Chapter 258: Chapter 260: First Morning Home
ARIA’S POV
Aria woke up to an empty bed, and she decided to lay still for a moment, blinking at the ceiling, letting her brain catch up with the rest of her. Two weeks of hospital sounds had trained her body to wake up tense....waiting for a monitor to beep, a nurse to come in, something to be wrong. But the room was quiet in a completely different way than the hospital had been. The kind of quiet that meant nothing was coming. Nothing needed to happen. She could just...lie here.
She turned her head.
Damien’s side of the bed was neat in the way of someone who’d gotten up carefully, trying not to wake her. And on the bedside table, propped against the lamp where she’d definitely see it, was a folded piece of paper.
She picked it up.
Urgent matter with Marcus. Couldn’t wait. Didn’t want to wake you because you were actually sleeping and you needed it.
Lucy and Mrs. Chen have their instructions. Your mother is coming at ten.
Stay in bed until someone brings you food. That’s not a suggestion.
— D
And then, at the very bottom, slightly to the right, like he’d hesitated before adding it:
I left you the good pillow.
She stared at that last line for a solid five seconds.
Then she smiled and pressed the note against her chest and looked up at the ceiling and thought....not for the first time and definitely not for the last.....that she was absolutely gone for this man. Completely, embarrassingly, irreversibly gone.
She was still smiling when the knock came.
"Aria?" Lucy’s voice, soft through the door. "Are you awake?"
"Come in."
The door opened and Lucy appeared ....tray in both hands, her hair pulled back, wearing the estate uniform that Aria had once worn herself and looking at Aria with the specific expression of someone who had been given detailed instructions and was very invested in executing them perfectly.
The tray had tea, toast, fruit, a small pot of what smelled like the honey Aria had mentioned once in passing that she liked, and a single white flower in a tiny glass that absolutely had not been on any tray Aria had ever carried as a maid.
"Damien briefed you, didn’t he," Aria said.
"He sent a three-paragraph voice note at six-thirty AM," Lucy said, setting the tray down on the bedside table with great care. "He described exactly how you take your tea."
"Of course he did."
"He also said if you tried to get up before you ate something I should call him immediately."
Aria looked at her. "Lucy."
"Those were my instructions." Lucy pulled the chair close and sat down, which she would absolutely never have done when Aria was just a maid, and the difference of it....the ease of it, two friends in a bedroom instead of a maid and the help....hit Aria somewhere soft. "Also hi. You scared me so much. Don’t ever do that again."
"I’ll do my best."
"The poisoning, Aria. In a hospital."
"I know."
"I was...." Lucy pressed her lips together briefly. "Okay. I’m not doing this now because Damien said not to upset you and I actually agree with him for once." She reached over and straightened the flower in its tiny glass unnecessarily. "How do you feel?"
"Better than yesterday," Aria said honestly. "Better than I’ve felt in two weeks, actually."
"You look better." Lucy studied her. "Still terrible, but better."
"Thank you, that’s very kind."
"You know what I mean."
She did. She’d caught her own reflection in the bathroom mirror this morning and the honest answer was that she looked like someone who had been through something significant and was in the early stages of coming back from it. The colour was returning. The shadows under her eyes were lighter. She was still too thin.
But she was here. In her own room. In her own life.
That counted for something.
Mrs. Chen arrived forty minutes later with a bowl of soup that smelled like it had been on the stove since early morning and the air of a woman who had decided that Aria’s recovery was a personal project.
"Sit up properly," she said, setting the soup on the tray with the authority of someone who had been running this household for twenty years and was not impressed by anyone. "And don’t tell me you’re not hungry. I can see from here that you’ve barely touched the toast."
"I ate the fruit."
"The fruit," Mrs. Chen repeated, in a tone that communicated exactly what she thought of the fruit as a meal. She pulled the chair around to face Aria directly, sat down, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at her in the way she had that made you feel like a child being quietly assessed. "Damien said you lost weight in the hospital."
"Damien is monitoring my weight now?"
"Damien noticed," Mrs. Chen said. "Which is different." A pause. "He notices everything about you. Has since you first came to this estate, if you want my opinion."
Aria looked at her. "You knew? When I was here as a maid, you knew something was different?"
"I knew he’d never once come into the kitchen to see how the staff were settling in before you arrived." Mrs. Chen was entirely matter-of-fact about it. "Eat your soup."
Aria ate her soup.
It was, she had to admit, extraordinary soup. The kind that tasted like someone had put genuine time and care and probably three types of ginger into it, and she could feel it doing something good for her from the inside out.
"This is incredible," she said.
Mrs. Chen accepted this with a small nod, as though it was the expected outcome and nothing more. "The recipe was made for people who need building up." She watched Aria eat for a moment. "You gave us a fright, you know. All of us downstairs. When we heard about the kidnapping and the poisoning at the hospital." She paused. "It was the gardener who found out first. He came into the kitchen and I knew from his face before he said a word."
Aria set her spoon down for a second. "I’m sorry," she said. "For worrying everyone."
"Don’t apologize for being poisoned." Mrs. Chen stood, smoothed her uniform, and picked up the empty toast plate with the efficiency of a woman who was done with the emotional portion of the conversation. "Finish the soup. Your mother is coming and she’ll want to see an empty bowl."
