I got a couple of PMs about the setting – yes, this story is aiming for a NYC / east coast vibe. No, there's probably not going to be anything explicit in the setting and detail. Somehow, naming it seems less fairy-taleish to me. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, if we come to it. Most of the action right now is interpersonal or internalized, so it's not especially relevant.
The first time he'd insisted on her bringing him tea each morning, Belle half-thought the well-dressed mystery man was joking. Three emails from the personal secretary of Mr. Anthony Gold, a partner in the firm that signed her pay check every two weeks, set the record straight. No, he was not joking. Yes, that was the oft-maligned Mr. Gold – in the flesh. No, tea service was not what they were paying her for but Mary Margaret could see to it that a small bonus made its way into her pay check once a month. Yes, it was rude of him to call her a ragamuffin.
To Belle, it seemed like a very small inconvenience with a fairly large reward. Mary Margaret sent down a $300 pre-paid credit card that same day so she could pick up any necessities for the following morning, and she synced their calendars so Belle wouldn't waste her time on days when Mr. Gold traveled or, if the whim took him, chose to work from home. Call her crazy, but getting a little face-time with one of the people responsible for keeping her on the payroll did not sound like an all together terrible idea.
She liked the mid-sized museum very much, but her contract only lasted for 2 years until the largest of her restoration work was scheduled to conclude. A recent recipient of her M.A.C. (Master of Art Conservation), the only option to improve her station was by networking with the large metropolitan museums and collecting a sheaf of glowing reference letters. If pouring tea for Mr. Gold was what it took, well... she could do worse, ragamuffin or not.
Belle lost herself a little when she entered the small Czech tea shop tucked away in the lower East end of town. The smell of honey bush and ginger overwhelmed her, so she spent a few moments just soaking it all in while a very out-of-place Gogol Bordello song drifted through the shop from the back room.
In the end, she bought three stainless steel travel mugs, a few variations on the standard loose-leaf, and more of the pungent Earl Grey he seemed to enjoy. A quick stop at a neighboring specialty foods store, and she had a very large jar of organic honey and lemons to last the week. The pre-paid card still had quite a bit of money left on it, but Belle tucked it away with her receipts for later. She assumed the lemons and tea leaves would need re-stocking sooner or later.
Her first few mornings went by quietly and without incident. Belle made it her priority to deliver Mr. Gold's hot mug of tea, made just the way he liked it, each morning before she began the painstaking task of reproducing oil on canvas masterpieces. As a result, her clothes looked a bit more pristine, her hair remained un-mussed, and her face stayed clean. The final product must have pleased, or at least not displeased, Mr. Gold because he never commented on her looks or attire again.
In fact, he never commented. Period. Belle did not see him when she dropped off his morning cuppa with Mary Margaret and collected his mug from the previous day (or previous two days, if he forgot and left one in a meeting room somewhere). She spoke pleasantly to Mary Margaret for a few minutes, handed off the beverage, and then retreated back into her own little world.
Her pride and joy stood about 12 feet tall and 20 feet wide, or it would if the canvas hadn't been lost in the annals of time and moldy basements. The painting was a remnant of an unknown Neoclassical French master, dated to approximately 1780 – just prior to the French Revolution. Who knew what the artist could have become, had it not been for Madame Le Guillotine and Robespierre.
At any rate, the work was referenced in numerous indexes and inventories over the years, all of which described it as a veritable orgy of nymphs and satyrs. Pieces of the canvas featuring particularly graphic content had been cut away and set into smaller frames, disbursed to private collections in God only knew where. Other portions of it showed burn marks from an errant flame. Still other segments had quickly been edited for content, and misshapen fig leaves dotted more than a few genitals.
Belle's duty was two-fold. To uncover and preserve what remained of the original piece, and to pour over records and photographs to reconstruct as much of the original work as possible. In the end, the museum wanted a clean, fully documented original painting and a full-size reproduction of the complete work, as it might have been in the late 1700s. If she had to invent figures for filler, they wanted a list of reasons as long as her arm backing it up.
It was no small task, but Belle knew she could handle it. Besides, when it became too daunting she could always work on one of the smaller restoration projects or help Gaston care for the several hundred historical weapons on display in the museum's main atrium. Weaponry, particularly swords, were Gaston's specialty. He fancied himself something of a dashing swordsman, but Belle suspected he fell somewhere between squire errant and fop in terms of real skill. Then again, what did she know? Her expertise lay in oil and canvas.
It took her entirely by surprise when, one predictable Tuesday afternoon, Mary Margaret sent her an email flagged as urgent.
