A/N: For all of the very patient folk who want to see Groves get the girl. This is the first part, as I was writing I was quickly realising that if I wrote everything I had in mind, it'd get very long and set me drastically back for Flufftober. I'll see what I can do about continuing this storyline sometime after October. I should really go back and edit the chapter titles at some point so that it's easy to see what's what from the wee drop down menu, considering how much this one jumps back and forth. Apologies if it's confusing!
Hope was observant - and, better still, she was no fool. She knew that her employers were…out of the ordinary. More so the mistress than the master, but then again seeing as he'd married the mistress, he had to have his fair share of quirks. But none of that was something she considered to be a bad thing. In fact, it made working for them rather pleasant. She didn't comment upon the oddities to their faces, she wasn't an idiot, and more importantly she didn't comment upon them behind their backs, either. No matter how many people pressed her for details on whether they matched up to all of the strange stories surrounding the two of them.
They paid her exceedingly well, and treated her better still, and that was more than enough to earn Hope's loyalty. Which was why, when she entered the kitchen one morning to find a strange man in the pantry, she thought little of taking up the nearest sharp object. It happened to be a carving fork rather than a knife, but she brandished it before her with two hands.
The master was away, and the mistress would likely be abed for a few more hours still. She only prayed little Antonia would remain upstairs until she could convince the intruder to leave.
"I don't know who you are," she said, "but you must leave. Quickly. Or else I'll call for the master of the house."
If he had been watching the house, he would know that the master was not home. But hopefully this had been a flight of opportunism, and not a calculated move. Hopefully he had come here alone, and not with some horrid gang.
The man turned and blinked at her in dismay, raising his hands up before his chest, palms out as though surrendering. He certainly wasn't dressed like a vagrant - in a waistcoat, shirt, and breeches that were in good shape albeit with some mud, and with long dark hair combed neatly back and tied at the nape of his neck.
"I'm afraid there's been a misunderstanding," he said.
"Indeed there has," Hope replied evenly, "you are in the wrong house, sir."
"My name is Theodore Groves, Miss…?" when she did not supply her name, he continued. "Miss. I am an old colleague of Admiral- er, that is, an old friend of the Norringtons. I returned here with Mr Norrington late last night, and it was thought best not to wake any of the servants to prepare a bedroom for me. I am here at the invitation of the Norringtons, you have my word."
"Groves?" she echoed quietly, faltering.
"I was a Lieutenant under Admiral Norrington in his days with the Royal Navy. I've maintained correspondence with the Norringtons since then with some regularity. If you will allow me to go to my bag, I can fetch a letter that might prove it."
Hope felt the colour drain from her face, and she immediately discarded the carving fork down to the tabletop. For she recognised the name, and were he not who he said he was, he would have no way of concocting such a story.
"Oh my God," she said thinly. "I am so sorry, sir, I didn't realise that…if I had known…"
"You're not in the habit of threatening guests of the Norringtons with kitchen implements, then?" he asked wryly, a small smile on his face.
She had to place a hand onto the tabletop in order to remain upright. Unconventionality of her employers aside, she'd just wielded a carving fork at a good friend of theirs. It was a sackable offense in anybody's estimation. Not growing to comfortable here was something she'd vowed not to do – not because she thought they might kick her out at a moment's notice, but because it would be all too easy for an idiot to take their kindness for weakness and push their luck here. Hope had no wish to do that, for it seemed the easiest way to ruin a good thing.
"I am so sorry," she said again.
The smile quickly slipped from Groves' face as he appeared to realise the extent of her horror, and he held out his hands, palms flat, approaching as though hoping to calm a spooked horse.
"Truly, do not trouble yourself with it," he insisted, stopping just out of arm's reach. "It warms me, if anything, to see the sort of loyalty the Norringtons inspire in those in their employ."
Hope nodded, her face quickly trading going cold and stark-white to blazing crimson.
"Well, can I fetch you anything, sir?"
"Are you a cook?"
"No, a maid – in a manner of speaking. But the cook isn't here on a full-time basis, there's no need for that, so if you're resolved to wait for him you'll only go hungry."
