Chapter Six
By the time we arrived home Friday evening, it was late and we were exhausted, including Fergus, who’d been dragging his hooves for the past hour. Bri dropped me at my cottage with the promise that she’d come by the shoppe tomorrow morning to help with the wolpertinger.
There was a lot for me to think about and plan, but right then, all I wanted was to wash off the road dust and sit in front of the fire with Argyle.
I fumbled in my satchel for my key and nearly screamed when the door swung open, revealing Finlay with a tea towel draped over one shoulder.
Argyle was perched on the other, blinking at me owlishly with his massive yellow eyes.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, still outside. The warm glow of candlelight beckoned. I sniffed the air, my mouth instantly filling with saliva at the scent of baked apples and butter crust. “Did you cook?”
“Welcome home,” Finlay replied, stepping aside so I could enter. I rubbed my eyes blearily, taking in the tidy state of the entire house, which I’d practically ransacked in my haste to leave yesterday.
“You cleaned, too?” I turned to stare at Finlay, who was smiling in an almost shy manner that did something strange to my innards. “What’s going on?” I asked, my momentary wonder replaced with suspicion. “Did you come to tell me bad news? Did the shoppe burn down? Was I robbed?”
Finlay threw his head back and laughed, which reassured me that this whole domestic performance wasn’t a prelude to bad news. It also revealed Finlay’s wonky tooth, which made my stomach do another strange swoop.
“Steady there,” Finlay said, taking my elbow and leading me to my armchair as though I were an old woman in someone else’s home. “How was the trip? Did you see anything interesting? I haven’t been out of Ardmuir in ages.”
I stared up at him from my chair, blinking against the grit in my eyes. I hadn’t even removed my boots yet, for Pete’s sake. “Finlay, what are you doing here?”
He finally had the decency to look sheepish as he ran his hand through his hair. “I finished work early, and figured you wouldn’t be home till late, and wee Argyle would be all alone in the dark.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Wee Argyle is a cat, Finlay. He can see in the dark.”
“Well, I didn’t love the idea of you coming home to a cold, dark house, either.” To my horror, Finlay knelt before me and began to unlace my boots.
“Get your clatty hands off of me!” I burst from the chair, my cheeks burning. I could only imagine what my feet smelled like after sweating in my old boots all day, and besides, my legs were bare beneath my skirt. I did not need Finlay Barrow touching my bare legs.
Finlay bit his lip, stifling a grin. “A thousand apologies, m’lady. I didn’t realize you were so precious about your ankles.”
I growled in response. “Go home, Finlay. Your mother will be looking for you.”
When he saw that I wasn’t relenting, the grin faded. “She knows where I am, Willow. Can’t you let someone take care of you for a change?”
A sour feeling replaced the butterflies in my stomach. My own father had barely taken care of me when he was alive; by the time he’d died, I felt like I was doing most of the parenting. I kicked my unlaced boots into the corner, too tired to fight my petulance. “I’m fine on my own.”
Finlay’s forehead furrowed, but I couldn’t feel sorry for him. Not when I was feeling this sorry for myself.
Was it nice to come home to a warm, well-lit house after a long journey? I supposed to most people it would be. Most people would accept Finlay’s generosity and be comforted by it. They’d thank him rather than kick their boots at him.
But tomorrow, when I came home from work to my cold, empty house, I would think about tonight: the fire, the scent of baking pie, the knowledge that I wasn’t alone. No matter how much I hardened my heart, that little crack would be there, niggling at me, a reminder of what could be.
“Please go,” I said, turning away from him so he wouldn’t see the tears welling in my eyes. Curse the damn road dust. He’d think I was crying, and that was the last thing I needed. “It’s been a long day. I just want to take a bath and go to sleep.”
The silence that followed was almost more than I could bear.
My shoulders crept up toward my ears as the tension in the room swelled.
Finally, softly, I heard him say, “I already boiled the water for you. The pie is almost finished baking. Argyle had a bit of cod I brought with me. Hope that’s all right. ”
I grunted my assent, knowing anything I said right now would come out throaty and strange.
“Goodnight, Willow.”
I stayed facing the fire until I heard the front door close, then swiped my cheeks furiously with my sleeve. Argyle mewed from the front hall, a plaintive cry for Finlay that made my chest ache with guilt.
“Traitor,” I hissed as I passed him on the way to my bedroom.
