Fuzzy time to SA28, post-midterm Her first week at work had been hell. As the saying went, ‘Hell is other people,’ and this had proven to be most assuredly true in the form of Mr. Penderghast, a snappish man who barked all his orders, and made her feel as if she completed every task poorly at best, if not downright wrong. She had stiffly resolved on her first day never to cry in front of him but had snivelled into her pillow most evenings. The main thought that sustained her was Araceli, and how much worse to her father was than Mr. Pendeghast was to her. Unpleasant though her days at work were, they were less than what her sister would face at home. And, she was determined, she could learn to be better. She could learn the skills he said she was lacking. Araceli was just nothing in father’s eyes, and always would be. The other factor, in why she hadn’t quit her job after the first dreadful day, was currently out of town on a business trip, but was due to return on Monday… Part of the reason her first week at work had been so crushing was the degree to which she had built it up in her head prior to starting. Barnabus Wolseithcrafte had made an exceptionally good impression on her the first time they had met, and she was determined to be quite fantastic at her job in order to impress him. A desire that was currently being crushed rather brutally under the heel of the senior partner.
On the Monday of her second week, she had just opened her files for the day and was panic-strickenly trying to remember what a subpoena was, when Mr. Penderghast strode in, the tall, dark and handsome form of Barnabus just behind. Mr. Pendeghast made to walk straight past her - when he wasn’t barking orders or corrections at her, he seemed to regard Delphine no more than any of the other office furniture - but the younger man stopped and smiled.
“Miss Arbon,” he smiled, “You’ve joined us at last. I’m sorry not to have been here to receive you in your first week - I was away on business. How was your first week?”
“Very good, thank you,” she replied earnestly. Her years at Sonora had taught her to be an excellent liar but she sensed that he didn’t entirely believe her.
“Glad to hear it,” he replied, his tone hinting the same. Perhaps he simply knew that the thought of a pleasant week alone in the office with Mr. Penderghast was an impossibility. “Well, I’ll see you later.”
“Yes, see you,” she smiled.
*
“To be filed, thank you,” Barnabus deposited the papers courteously on her desk. He paused a moment. “Would you care to take lunch together?”
That was how they had come to be sitting in the Italian restaurant just across the street from the office, him with a large plate of pasta and her with a roasted vegetable salad, her musing how her two employers could be so different… One so brusque, so rude, and the other so kind.
“You mustn’t mind Penderghast,” he said, as if he had read her mind.
“Oh, no - I,” she flustered, trying to find the words to deny that his every action to date had bothered her.
“He’s like that to everyone. It’s certainly not personal. And in spite of what he says, you’re really doing a very good job.”
“You’re really too kind.”
“I mean it.”
There was a pause. Delphine certainly was curious to know more about Barnabus, but at the same time was very conscious that he was her employer, was Mr. Penderghast’s junior partner, with certain loyalties to him. Still, she chanced her question.
“Why do you put up with him then? If he’s just as churlish to you.”
“Because he’s great at what he does. And I’m learning a lot from him. Though one thing I hope I shan’t learn is his way of speaking to others. Please, if I am ever anything less than courteous to you, if I ever start to sound like him, draw my attention to it. I certainly should not like that in myself.”
Delphine half nodded, more at her salad than at him, not quite sure how to take a direct order to speak back to her employer, or to perhaps do so in the future, and trying to ignore how his soft words and his smiles made her feel. It would be, she knew, a very bad idea to fall for her employer.
“Promise me,” he insisted.
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’” he insisted, “I told you so this morning. I like to think we have a few things in common…
“Do we?” she asked, rather hopefully.
“We each come from a large family. One where, perhaps, we’re something of the odd one out?” she wasn’t immediately drawn on the subject, and so he ventured to expand. “I mean, at first it was just me, then me and Francesca, so naturally for a time we were the closest. Then Theodore arrived, and she was in the middle. My going to school pushed them closer to each other, then of course they went to Sonora together and that cemented it. I was old enough by then not to be so jealous of it as I might have been as a small child, but they’re a pair, and so are the younger girls. All Sonora students too. And then there’s me.”
“It wasn’t like that with us. Not exactly. Effie and I are so close in age - we were always together growing up. It was Araceli that was left out. Not that we left her out, not deliberately, but… Effie was just about a year old when I was born. I don’t think she clearly remembers a life without me, and obviously I don’t without her. We tried to include Araceli, we tried to look after her, as the baby, but it wasn’t the same for her, I always got the sense.”
“But then they both went to school.”
“Yes. Though they were still so far in age that I don’t think it changed much. Effie still tried to look after her, of course, but it didn’t change things really. I expect our living together will do that more. Especially now that the age difference really doesn’t seem so great.” And, of course, the years she had spent impersonating her sister. She knew Araceli more closely that she thought she would ever know another living soul - more than she wanted.
They talked amicably all through lunch. Delphine was surprised to find that, as per his initial guess, they really did have rather a lot in common. A fact that made her previous resolution all the more difficult to stick to… As they stepped out onto the street, she dared one more, slightly more personal question.
“Why are you being so kind to me? Not that I don’t appreciate it - I do, of course. But… you know, you don’t have to be.” She was, supposedly, a big girl, who could look after herself. And, however far from the truth she felt that was, it certainly wasn’t Barnabus’ responsibility to shield her, to hold her hand and guide her through what she herself had signed on for.
“Well, in part, it’s naturally my way. But I suppose also because I have three younger sisters, and I like to think that - if one of them had a dragon for a boss, constantly snapping at her - that someone would take the time to go to lunch with her and to check that she was holding up alright.”
“Well, thank you,” she smiled, trying to mask the crushing feeling of disappointment that he had just compared her to his sisters.