"In a manner of speaking?" he echoed, a small smile on his face. "That sounds far more suspect than I think you intended. Like you're a maid by day but assassin by night."
Hope breathed a laugh. Yes. He was definitely a friend of the mistress.
Theodore Groves, from their first meeting onwards, was on Hope's mind more than was strictly necessary. Nor wise. At first it was embarrassment at their first meeting – as well as worry. Mrs Norrington would perhaps find it amusing, but Mr Norrington, while not cruel, was a deal more serious than his wife. More of a stickler for the done way of things.
But, that night, when Mrs Norrington introduced their guest to Hope as she cleared the dinner table for them, he smiled politely at her as though they had never met…and offered her a reassuring smile when her employers' attention moved elsewhere. The worry had left her then, but her curiosity had only grown.
He was kind. A kindness that seemed to seep into his face and his general demeanour and shine through – and he was a dream of a guest to deal with, for he had her employers' habit of seeking to make her job easier for her rather than falling into bluster about getting what they pay for. Plates were organised and neatly stacked at one end of the table for her to collect after dinner, they made their own bed after rising, and Mrs Norrington even insisted on dressing herself, or making do with only the help of her husband – and on being called Mistress Theodora, when they were in conversation. Only because Hope could not quite bring herself just to call her Theo.
Mrs Norrington, she knew, had profited from a great deal of upwards mobility, and so Hope suspected that to be the root of her kindness, perhaps not taking kindle to being on the other side of the great divide, and Mr Norrington likely was content to follow his wife's lead for the most part – although he took far more easily to the conventional ways of addressing servants. The matter of dressing, she thought, was less an oddity and more a great sadness. It was no secret that she'd taken a knife to the belly in all of that mess a few years ago, and what it had cost her. She could not be blamed for wishing to keep the evidence of such a time private. But, to the point, guests were always a wild card, and Groves was proving to be far towards the positive end of the spectrum than of the ilk who traipsed mud across the house with smirks on their faces because they knew it would not be their job to clean it.
No, Mr Groves seemed to suffer from the opposite problem. The same sort that Mrs Norrington did, if their second real encounter was anything to go by.
She'd been in the midst of mending one of Mrs Norrington's favourite nightgowns at the great, cleaned, table in the kitchen when their guest had all but burst into the room.
"It's raining," he said in response to her wide-eyed stare.
"…It's England, sir," she said slowly.
He smiled at that, his face boyish in his amusement, before she could worry that she'd sounded rude.
"Yes, I'm aware of that – but you have an awful lot of clothing on that line out there."
Oh. Oh no.
Such was her haste to race out, basket in hand, that she didn't even notice Groves not five paces behind until he was at her side, carefully unpinning clothing from the line and throwing it into the basket as she did.
"You shouldn't, sir," she insisted – albeit distractedly. "If the Norringtons see…"
"They're out – they've taken Antonia into town. And you must know Theodora well enough by now to know she'd judge me more harshly if I did not help you," he snorted. "Furthermore, I feel I owe you for that dreadful fright I gave you."
He had a point there – and she didn't really anticipate their ire, but it simply did not look good for their guest, for their very old friend, to be seen engaging in drudgery while he stayed. But the rain grew heavier, raining down upon them with the ferocity of hailstones, and whatever reservations she had were soon washed away by it.
Groves proved to be a skilled tactician, too, for he soon realised that she could take down the clothing at least twice as quickly as he, and adopted a new strategy. Shrugging off his coat, he stood in a shirt and waistcoat that soon grew sodden, and shielded the basket with his overcoat so that the clothing within wouldn't be drenched by the time she was done. He cut a ridiculous figure, hunched awkwardly over the basket as though his back was bent with age he could hardly boast of. When his actions earned him a disbelieving stare, he simply laughed and urged her to hurry. She didn't need to be told twice.
They returned indoors freezing, soaked through, robbed of their breath by cold and exertion both…but giggling like children. Best of all, most of the clothing was little more than damp. And they could both pretend that the flush of their cheeks was thanks to the cold, rather than the fact that they could not look one another in the eye without smiling.