Belle,
He's in a mood, heads are going to roll soon. Will you please do me a favor, just this once, and run up something decaffeinated? A whole pot, if you can. He really might have lost it this time – he threw the cup one of the interns brought him at her head. Thank God it was just paper and plastic, Hopper's going to have a fit.
I owe you one!
M.M.
Belle liked Mary Margaret. Really, she did. She sighed and typed out a quick reply:
Be there in about 10 minutes.
B.F.
Looking down at her paint-flecked smock, wrinkled slacks, and low heels, Belle felt like she would be walking naked into a war zone. Maybe Gaston wouldn't mind if she borrowed a suit of full-plate? But of course she couldn't actually do that, no matter how appealing it sounded. Instead, she summoned all of her bravery, plopped some honeybush-rooibos into a tea ball, and assembled all of her porcelain soldiers on an improvised tea tray. (It was supposed to be part of an 1850s silver-smithing display, but closer examination had shown it to be a cunning forgery.) She did not notice the chipped cup make its way onto the tray.
When she arrived in the executive lobby, she could hear Mr. Gold shouting from outside his office. His brogue seemed thicker, though the exact words coming out were muffled through several layers of glass and concrete. Belle took a deep breath and kept moving. At the very least, she knew that herbal tea and art must be pretty far removed from whatever had stirred the agitated man's ire.
"I'm here, Mary Margaret."
"Thank God," the pale woman gasped, phone set half-cocked and three little red lights flashing for callers on hold. "Mr. Gold, your afternoon tea is here," she said softly into the intercom.
"If you're offering me pigswill again..."
"It's Belle," Mary Margaret offered in way of an explanation.
"Who?"
"Miss French. The Earl Grey girl. I asked her to make a special trip."
"Good. Send her in," snapped Gold, and the line went silent.
"He's all yours," grinned Mary Margaret apologetically.
"Goody," muttered Belle. She was not looking forward to having a full tea pot hurled at her head this afternoon. She took a deep breath, plastered a smile to her face, and walked through Mr. Gold's office door for the first time.
The man Gold was screaming at, a cowering, beet-red little man who Belle thought looked painfully shy, took the break in conversation to excuse himself and escape. He nearly bowled Belle over as he hurried out the door.
"Ah, Miss French. You are looking as unkempt as ever, I see. Is that a paintbrush sticking out of your hair, dearie?"
Belle blushed. It almost definitely was a paintbrush, and it just figured that she would forget something obvious like that. Still, she wouldn't be cowed. "Mr. Gold," she replied, setting down the tray on the side of his desk. "You do realize that you pay me to paint and not to make tea, right?"
"Do I?" He genuinely seemed not to know what she did, as though being his delivery girl must be the sum of her worldly ambitions and talents.
"Yes," she said strongly, "you do." And with that, she began to pour.
"This is not Earl Grey, Miss French."
"No, it isn't," she paused. "It's an herbal tea, from Africa. Mary Margaret thought you might benefit from something decaffeinated."
Gold completely stunned her when he let out a healthy belt of laughter and indicated that she should continue to pour. As Belle handed him the cup, she realized a few seconds too late that it was chipped.
"Trying to bleed this old rock to death, Miss French?" he teased, taking a careful sip.
"Oh, uh... I'm sorry. I didn't realize, it must be the one I chipped that day in the break room. Mr. Gold, if you don't mind me asking, what were you doing all the way down there that day anyway?"
Gold added a bit of honey to his cup and motioned for Belle to sit. She felt incredibly vulnerable, sitting a little lower than his eye level in her less than glamorous clothes, but she met his critical gaze anyway. Sometimes bravery is a quiet tea for two, she thought ruefully, and then giggled because, in reality, it was just tea for one.
He looked up from his cup and was pleasantly surprised by the bright color and clarity of Belle's rather fine sapphire blue eyes. "Do I need an excuse to visit my collection, Miss French?"
"No, of course not. It just seems strange that..."
"If you must know, I was looking for a quiet respite and a spot of tea."
In for a penny, in for a pound. "Gaston says you only ever come down to spy and fire people."
"Gaston is a twit," Gold spat back. Belle got the impression she might have pushed her luck too far. "Now, Miss French -"
"Really, you can call me Belle, Mr. Gold."
"Miss French," he insisted. "This has been lovely. You will repeat the performance at 3 PM each afternoon unless Mary Margaret tells you otherwise."
"Mr. Gold, I don't -"
"Yes, yes. I pay you to paint, all of that nonsense. But the point is, I do pay you. So next time bring me green tea with ginger and an extra cup for yourself."
"Sir?"
"Did I stutter, Miss French?"
Belle shook her head no.
"Good. Then get back to whatever it is I do pay you for, and tell Mary Margaret she can stop holding my calls. Good day."