Chapter One Hundred: I Keep Away from Women

After hearing Louis speak, Kate’s eyes brightened and she grew excited. For a moment she had truly believed it might be a wondrous spell that could let her see the person hidden in her heart. Who, she wondered, was that person?

Kate became curious and ended up talking to Louis at length.

It was only after her father, the bishop, the wizard, and the others raised their cups again and again in toast that the young lady realized she had been a little less than lady-like. She straightened her posture in haste. “My goodness, I’m drunk—was I too forward just now?”

“Mr. Louis won’t misunderstand me, will he?”

“I don’t mean any harm.”

“Why isn’t he talking to me?”

Louis kept up his rounds of polite conversation, while Helen’s crystal globe at her wrist lit up. Her sister had been quietly asking how things were going all evening—today the Crowley family were all important figures, each one able to speak on her behalf at court. So she had been fretting over it in her mind.

No surprise, then, that when she saw the kingdom’s ministers, scholars, and bishops all paying Louis warm tribute one after another, her face lit with interest.

When Louis caught Helen secretly live-streaming, he gave her a stern, tightening look and signaled her to stop and turn it off.
Helen made a face and shut down the crystal sphere. After the count, clearly worn out, apologized and left the banquet, she too slipped away with an excuse and quietly reported to her sister: “I’m telling you, sister, Louis is amazing. You definitely can’t outdo him.”

When Helen finally left, Louis’s spirits lifted.

A house attendant whispered, “Master, Miss Helen is calling you. It seems Her Highness Oxycris has business with you. I used to be a court eunuch and still know a few old ministers…”
“Enough. Go at once.”

When Kate began to take her leave as well, Louis hurriedly waved to Stuart. “Out,” he meant.

He had no patience for the background officials. Oxycris had been gone from court for so long that the few old ministers who still stood by her were mostly useless sycophants, only good for loud, empty cheers.
Taken together, they could never match the authority of John the Bishop, who had just sat down and now wanted to draw him into conversation. Louis tugged his sleeve and sent him off to the side. He paid no mind to the drunken clergy and academicians nearby, who danced up to him or invited him for drinks.

After pushing through a cluster of arms, Louis came quickly to Kate, who had already stood, and asked the maid who intended to steady her to leave.

Taking the tipsy Kate by the hand himself, he said, “Lady Kate, I’ll take you home. You did want to meet the person you miss most, didn’t you? I have a book in my room with a full account.”

Hearing that, the composed young lady—twenty-six or twenty-seven and worldly enough—hesitated and gave Louis a searching look.
“Come then, Lady Kate,” he said with a gentle smile. “I’m a little tipsy, too. I’ll take you there and then fetch the book. If there is anything you still don’t understand tomorrow, ask me anytime.”

He sounded so sunny and upright, so perfectly gentlemanly, that Kate felt a secret sting of embarrassment.
How could she have thought poorly of him? He was a priest, after all—a gentleman of the right sort. He only meant to lend her a book, nothing more.
He was only twenty; surely he did not understand much yet, she thought.

She nodded with restrained dignity and followed Louis through the noisy hall.

At the doorway she turned back and added softly, “Mr. Louis, I’ll wait at the entrance and won’t come in.”

“Of course, Lady Kate.” Louis offered her his arm with complete courtesy, his face showing unmistakably that he kept himself distant from indiscretion.
Kate nodded demurely and placed her lace-gloved hand in his, smiling with quiet trust.

On the way, they exchanged ways to keep in touch, deciding they would correspond by letter and begin, slowly, as pen friends.
As they walked, they spoke for a while about Bors literature—Borst, called “Bor” in the Muggle world, a colossal literary giant—and seemed genuinely delighted. But it was nearly time to return.

Kate hesitated. It was getting late, and she thought perhaps she ought to return sooner, lest her house nurse come for the night check. Louis, ever polite, suggested they continue the discussion another day and that he escort her back to her guardian’s quarters.

Kate agreed at once, though just a little disappointed; she had thought they might easily sit and talk a little longer about the Odes and poetry.

Halfway there, Louis suddenly remembered he had no room key.
Kate gave him a mildly reproachful look and accompanied him to the half-basement steward to fetch the key, along with a few necessities.

Soon they reached Louis’s guest room. He took the supplies and told Kate to wait a moment while he brought the book.
She waited at the door with a candle, expressing her thanks in the most proper fashion.

When Louis opened the door and began rummaging through his luggage, the room became a little untidy.
Seeing the mess, Kate gave him a gentle rebuke, stepped inside like an elder sister, and helped him set things in order.

After they were done, they sat on the bed and talked some more about literature.
Later Kate said she was cold. Louis, thoughtfully, closed the door.

Then that room went on all night with noise.

Don’t misunderstand—they were only tidying the room.
That room, for all its size, seemed to have gone uncleaned for a long time. The two of them threw themselves into it, especially Kate, who felt she must receive a guest properly; this place was too rough, too unsightly, too undignified.
So they set to work cleaning.

The sounds in the room went “crackle and pop” in a lively rhythm, almost like firecrackers, as if someone had set them off near water. But truly it was only a thorough dusting—beating the sofa, the curtains, the bed, everything. The room was damp anyway.

It seemed they must have discovered either a giant rat or a great snake; Kate’s scream had been far too loud otherwise. She must have jumped to Louis in panic, and he lifted her into his arms. She clung hard to his neck, breathing fast, crying out at the creature that had frightened her.

The cry was loud enough to carry into the corridor. Louis, as if he had merely been carrying her through a mouse hunt, did not seem exhausted at all.
Kate, by contrast, nearly fainted from weariness—who could have guessed there was so much in that room?
He had promised to take her out for reading, but had instead dragged her into cleaning. She thought, if anything else, they could have spent the evening in conversation and written letters later.
Ah, a man of rigid ways—he managed to ruin even this.

Yet Kate said nothing. She was efficient and thoughtful. After a short rest, at Louis’s request, she helped him make up the bed again.

To receive a guest properly and preserve noble propriety, to maintain her own lady-like composure, Kate cleaned with such energy that her breath came in heavy gasps. Her eyes were strained and bloodshot, yet she did not stop.
The bedframe groaned and rattled with every movement.

Down below, John the Bishop, who had lain on his bed reading, took a noseful of dust as it drifted down from above. He sat and watched the endless drifting grains with a helpless shake of his head, spending the night sleepless.

That night a sudden, fierce rain struck the castle and rained all through to dawn.
Outside, the rich fields, long parched and thirsting, drank greedily. The cracked earth, desperate for water, seemed to sink its mouth into the downpour.
The rain was so heavy it drenched those fertile fields through and through, and the little spring beyond the castle gushed again and again, soaking every bedsheet the servants had forgotten to collect.

As Louis had said before, that night Lady Kate, who had carried this longing in her heart for years, truly did meet the one she had spent her heart on.
In tears of emotion, she kept crying out his name:

“Louis… Louis… Louis!!”

Too happy for words.

It was, in the end, a happy accident. It seems the dignified young lady who claimed to adore talking about the Odes and literature was, in truth, someone who enjoyed cleaning.

They would probably still make good pen friends in the future.

……
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