Chapter 867: Date With Martha [IV / Bonus - ]

Chapter 867: Date With Martha [IV / Bonus Chapter]

The neon lights of the vintage glass cabinet hummed with a low electric buzz, washing Martha’s face in alternating pulses of blue and magenta.

Inside the cube, resting atop an uneven mound of stuffed bears, oversized plush carrots and cartoon frogs, sat the plump white duck.

It was roughly the size of a kettle, made of dense velvet fleece with a bright orange felt beak, a ruffled lace bonnet tied beneath its chin and a crisp black maid’s apron fitted neatly over its round belly and stitched firmly to its right wing was a tiny wooden mixing spoon.

“Haah…”

Martha took a single step closer to the glass, her new chestnut boots clicking against the damp pavement.

“Master Silas,” she murmured, and every trace of her usual hesitant warmth was gone from her voice.

Silas paused with his half-eaten pork belly skewer still in his hand. He tilted his head, looking from the glass cube to the woman standing in front of it.

“Yeah, Martha…?”

“How does this device work?” she asked, her eyes never leaving the duck. “I see people scanning their cards at that panel and then moving that crane around… Does the crane drop exactly where you put it, or is there something inside that decides how hard it grips?”

Silas blinked.

A slow boyish grin spread across his lips as he took in the serious set of her jaw and the sharp focus burning behind her brown eyes.

“It’s a claw machine, Martha,” Silas explained, tossing his empty skewer into a wire bin. “You put credits in, you move the claw over whatever toy you want with the joystick and you hit the button… If the claw grabs it tight enough, it drops it down that chute and you get to keep it.”

Martha’s brow furrowed and her lips pressed into a thin critical line.

“So it’s a lottery… run on cheap levers.”

“Have you ever played one?” Silas asked, walking up behind her shoulder with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

“Certainly not,” Martha replied crisply, still staring at the duck’s bonnet. “When I was Lady Lia’s age, my family didn’t have money to waste on carnival games… And well, me and my husband never went out then he got sick and my days were all cleaning, shopping and the household accounts… Games like this are a distraction from proper housekeeping.”

She paused, she was talking about another man next to her Master… was he going to get irritated?

’Still, I’m not lying… He worked too much to have fun like this.’

Her gaze lingered on the tiny wooden spoon stitched to the duck’s wing, and her fingers twitched against the hem of her cashmere wrap.

“Though… that duck does carry herself with remarkable composure,” Martha murmured, almost too quietly to be heard over the market. “The stitching on that apron is beautifully even, too… She’d look quite respectable sitting on the sideboard in the breakfast room.”

Silas chuckled as a deep sound that rumbled through his chest.

’She’s already named the room it’s going in,’ he thought. ’She’s so done for…’

Without a word, he stepped up to the payment panel under the joystick and tapped his card against the glowing pad.

BEEP!

A cheerful electronic fanfare chimed from the cabinet’s speakers and the neon border flashed in a spiral of rainbow light as the counter beside the joystick lit up.

[Plays: 10]

“Go for it,” Silas smiled, stepping back with his arms crossed over his chest. “Ten tries… Show that machine who runs the Graves household.”

Martha flinched, staring down at the joystick and the big red button with sudden wide-eyed alarm.

“Master Silas! Ten whole tries?! That’s far too—”

“The timer’s ticking, Martha,” Silas said smoothly, nodding at the flashing red countdown. “Twenty-five seconds or the crane resets…”

“Oh, heavens!”

Every bit of her hesitation vanished like morning mist.

She lunged forward and clamped both small hands around the rubber-topped joystick with a grip that could have flattened raw dough.

Martha planted her boots shoulder-width apart, locked her spine straight and narrowed her eyes until she looked like an artillery commander lining up a long-range strike.

CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!

She wrenched the joystick forward and the three-pronged steel crane whined along its rails with a groaning rattle.

“Left… a little left…” Martha muttered through gritted teeth, her forehead practically pressed flat to the glass. “Line it up with the spot between the bonnet ribbon and the left shoulder… Account for all that fluff… Now!”

