The sky was dipped in grey. Not a light, dusty grey. But not a really dark grey either. A storm cloud grey. Only without the storm. Without any movement of the wind. The air didn't smell of rain either. It seemed to her as if someone had sucked away the colour of the sky. Like the stain on a dress that one brushed after soaking and that dissolves into nothing and afterwards one can't even tell where that stain had been. It had been the same with the colours around her for two days. Even the colour of the woods and fields she could see from her place by the window, seemed wiped out.
The gloomy thought that there were no more colours remained stubbornly in her thoughts.
Charlotte turned away from the window and looked at the room she was standing in. Her favourite room in the whole house. It was always warm and comforting, perhaps because she was surrounded by life outside her own. Her father's study was also the library. It was crammed with account books, papers, documents and exciting novels up to the ceiling. Most of them had colourful covers. But on this day they seemed somehow dust-covered, although the place was always clean.
The upholstery of the armchairs in front of the desk was velvet green. Red was the cover of the cushions in the alcove by the window where she often sat. Sometimes unnoticed, when her father was buried deep in the account books. So fused with the rest of the room. A part of it and yet unseen, like the wood panelling on the walls that could no longer be made out behind the many colourful landscape prints.
The smooth wood of the furniture gleamed like the dark fox-coloured fur of the mare who had witnessed her encounter with Mr Parker that fateful evening in the barn. Her confrontation with him, which had surprised and unsettled her like a sudden thunderstorm. A thunderstorm in earthy honey brown, smelling comforting of hay and horse. An unforeseen thunderstorm in which only her lantern produced latent light. The light that was also the greatest danger.
Her shame was dark blue, her anger was red, like her cheeks when she had looked at herself in the mirror after washing her face. Black-tinged anger at this man. The reluctant realisation that he was right was an unclear greenish, like the candle on the shelf she had unconsciously nibbled at.
Still, everything seemed colourless.
Especially the way she felt within.
In her mind she saw repeatedly his gaze, which had not only bored into her eyes, but into her in a disturbing way. As if he wanted to touch something deep inside her. His voice, dark and something she couldn't name, reaching into her, stealing something. Charlotte didn't even know what it was. Nothing was missing. Except that she could see no colours in this grey.
That look... Charlotte wanted to believe that it was stern and evil, like his words, which still scratched painfully at herself, yet there was something hidden there, something that made the strange voice within her ripen that she should apologise to him.
But she would not!
Determinedly, she jutted her chin as if this insolent man were standing in front of her at that moment. This man who had once been a gentleman, who had looked at her so shamelessly and insulted her with terrible words. Had hurt her as no one before him had ever managed to do. Perhaps it was because she had always been considered the smartest until now. Even if she didn't like to think that she even had such a feeling, Charlotte had to admit to herself that this Mr Parker had hurt her vanity.
And that it was this vanity that had driven her to her father's study at this hour instead of to the field with the workers. She wanted to find out what made him grumble at her like that.
Why a man whose closest relatives lived on the estate of a Lord Crowe struggled to live as a farm labourer. Why he was secretive and taciturn, yet taught mathematics to the children. Why he never laughed. Why he treated the female workers like ladies and treated herself so harshly, as if he would have liked to slap her. Or at least liked to shake her like a silly child.
