Story Snip from Larksong: Chapter 11 and Mountie!

oals!

Larksong is set in Montreal, July 1914.

In chapter 1, Alice, after her grandmother's funeral, arrived at the family cottage to take care of her grandmother's aviary, only to find that her parents had already leased the cottage to another family for the summer.

The only way she could have one more summer in her favourite place was to surreptitiously take on the role of governess to the two young girls...

In chapter 2, we met George, laid up at the hospital with a broken leg. Instead of joining his friends on a Grand Tour of Europe, he's being sent off to recuperate at a rented cottage in the country...

In chapter 3, we returned to Alice's point of view, and saw her bonding with George's younger sisters. Then she got a surprise -- George was arriving at the cottage that very day!

In chapter 4, we had a hint that Alice finds George attractive and interesting -- but also unbearably rude.

In chapter 5, they had their first argument.

In chapter 6, they argued once more, but the stakes were higher: war is on the horizon.

In chapter 7, George attempted a rapprochement. The chapter ended with him asking, "Why don't we both go sit in the parlour?"

In chapter 8, Alice had some feelings stirring...

In chapter 9, during their first evening together, they began to suss each other out over a card game.

In chapter 10, we reached the end of the evening, with harsh words from George, but a détente of sorts before they went their separate ways for the night.
(I've called the card game euchre, as a precursor to bridge, but if there's a better possibility, please let me know! The rules have been modified to suit the plot; we're pretending they're playing a local variation.)

In chapter 11, we start the next morning in George's point of view...

He was late to breakfast the next morning. The dining room was empty, with no one there to see his ungainly flop onto one of the cushionless chairs, or to hear the clatter as he shoved the crutches to one side and propped the leg in its cast on a second chair.

Elsie must've been listening out, though, because a few minutes later, she appeared with his breakfast on a tray. She set the tray before him, left and came back with a pot of tea, then informed him that the governess had taken his sisters down to the village.

He had no reply to that, so she returned to the kitchen. He heard her tramping back and forth through the back door, the creak of the well's wheel, the slosh of water on the flagstones.

Propped on a hard chair in a lonely room, toying with a slice of toast and a rapidly congealing soft-boiled egg, and listening to domestic sounds; his days had sunk to a new low. Not to mention that he was straining to hear one specific set of sounds: Alice's footsteps, returning. Since when had he hung on a girl's presence?

Shoving the greasy remains of breakfast to one side, he clambered to his foot and limped with one crutch to the aviary. His back ached from carrying all his weight.

The birds did not spare him a second glance once they'd determined he had no treats for them, but chattered amongst themselves. He recognised only a handful of species: the parrot, the pair of mourning doves, the mynah, the three budgies. A sparrow with a broken wing hopped about on the ground, trailing the wing alongside. That sight was all too familiar and, despite his straining muscles, he spun around hard on his good leg––the way he used to spin on his skates––and thumped down the hall.

He flopped heavily onto the daybed on the porch and was about to shove a cushion behind him to pacify his back, but just as quickly pushed himself to his feet again. There was no sense letting anyone see him act lazy or dejected. No matter how little will he had to perform the exercises Doctor Örstan had set––not even a short walk down to the garden––he certainly did not want the pity of any onlookers. He limped to the dining room, fetched the second crutch, and went out.

The garden path was paved, and the stones were level and clear of weeds, making his journey easier than he'd feared.

A bench had been set so as to command a view both of the woods behind the house and the lake at the bottom of the rise. Along the far shore, the green of summer shone on the tip of every branch, and the wildflowers on their tall stems waved their jaunty colours amidst the long grasses. The sense of looking out over a vast landscape was calming, giving the illusion that he might control all that he saw before him, even if it was only in the matter of how to paint it––if his desire to sketch or paint ever returned. Whoever had designed this garden had known what he was about.

He might wave a hand, and that monstrous two-storey brick homestead across the lake would disappear. In its place he'd set a low-slung stone building with many windows. A country club, where dances and other entertainments would be held all summer long. In winter, there would be a firelit room with deep sofas to rest on after a day of furious hockey battles on the lake.

He sketched in a balcony, his mind's eye conjuring girls in the wildflower colours of purple, pink, and yellow. He was debating whether they should hold fans or straw hats when he caught the sounds he'd had his ear out for all morning: laughter, girls' high-pitched voices, and the tramp of ladies' boots on the porch steps.

He leaned back on the bench, so that a convenient rose trellis, as though it had been planted there for just such a purpose, hid him from view. He already had his cast up on the bench; now he swung the other leg up beside it, and he was screened entirely.

He watched the governess––Alice––come and go, up and down the porch steps. His sisters ran around her, pretending to help but merely getting underfoot as Alice––the governess––and the maid went from house to hired cart and back, bringing in all the parcels. Alice paid the cart driver, then followed the others inside. The door shut.

From the aviary, the murmur of the birds suddenly rose to excited chirps. He pictured Alice as she'd been yesterday, straight as a goal post, with that elegant thin-limbed stance. Shoulders back, and both palms held tirelessly high in the air, as the birds swooped in and out, chittering at her, taking seeds from her hands.

A wild image came to him, of himself grabbing her about the waist from behind, birds and seeds scattering every which way as he buried a kiss deep in her neck.

"What in blazes?" he muttered, and turned away from the house. "Pull yourself together, man!" He tried to focus once more on the building opposite and the painting of his country club daydream.

Yet the image of Alice in the aviary, flushed by his kisses, would not leave him.