15. Leora
Leora
“Where’s Alban?”
As it turned out, I didn’t need to wake Dorie after all. While I was opening all the cabinets to see what I could use to make breakfast, she came tromping down the kitchen side stairs. And I looked up to find her already showered and dressed in the other outfit Alban had hung up in the bathroom.
Funny, it hadn’t even occurred to me that she knew how to use a shower. Back in Canada, I’d always made her warm baths. She must have learned to take showers during my days of recovery at Alban’s cabin. And she’d obviously figured out how to put on the three-piece ensemble by herself.
It was the first time I’d ever seen her in an outfit I hadn’t sewn by hand.
With its puffy-sleeved blouse and red peplum lace-up vest, it was nowhere near as modest and unadorned as the black dresses I’d made for her.
Also, the tartan skirt hung a bit too loose on her thin frame.
I’d need to take it in a bit at the waist once I got my hands on some needle and thread.
Still, I had to admit, she looked adorable in the dress, even as I used my most disapproving tone to say in a mix of English and Wolfennite German, “Guter Mariye to you, too, meine Dochder.”
“Guter Mariye, Maem,” Dorie answered dutifully in WG. Then quickly switched back to English to ask again, “Where’s Alban?”
“He had to go to Dùn Faoiltiarn for a special solar panel project.” I resumed my kitchen assessment, opening the last cabinet along the kitchen’s interior wall. “But he said he’d be back to take us to the castle after lunchtime.”
“What are solar panels?” Dorie asked.
“No idea,” I admitted as I examined the contents of the cabinet I just opened with a frown.
The entire cupboard had been filled from top to bottom with jars of some dark brown substance labeled Marmite.
“Oh, Alban puts that on his toast every morning,” Dorie explained helpfully as she came to stand beside me. “He gave me a bite once. It was gross.”
I closed the last cabinet door with a sigh. “Then I guess we’re stuck with just butter and toast. Other than this excessive supply of Marmite, it’s the only thing I could find in the whole place. There wasn’t even a packet of bacon in the freezer.”
“I think I saw a chicken coop in the back when I was upstairs!” That was the only warning I got before Dorie skipped to the kitchen door and slipped outside without asking for permission.
Which left me with no choice but to follow her into the backyard. I certainly wasn’t going to let her go off exploring on her own in a town neither of us knew, even if was only a little jaunt behind Alban’s house.
To my surprise, she was right. Outside stood several rows of dormant rectangular farming boxes and a large chicken coop made of wood and stone.
Inside the coop, we found well-maintained birds and plenty of eggs for breakfast. There was even a basket for gathering their produce hanging off a hook on the wall.
Besides that, the entire place was immaculately kept up with dry and clean bedding for the fowl, and roosting perches scrubbed free of manure.
I sniffed, and the scent of deodorizer filled my nose … as confusion filled my head.
Someone was definitely taking good and loving daily care of these chickens. But who if Alban had been up at his mountain with us for the last few days?
I have nae lay with a female in quite a while. Too long. It made me lose control. I shouldnae have …
His words floated back to me in a new light, turning my stomach. Did Alban have a mate he hadn’t told me about?
“Maem, what’s wrong?” Dorie asked.
“Nothing,” I lied before quickly gathering enough eggs for breakfast and rushing her out of the coop back to the house—the house with four upstairs doors, only two of which I’d opened.
Alban had put us in a large room together, and that morning I found a bathroom with a glassed-in shower. But the other two doors had been firmly closed.
And I’d been so grateful to see the clothes hanging on the bathroom’s rod it never occurred to me to ask where he’d gotten them.
They’d smelled like him—but different. I assumed they belonged to his departed mother.
But my stomach churned with self-recrimination as I scooted Dorie back toward the house.
“Let’s just fry a few of these up for breakfast with some toast,” I told her as we neared the kitchen door we’d left open. “Then we’ll walk over to the castle ourselves.”
“But I thought Alban was taking us.”
“We don’t have to wait for him, liebchen.” I worked to keep my voice light. “It’s not that far. You saw how short a ride it was last night.”
“I want Alban to take us,” Dorie’s voice turned stubborn as we walked through the door.
“I know, but—”
I cut off. Not because I agreed with Dorie about us not being perfectly capable of getting to the castle on foot. But because I abruptly got the answer to who had taken such good care of the chickens in the coop while Alban was gone.
A strange man stood in the kitchen. Old but large, with wild grey hair hanging to his shoulders and a long grey beard that fell past his chest.
He wore a long flannel sleep shirt—that might have made him look a little less disconcerting.
If not for the shotgun in his hands—the shotgun he raised and pointed at us as soon as we walked through the kitchen door.
“Who the hell are ye?” he demanded. “And what are ye doing in my ex-wife’s clothes?”