She slammed her open palm down on the red button.

WHAM!

The crane halted and, with a sharp hiss, the three curved prongs dropped straight down into the pile of stuffed animals.

CLANK!

The steel fingers settled right over the duck’s head… The lace bonnet squished beneath the metal pads, the claws closed with a firm promising click, and the cable began to reel upward.

Martha’s breath caught and her hands flew to her collar.

“It has her! Master Silas, look! It has her!”

The duck rose six inches off the pile.

…Eight inches… Ten…

Then, just as the crane reached the top of the rail to start toward the chute, the machine let out a sickening little hiss.

PFFFT!

The claw went completely limp.

The white duck slid out from between the prongs, tumbled backward through the air and landed upside down between two green frogs with its little black apron facing the ceiling.

A heavy silence dropped over that corner of the market.

Martha’s jaw stayed locked as the color slowly drained from her cheeks, replaced by a cold quiet hostility that Silas had never once seen from his gentle housekeeper in all the time he’d lived under her care.

“It let go,” Martha whispered, her voice dropping a full tone into one that made the hairs on the back of Silas’s neck stand up. “It loosened its grip right at the top… on purpose. That was a betrayal. A planned one.”

Silas stared at her profile as his eyebrows crept slowly up his forehead.

’Uh…’ he thought with a nervous chuckle catching in his throat. ’Is she actually furious at a claw machine?’

He’d watched people lose their cool a lot and seen hardened fighters throw their weapons in frustration but watching a petite thirty-one-year-old maid in brand-new cashmere glare at a plush duck with the lethal intent of an assassin was a whole new level of terrifying entertainment…

“Martha,” Silas began carefully, taking half a step toward her. “You know these things are rigged, right…? The owner sets it so it only grips properly every twelve or fifteen—”

“Master Silas.”

She didn’t turn around. She held her right hand out toward him, palm open, and flicked her fingers with sharp demand.

“Another try, please…”

Silas blinked, then glanced at the counter, which still showed nine plays.

“…You’ve still got nine.”

“Then stand back, please.”

He stood back as Martha seized the joystick.

CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!

This time she moved with terrifying speed, whipping the crane across the box and tracking the fallen duck with mathematical precision.

“You think you can escape me, you rude little machine?” Martha hissed at the glass, her eyes blazing as she leaned into the frame. “I’ve balanced a whole household’s accounts down to the last credit while watching three pots and six dozen rising loaves… I’ve plucked eighty pheasants in a single morning! Don’t you dare challenge a professional housekeeper!”

WHAM!

The claw dropped, caught the duck’s wing, lifted it three inches, slipped on the smooth ribbon of the bonnet and dropped it right back into the pile.

“Tch!” Martha clicked her tongue with a sharp snap. “Again!”

CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!

“The back prong has to hook under the apron seam,” Martha muttered frantically, her hair starting to slip loose from its soft bun as two chestnut wisps fell across her flushed cheek. “The velvet’s too slippery from the top… I need to come at it from the side… Down!”

WHAM!

The claw dropped, hooked the duck’s tail, dragged it sideways across three stuffed bears and lost its grip right at the rim of the chute.

“AGAIN!”

CLACK-CLACK!

WHAM!

Silas stood behind her with his hands on his hips and his mouth slightly open.

A booming laugh kept threatening to burst out of him, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to hold it in.

Her cheeks were burning crimson, her knuckles were white on the joystick and her boots kept shifting against the pavement like a duelist adjusting her footwork.

…She was completely possessed.

’This is the woman who apologizes to the vacuum when she bumps it into a wall,’ Silas thought. ’She’s having way too much fun…’

On the eighth try, she stopped slamming the joystick.

Martha took a deep steadying breath, then bent her knees slightly until her eyes were level with the bottom of the chute.

“Her weight has shifted toward the tail,” She whispered calmly. “If the left prong catches her neck under the bonnet knot and the back two cup the bottom of the apron… she won’t slip when it loosens.”

