“She Can’t Understand Us,” They Laughed — Then the Duke’s Bride Silenced Them in Fluent Italian
Chapter 16
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Then she had gone out again alone into the snow. It was the worst thing she had ever done: the wind knocked her down twice before she reached the boot. The drift was building against the underside of the coach, higher every minute, and it was creeping across the door. If it covered the door, they would be sealed inside in the dark, with the lamp eating the air.She found the guard's spade in the boot by feel. She was so afraid that she could hear her own teeth chattering—a sound like dice in a cup.She dug. She dug the door clear, and a trench down from it. And then she dug a wall of snow on the north side, packing it with her hands so that the wind would go over the coach and not into it. She could not feel her fingers by the end; she could barely see.She went back to the coach on her hands and knees. When she slid down through the door again, the soldier's wife caught her and pulled her inside, and they all crowded around her and rubbed her hands until she could feel them again, which hurt so much that she wept."There," said the old lady, patting her. "There, you brave, foolish girl.""I am thirty-one," said Thomasina, laughing and crying at once. "I am not a girl. I have not been a girl for years.""At my age, dear, everybody is a girl.""Stockings off," she said. "All of you. Wet stockings will take your toes before morning. There are dry ones in this gentleman's bag. Yes, sir, you as well.""Madam, I hardly think—""I do not care what you think. I care about your feet. Now, sit close. Closer than that. Knees together. The coachman in the middle, the blanket over all our legs. Nobody here is too proud to be warm."She put the lamp where it warmed the most hands, then uncorked the port. "One mouthful each," she said. "No more. We shall want the rest before dawn."She capped the bottle. "Now, the worst danger now is sleep. If you feel sleepy, you must say so. Nobody sleeps.""Nobody.""How can we keep awake?" said the clerk. "It's past three in the morning."Thomasina reached into her gown and took out her father's pocket board. She unfolded it on her knee in the lamplight. The small pegged men stood in their holes where she had left them halfway through a game."We are going to play chess," she said.She did not play the game on the pocket board—that one was not hers to finish alone. She took the pegs out of it one by one, put them in the old lady's lap, and then set them up fresh.She played the clerk first. He did not know the moves, so she taught him, and he learned fast because he was frightened and it gave him something to hold.Then she played the soldier's wife, who knew a little, and who said her husband played in barracks.