A Noble Cause

XIX - Us, as Equals

Nineteen: Us, as Equals

"Oh, there he is!" Lady O'Cain said as Samuel walked downstairs.

At the sight of him, Olivia was finally able to leave their lordships behind and go to the kitchen to check on the meal. Isaac, who waited upstairs until Samuel led his parents to the living room for a much-needed conversation — one of many they would have, he was sure —, followed her.

"Why did you leave me there with them?" Olivia asked when she saw Isaac entering the kitchen. "You almost burned the entire dinner! I could smell it."

"I am sorry. Samuel needed my help getting ready. Plus, we... " he stopped talking when he noticed he might have been saying too much.

"What?"

"Um? Oh, the meal smells great, by the way. Did it not burn in the end?"

"I see what you are doing, so don't. What else happened upstairs? 'We...' what?"

"We were invited for dinner."

She raised an eyebrow.

"We who?"

"You and I; Samuel wants us to have dinner with them," Olivia's mouth fell agape. "Yes. My reaction exactly."

"But... Why would he want that?"

"He said he considers us too much and he would not want us to spend New Year's Eve in the kitchen like a couple of servants."

"But we are a couple of servants!"

"Yes, but... not to him, we are not."

Olivia sat beside him. She thought that the whole situation was absurd, as it went exactly against everything Mrs. Laroche had taught her in the past few years at Wulworth Place. "A servant is a servant: you should never behave as anything other than a servant unless you're outside the place you serve and, even then, make sure you are not in the company of the person you're serving.", Laroche told her one day. One of the first lessons she learned about being a servant.

But this was not Wulworth Place, Mrs Laroche was not there and the O'Cains were definitely not the Sulleys. All the things she learned from Laroche might have been useful in London — and would still be once they returned —, but, at that moment, could there not be something different for her other than just being a servant?

"What will their lordships think if we accept it?" she asked Isaac.

"You are not considering it, are you?" he saw it in her eyes that she was. "Don't even answer; I know you are: I can see it spread all across your face, already."

"I am indeed considering, but it depends on their lordships. Samuel wants us there, but he is not the one who hired us."

"So what? Should I go ask them?" Olivia shrugged.

"Well..."

"I am not doing this, Olivia! I am not interrupting their conversation for this. Quite frankly, I thought you would have some sense."

"Isaac!" Samuel called from the living room. Olivia looked at him with a smirk on her face.

"It's not an interruption if he called your name, now, is it?" She said.

"Sometimes I feel as though the Universe is mocking me," Isaac said before he left the kitchen.

Olivia laughed, delighting herself in the situation that had just happened. "The Universe is not mocking you, Isaac," she thought to herself. "It is giving you a second chance. Better hold tight to it."

As he walked to the living room, Isaac thought about how he would approach the matter again, after having been so clear about it just minutes earlier. In a flash thought, he realized he had rushed himself when making the decision he had and this is something that he should probably admit to Samuel, just not at that moment. No; at that moment, he needed to be direct.