Free Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1) by Steele Alexandra

her hand. “I’m fine. I’m not sick.”
    His
mother nodded, though she looked unconvinced. “I’ll be back down to fix our
supper in just a minute. I have to look in on her ladyship first.”
    “Take
your time,” Spencer told her. He wasn’t opposed to having a few minutes alone
with his thoughts.
    Mrs.
Tattersall frowned at his terse response. “I’ll just be a minute.”
    As she
vanished upstairs Spencer wandered into the kitchen and stoked the fire
contemplatively. The cat leapt off the table and darted between his ankles,
pausing to rub her head affectionately against his shin. Then she too was gone,
a nimble shadow in the gathering darkness. Spencer sat at the hearth and stared
out of their kitchen window, one of precious few windows in the Haligorn.
    He was
not comfortable around the princesses. His new connection to them made him
anxious and he was afraid that it might bleed into all aspects of his new life at
the castle. His existence in the Haligorn had been quiet so far, and he hoped
it would remain that way. Some might have considered Spencer and Abigail’s
lives dull, but there was a quiet rhythm to their days which Spencer found
comforting. He and his mother rose early, and Mrs. Tattersall immediately
withdrew to the topmost chamber of the Haligorn to wake Justine. While his
mother was upstairs, Spencer tended to the morning chores, stoking the fire and
feeding the cat. Eventually his mother would come downstairs, make breakfast
and give Spencer his tasks for the day.
    Mrs.
Tattersall was determined that her son would receive the best education
possible, but since he was from the countryside and not of castle blood,
whatever schools the elite children of the castle attended were off limits to
him. Mrs. Tattersall, whose father had been a schoolteacher and an educated
man, assigned him books to read and did her best to review his work when she
had the time.
    While
she sat with Justine, Mrs. Tattersall kept herself busy stitching, and since
there were only so many clothes that the two Tattersalls could wear, Mrs.
Tattersall often took on extra sewing. They had no way of knowing how long Mrs.
Tattersall would retain her job at the Haligorn, and so the extra money brought
them peace of mind. Every few mornings Mrs. Tattersall gave Spencer a basket of
newly mended clothing, and he delivered them back to their owners all over the
castle.
    Since
his mother spent much of her day at the top of the Haligorn with Justine, she
had little time to clean their living quarters, so much of the day-to-day
cleaning fell to Spencer. Mrs. Tattersall had become obsessively tidy since her
husband’s death from an infected wound turned morbid. More than once in the
dark days after his father’s death, Spencer had woken in the dead of night from
a deep sleep to hear his mother scrubbing their floor and crying.
    Though
his father had died just a year and half previously, Spencer rarely thought
about him. He could feel the memories clawing their way to the surface of his
mind every once in a while, but he pushed them away as often as he could. In
the past eighteen months it had become an automatic reflex. After those first,
horrible months, he had begun to master the art of stifling thoughts of his
father before he could really think about what had happened. There was
no sense thinking about it. It wasn’t something that could be undone, or fixed,
or even made sense out of. He had even managed to block his father out his
dreams, at least the ones he remembered, though sometimes he woke with tears on
his cheeks and no memory of why he had cried.
    Spencer
stretched uneasily, and his glance went to the kitchen doorway and the dark hall
beyond. Despite his earlier words to his mother, he found himself suddenly
lonely for her company. Though he felt guilty about keeping his association
with the princesses from his mother, her presence was comforting.
    When
Mrs. Tattersall came downstairs a few minutes later, it was to find