One strains to think of good things, to raise the spirits, but even from high atop the hill which sits like a king at table before Bree, there is nothing lofty to be found. Not even so much as a fine feast, bought with coin I should not have spent, could not spare, wasted as I barely got to taste it. So simple it seemed. To celebrate another exhausting, draining, but productive day, and the presence of the beautiful Odelynne -- even if she seemed more taken by my sister than by me, a familiar enough experience, it was still hopeful both to be in her company, and to see them together. I had not realized how much I was counting on some small morsel of merriment, on a hearty meal, on good cheer, to wash away a wearying day, until it was taken from me.
What has become clear to me now is that, if Mr. Hazelwood is in a room, there shall be room for naught else but him. His petty recriminations, his ego, his eagerness to take offense at anything, ever seize all the words and thoughts and attention of all and sundry, and I might as well be a mouse behind the wainscoting. He and Piper make a wildly volatile situation, it is true. She is quick to fire, and he has naught to occupy him but throwing tinder every which way. But no, Piper did nothing but say what I was too cowardly to say, too fretful at how fragile is my place in Bree while I desperately scrabble for purchase. The unavoidable truth is that the same happens when she is not there; it is not her. It is Arthur who, no matter who else is present, draws from the room all thought, all air, all heed. I stood or sat within arm's length of Odelynne for an evening, and yet for as many times as I struggled to engage her in conversation, we exchanged little more than a few dozen words, and all of them, ultimately, about Arthur, save only her disapproval of my scant mention of work. Her final words, about her choice to stay at his table even after such unseemly and churlish behavior to me and my sister, stung all the more, dulled not at all by her protest that she chose no sides. What sides are there to choose in such an affair?
It is now evident that I must extricate myself from his company entirely. There is naught to be gained by his proximity, and even less by his friendship, or whatever coarse diminishment of haughty abuse might pass for it. Perhaps also from Odelynne at that; I think not that she will have words for me, and I cannot tell whether I might have any for her, should I chance to see her again.
Piper, for her part, burning hot, stalked her way back to the Peach, and I deemed it a poor time to follow after her stride was so chosen to suggest perhaps it best I keep some distance. She stands in my defense, and then apologizes to me for it, and I have failed entirely to thank her, to convince her she spoke my own thoughts, to make her feel the appreciation I ought to shower upon her for taking up words (if not sword) in my safeguard. Even Odelynne saw fit to defend me (at first), going so far as to offer a duel -- Liffey might laugh at the thought of another woman trying to defend me with steel from Arthur, only to be spurned for the mere shortcoming, in Arthur's addled thoughts, of being a woman -- but whatever moved her to stand for me did not impel her to speak to me, look at me, or even choose to leave when Arthur's effrontery had gone beyond what can be forgiven.
This hill-top was to be a place I walked with Odelynne when next I visited it. I was avoiding climbing it to better savor that moment when it came. If it ever did. I suppose the view shall be mine alone, then.
Perhaps I ought to seek some other place for meals while my work keeps me in Bree, if the Pony be thus unwelcoming. Here I sit with my stomach rumbling from hunger even though I just spent a week's wages on a fine feast. It might be for the best, anyway. I can ill afford to dine so well. What I can wheedle from Eugenie for a box lunch, and such scraps can be scrounged in the market, will have to do.