Sure enough, Finlay had filled the copper tub with hot water, and the kettle was whistling impatiently in the kitchen.
What was he planning to do? Sit here and wait for me to bathe?
Spoon feed me fresh baked pie and make me milky tea with honey?
It was the sort of thing a husband did for a wife, not something a boy did for a girl.
Particularly a girl he only liked as a friend.
I turned off the kettle and removed the pie from the oven, cursing the way my mouth once again watered at the scent.
I stripped out of my dusty skirt and blouse and flung them into the corner where my manky laundry usually piled up for several weeks before I got desperate enough and washed it.
“For the love of Pete,” I muttered when I realized he’d done my laundry, too.
It was probably hanging up out back. Including my knickers.
Once in the tub, I dunked my head under the water as if it would somehow cool my flaming cheeks.
Finlay, for his part, probably thought nothing of washing a woman’s knickers.
His mother had been ill for as long as I’d known him, and he did most of the domestic tasks at home, on top of working long hours in the print shoppe.
They’d taken the apartment above it, small and shabby as it was, so that he could keep close to his mother while he worked.
He was the epitome of a decent young man.
Meanwhile, I thought as I struggled to unravel my dusty braid, I was every mother of a son’s worst nightmare.
Unkempt, uncouth, and worst of all, up to my eyeballs in debt.
I had no maternal aspirations, and one look at the state of my house would confirm that I had no domestic potential, either.
The hope chest at the foot of my bed was filled with my mother’s old pots and pans, which I’d never had need for, considering my cooking consisted of whatever I could make in my trusty cast iron skillet.
Finlay must have found my mother’s old porcelain pie plate, I realized.
Which meant he’d seen that where most girls kept hand-embroidered linens, fine gowns, and silken underthings, I kept rusty cookware.
I rubbed the bar of soap over my skin until it was pink, wishing I could wash away the filth I was sure covered every inch of my soul.
Finlay would marry a girl like Bri: pretty, proper, no doubt with a vast fortune to her name.
Aye, she was “cursed,” but then, so was I: cursed with a father who tarnished our family’s name and sold our silver to buy useless junk.
Cursed with a sour temper, a foul mouth, and hair that was currently tangled into an impossible series of knots.
With a sigh, I rose from the bath, dried myself, and pulled on my father’s old robe.
Burgundy silk with purple stripes, it was a garment for a wealthy man who sat in a library and smoked tobacco.
Hardly appropriate for a skinny seventeen-year-old girl in a cottage.
But I liked the feel of it on my bare skin, liked even more that for a few seconds, it made me feel like a wealthy man. There was a magic to that, really.
Argyle sat at my feet while I grabbed a fork and dug into the hot apple pie, burning my mouth as I ate but unable to resist the salted butter crust, the tart, cinnamon-laden apples.
The knowledge that Finlay had made this pie just for me.
And if I cried while I ate it, well. The benefit of living all alone was that there was no one around to see it.
True to her word, Bri arrived at the shoppe in the late morning. She looked fresh as a daisy, her hair floating around her head like a halo, her russet dress perfectly tailored to her figure.
Meanwhile, I’d given up on my hair entirely, and it hung down my back in pillow-wrinkled waves.
It had rained during the night, and of course I’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table in my father’s robe, my belly full of two-thirds of an apple pie, and all my clean laundry left outside.
Half of it had fallen off the line and was now far filthier than it had been to begin with.
I pulled an old dress out of the back of my closet, one that revealed to me how much I’d grown since my father’s death, though it didn’t seem possible.
If anything, I felt like a shrunken version of myself, withering like an apple forgotten in a cellar.
Worse still, Bri arrived with Finlay. He, too, looked well slept and cheerful as ever.
“Good morning, Willow,” he said, not a trace of hurt in his voice. As if he’d already forgotten how terribly I treated him last night.
“Morning, Finlay,” I managed. “Hello, Bri.”
Our eyes all drifted to the wolpertinger, which sat in its usual place on an old wooden pedestal by the door. But it remained as inanimate as a sack of potatoes.
“Do you think it was a fluke?” Finlay asked no one in particular.
“Only one way to find out,” Bri said, raising her hand.
“No!” I blurted.
They turned to stare at me. “What do you mean, no?” Bri asked. “I thought that was the whole reason I came here.”