“Oh, ofcourse.”
As Iris stalked towards Ewan’s office, she could feel her body trembling. Only this time it had nothing to do with the impending journey, and it had everything to do with the man she was about to face. Her body reacted to the idea of him without even seeing hisface.
Iris felt like she was about to step right into danger, and there wasn’t anything she could do aboutit.
With a deep breath, Iris quickly smoothed down her uniform and she patted her hair. Then she knocked lightly on the door and waited for Ewan to answerher.
“Comein.”
She swooned a little. Even his dark, velvety voice was enough to floor Iris, but she had to pull herself together before she went in there. Iris needed to find that inner strength again, to pull her through another challengingday.
“You called for me?” she asked quietly as she pushed the door open. “Is everythingalright?”
“Please, Daisy, comeinside.”
As Iris stepped into the room, she couldn’t help noticing how stiff and stressed Ewan looked. Gone was the wishful young man that she’d danced with at the ball and in his place was a gentleman with the weight of the world on his shoulders. One that didn’t know what to do with the future that lay out in front ofhim.
“Thank you for coming to see me, Daisy. I would just like to let you know that arrangements have been made for our trip into the city. We will leave at firstlight.”
Her heart lifted and jumped all at once. This was somehow wonderful and terrible news all in onego.
“Wonderful, thank you.” Iris bobbed into a curtsyautomatically.
“The journey may take some time; we may have to stop off along the way so please be sure to bring whatever you need withyou.”
“Iwill.”
She smiled at Ewan and he returned the happy look, if only for a second. It wasn’t long until he rearranged his face into a stoic expression oncemore.
“I will see you by the main entrance in the morningthen.”
“Thank you again, Lord Oakley.” She paused for a second, but there was no offer to ‘call him Ewan’ this time. “I will see you in themorning.”
* * *
Iris’s emotionsdipped and rose all day long. As it turned out the anticipation wasn’t the worst thing. Knowing that she was about to leave and waiting for that to happen jarred her evenmore.
She spent the evening away from the other members of staff, just because she knew that she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to hold a normal conversation so she retired to her bedroom early instead. There she set about packing away all of her belongings, just in case. Much as Iris wanted to remain positive about her chance of return, she needed to be smart and thinkpractically.
Iris delicately folded up the endless letters that she had written for Daisy to take with her. She did not want them to be discovered, but also she might pass maybe one or two of them onto her sister to send on to Daisy...possibly.
Once she was done, she paced the room and flicked her eyes all over it to drink it all in. Her time within this household hadn’t always been straightforward and fun, but she’d found a lot of happiness within these walls and it was sad to say goodbye. Especially as it could beforever.
Speaking ofwhich...
It wasn’t typical for the staff to be out of the quarters past their hours of work, but Iris wanted to say a final farewell to Amy too, so she tiptoed quietly past everyone to see her. Luckily all the others were deeply involved in a debate about something that sounded vaguely political, so no one turned to faceher.
As Iris reached the top of the stairs, she stopped dead in her tracks when she realized that she wasn’t the only one who had come to say goodbye to Amy. Standing in her bedroom door was her brother, and he had a look of sheer concern on hisface.
Iris knew that this was her cue to leave, that she should’ve raced down the stairs as quickly as she came up them to avoid getting caught, but she couldn’t. Her legs felt stiff, frozen to the spot as her eyes fixed on the man that had meant so many things to her at differenttimes.
Her heart reached out for him, there was a larger part of her that simply wanted to tumble into his arms, but of course she knew that she couldn’t. She was restricted by who she’dbecome.
Seemingly sensing that he was being watched, Ewan twisted his neck to look at Iris. At first he looked a little shocked to see her so blatantly breaking the rules, but then his face softened and they shared a sweet look instead. She spotted a glimpse of the man that she’d danced with coming back again for amoment.
“She’s asleep,” Ewan said quietly across the hallway, making no move to get closer to Iris. “You may need to see her before we leave... if she’s awake thatis.”
“Right,” Iris nodded. “I guess I’ll come up in the morningthen.”
Neither of them moved for a moment, they remained in the thick, tense atmosphere simply looking at one another with emotions flowing between them. A thrill raced up Iris’s spine, but still she did not move. In the end, it took Ewan to turn and leave for her body to unfreeze, but even then there was a sense in her heart that anything waspossible.
Maybe tomorrow, she would get much more than she bargained for. Everything could change in a good way...possibly.
