Lindenstein, ready to claim Prince Hal as your bridegroom, what proof can you offer, and what will the second Lady Evelyn do about it? If she is pretending to be you, and believes the real Lady Evelyn to be dead--”

Now the English patient looked irritated again, her fists clenching, her brows knitting together as she pulled away from him.

“What a thing to say! My maid Vee is missing. You speak as if she is a usurper--my friend and companion from infancy!”

“Despite her lower station.”

“She is as well spoken and well mannered as any lady, because I treated her like one. Sometimes as a joke we would dress her in my clothes, and nobody mistook her for my maid. Until we went down to dinner looking like two sisters. Mother was furious. Everyone else just laughed, but Mother had Vee punished--”

She winced at the memory.

Stangler laid a hand on her shoulder. “So she has been known to dress in your clothes before--and pretend to be your sister.”

“I do not like what you are suggesting.”

“Nor do I, but Lanza had the same thought. He is still here, if you are ready to go down and hear him out.”

“Never. I will never be ready to hear more of this treachery!”

“Ready or not,” Stangler said, “the door has opened, and you can slam it shut now, or you can go through it and see what lies between you and the road to Lindenstein.”

“I shall go,” she said, “just to prove how terribly wrong you are.”

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END OF DAY SEVEN (for now), word count 1693