She nudged the stick a hair to the right then a hair forward.

She hovered her palm just above the red button and waited for the swaying cable to settle into dead stillness.

CLICK!

She pressed the button with a gentle, almost reverent tap of one finger.

The crane dropped like a plumb line.

The three steel fingers opened wide and slid smoothly beneath the duck… the left prong seated itself perfectly under the thick velvet knot of the bonnet while the back two slipped under the sturdy double-stitched hem of the apron.

CLANK!

The claws closed tight around the duck and the cable reeled upward.

This time the duck stayed firmly pinned inside the steel triangle all the way to the top.

The machine hissed and loosened its grip the way it had before, but the bonnet knot caught against the metal knuckle and held.

The crane rolled along its track and stopped right above the chute.

CLUNK!

The plump white duck dropped through the swinging flap and landed in the collection bin with a heavy muffled thud.

THUMP!

A brassy electronic fanfare blared from the speakers and yellow and blue lights flashed across the cobblestones.

Martha stood motionless in front of the glass with her hands hanging loosely at her sides and her chest rising and falling in quick shallow breaths.

Slowly, she bent down and reached her trembling hand into the plastic flap, and her fingers closed around soft velvet.

…She pulled the prize out into the cool night air.

The duck was perfect.

Its lace bonnet was a little rumpled from the battle, its orange beak pointed happily at the sky and its little black apron was smoothed over its round belly with the tiny wooden spoon held up like a flag.

Martha held it in both hands and stared at it for five long seconds then a sudden radiant smile broke across her face, so bright and so young that Silas forgot to breathe for a moment.

She spun around on the heels of her new boots, the hem of her cashmere wrap swirling around her hips, and held the duck high above her head with both hands.

“Master Silas!” Martha cried out with pure childlike joy. “Look! I did it! I beat it!”

Silas couldn’t hold it in any longer.

A bright ringing laugh tore out of his chest and rolled across the stone walls of the canal as he walked toward her.

“I saw it,” Silas chuckled, shaking his head in fond disbelief. “I honestly thought you were going to smash the glass with your bare hands on that sixth try… That was some serious tactical positioning, Martha.”

Martha’s face flushed pink and her breathless excitement settled into a soft bashful glow as she realized half the people at the nearby stalls were smiling at her.

’Oh no… I shouted at a machine,’ she thought. ’In public… like a child…’

Then she looked up at Silas and saw that he was smiling too and she found she didn’t mind so much.

She lowered her arms and looked down at the duck with sudden tender fondness, smoothing the ruffled lace of its bonnet with her thumb and straightening its little apron strings then she held it out to him with both hands, close to her chest.

“For you, Master Silas,” she said softly, dipping her head in a small graceful curtsy. “To remember… tonight by.”

Silas paused and looked down at the round white duck resting in her palms.

A slow incredibly gentle smile curved his lips.

“You fought a machine for ten minutes straight just to give it away?”

“I fought it for you,” Martha said before she could stop herself, and then her eyes went wide. “I-I mean… it was always going to be yours, I just… I didn’t know it until I won it…”

’What am I saying…?!’ her thoughts wailed. ’Stop talking, Martha!’

Silas reached out and took the duck from her hands, his long fingers lingering against hers a beat longer than they needed to.

He tucked it under his left arm, where it sat comfortably against his leather jacket with its tiny wooden spoon poking out over his forearm.

“Thanks, Martha,” he murmured, his deep voice warm and sincere. “She’s getting the best spot on my desk… Right next to the window so she can keep an eye on everyone.”

Martha beamed, her cheeks glowing in the neon light.

“She’ll keep you honest, Master Silas…”

“Will she now?”

“She has a spoon,” Martha said primly. “She’ll know what to do with it if you misbehave…”

Silas laughed again, and this time Martha laughed with him.

They turned away from the arcade and walked side by side back through the thinning crowd toward the parking terrace, and somewhere along the way Martha’s hand found its way back into his without either of them saying anything about it.