Double drabble. A telling conversation after Bates' fall
She sewed the torn tooling of the Lady Mary's black evening gown. He listened to the thimble and the needle swish gently as the fabric passed through her fingers. He reckoned in the ledger he kept for His Lordship, eager to show that his mind could be agile even if his limbs could not. Mrs. Patmore and Daisy pounded dough and readied kettles for the morning. The tallow was nearly gone.
"You should put something on that." Her tender eyes were fixed upon the tender flesh stretched over his knuckles. It had been torn when he landed in the gravel the previous day.
"It won't kill me," he said with a sad smile. The swishing quickened.
"It did my father." He set the pen down.
"He was a miner. His skin used to crack in the winter. Then it got infected." Her voice followed the rhythm he had grown so familiar with after just a few short wisps of conversation: her voice lowered with every sentence, then she tilted her head, her eyes darkened, deepened. She looked from the black cloth in her hands to his eyes. "He was very dear to me."
