![]() She looks through Toris, mostly, or gives a sharp but small nod of gratitude, but this sneer is new. Mistress Braginski looks at him with disgust, something she hasn’t done before. ![]() No, Mistress Braginski, he has to remind himself. He turns around and smiles, expecting it to be Elizabeta, but instead he makes eye contact with Natalia. Toris is preparing Lady Braginski’s favorite soup for the rainy day when the kitchen door swings open with more force than usual. Toris strongly considers making small talk about the occasion, but the look she gives him as he slices bread and cheese for sandwiches silences him. The days she requests a meal, she leaves through a small door in the back of the kitchen overlooking the garden and beyond that, the woods. These are on weekends, Toris has learned, but she appears on the occasional weekday too. Most often, she wants a small meal to carry. She wants a slice of the cake only Elizabeta can make. Natalia, Toris has already met, and continues to meet with very limited dialogue. He enters the kitchen for bread, and sometimes he likes to sit at one of the staff tables and watch Toris cook, which is slightly unnerving. He smiles too, but constantly and vacantly, as if imagining himself somewhere else. The middle child is a thirteen-year-old boy, Ivan. She is the only one to smile and thank any of the servants she sees, but Toris hasn’t had this luck because she refuses to bother the kitchen servants, and Toris can’t often leave the kitchen. Yekaterina, he learns, is the oldest daughter at seventeen years old. The idea may have been that of Lady Braginski, the second person of rank, because Toris can’t think of the cold, unsmiling, rumbling-voice Lord Braginski as the one to take in orphans and children in poverty. Foremost is Lord Braginski, who seems only to have hired Toris and the rest of their adolescent staff as a charity project. The most important thing for him to remember is to stay out of the way of anyone of higher rank, which narrows it down to five people, give or take a few long-time servants. When Toris first saw Mistress Braginski, all he thought about her was that she was pretty.Ī few months later, Toris has largely got the hang of his job at the Braginski manor. He’ll have to ask Elizabeta about it, since she seems to know. He turns himself back to the dough, working a little faster so that he can get to whatever cookies Miss-Mistress Braginski wants. Toris flushes very slightly and doesn’t answer. Toris swivels around to look at Elizabeta, who is examining him with an amused expression. “See that you do,” says the girl, and with a rustle of knee-length skirts, she’s off. “The minute we finish our preparations for lunch.” “We’ll prepare them soon, Mistress Braginski,” butts in Elizabeta from the sink, turning and wiping her hands on her apron as she gives a little bow. “You’ll be making them soon,” she says in a voice that leaves no room for protest. The girl reaches his eyes and raises her eyebrows. When Toris takes too much time in responding, the girl turns to face him and eyes him from the ground up. The old cook, it seems, was fired for something along the lines of too many poor meals, making young Elizabeta the head chef and Toris her assistant until they can find someone new. He’s preparing bread to accompany that day’s lunch, a special recipe that the Braginski family seems to prefer based on how Elizabeta specifically instructed to make it exactly to the recipe’s standard. Toris doesn’t know anything about expected cookies. “Is there something I can help you find, miss?” She appears to be looking for something.Īfter a few minutes of this, Toris speaks again. The other girl-she looks around ten years old, four years Toris’s junior-pokes around methodically in the cabinets and pantry. Toris and Elizabeta continue to work quietly in the kitchen, Toris kneading dough and Elizabeta washing dishes. Not on his first day at the job, and not any other day. All he knows is that his greeting to her was one of his first thoughts, and he’s never going to shy away from a compliment. He can’t exactly describe what strikes him as the sweet part, as she has a bit of a glare and a slight haughtiness in her step. This girl, now that Toris gets a good look at her, still has a sweet face. It’s odd because everybody else Toris has met today has been exactly as he first guessed they would be-Raivis in the gardens stuttered and wouldn’t meet his eye, Eduard kept a cool façade to keep up with his butler uniform, and Elizabeta, right here next to Toris in the kitchen, constantly has a smile and something interesting to talk about. This girl looked so sweet when she first set foot into the kitchen, but apparently appearances can deceive. ![]() “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.” ![]()
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