Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Iwas giddy, and not just because I would soon eat an actual meal, but because I was in my element.
The kitchen was exactly the opposite of the one at TLC.
I didn’t have my usual tools, my chef’s knives, or the various machines that helped me create magic.
But this was a great reminder that the tools were only tools.
And good food came from love—love of cooking, love for the ingredients, and respect for those you fed.
A knife, heat, and a decent pan were all I really needed to turn good ingredients into happiness.
I waited for Kee-un to get inside and catch his breath, then told him, “I’ll need a sharp knife. Something much smaller than the sword, if you’ve got it.”
He glanced at the closed trunk, then nodded and moved in that direction.
He reached up and pulled three knives from the top of the shelves.
“I hid them back when I believed ye were the enemy.” He brought them closer, stopped short, and flipped them in the air, then caught all three by their blades before offering the handles to me.
“A knife juggler. Nice.”
“The deft handling of blades is m’ livelihood.” He pointed to one of the handles with leaves and vines carved into it.
“Pretty. I saw your collection in the trunk. I didn’t know you’d made them.”
“Ah, well, I cannae overwhelm the armorist I trade with. I always have a good store on hand.”
“Maybe you should find more armorists.”
He balked. “Never. A man without loyalties has little to offer the world.”
“Tell me about it.” I turned away before he could ask me to elaborate. “Do you have a cutting board?”
“Polished, aye?”
“So I won’t get splinters in the food.”
He took two quick steps that left our bodies just an inch or two apart.
The air froze in my lungs and my heart stopped.
He smiled into my eyes and then, just when I thought he might kiss me, he reached up, lifted onto his toes, and pulled something from the rafters.
He took only a tiny step back before putting a thick board in my hands.
I took a couple of deep breaths, tore my gaze from his, and looked at the wood. A braid was carved all around the edges, but the center was polished and smooth.
“I can’t use this. It’s too pretty. Have you got something…less important?”
“Use it, Matty lass. ‘Tis right for the occasion.”
“It’s an occasion to have someone cooking for you?”
He backed away. “’Tis an occasion to have a visitor in Balnacoorie. No matter what led them here.”
I cleared my throat and hid my expression. I didn’t think he’d appreciate being pitied.
He wasn’t paying attention to me anymore anyway.
He thought I didn’t notice when he pulled his sweater off his head, moved quietly to the door, and chucked it outside.
I wasn’t going to stop him, though, since I’d gotten a whiff of it when he’d reached for the cutting board and his armpit was only inches from my nose.
I thought I’d done a good job of keeping a straight face.
I tried to concentrate on the blade in my hand while he sat on the bed and fidgeted. After a minute, he started sniffing himself—his shoulder, his arm—then made a face.
“Forgive me,” he said, then disappeared out the door, into the cold, wearing nothing but jeans and boots.
My stomach growled, hungry for all kinds of things now, and I was glad it hadn’t done so when he’d stripped his sweater off.
I hurried with the rest of my prep, hoping I’d be done before I saw that chest again.
The venison, already cured and dark from the smoke, only needed time to soften.
I tasted the soup I’d been willing to settle for.
The stock was fine, but I strained out the rubbery vegetables, opened the stove door, and tossed them into the flames.
Then I found the bag of salt and sprinkled a few good pinches into the pot.
I cut the smoked venison into small pieces so the broth could draw the flavor from it.
The smell of the meat warming helped me forget about that sad carrot I’d forced down earlier.
I cleaned the leeks and sliced them thin, then peeled any questionable marks from the fresh carrots, parsnips, and a fat turnip.
Everything went into the pot in order—meat first, then the roots.
When they softened, I would add the leeks, thyme and parsley.
I made a note to ask Kee-un if he had any black pepper, but assumed he didn’t and added a few dashes of hot sauce.
The roots were half-done when Kee-un came back through the door. His teeth rattled loud enough to hear over the boiling soup. His hair was wet and dripped all over him. His jeans were wet in places, as were his Offroaders.
He rushed to the stove and smacked the handle of the door to open it, not bothering with a hot pad.
“What did you do?”
He shuddered instead of answering.
“Where did you go?”
He nodded toward the side window. “’Tis a b…b…burn—”
“You were burned?” I searched his chest, then forced him to turn around. His skin was ice cold, but at least the water hadn’t frozen. There was no ice in his hair like the night before. But I saw no burns, no red patches.
“A burn is a…wee stream…fresh water. Not burned. Just b…b…bathed.”
I stopped looking for injuries and reluctantly pulled my hands away and stepped back so the heat could reach him. But suddenly, he grabbed my arms and pulled me against his chest, while aiming his back at the stove.
“Give me but a minute, Matty. I beg ye.”
I laughed. I thought he’d get a lot warmer a lot faster if he wrapped up in a blanket, but I decided to keep my opinions to myself. If he needed a warm body, who was I to deny him when he might literally be freezing to death?
I wrapped my arms around him and started rubbing his back until his skin had warmed to room temperature. Then I let go of him and told him to turn around so I could hug him from behind—you know, just to hold the heat in. The fact that I enjoyed it had nothing to do with it.
I didn’t know what I was doing, but he seemed to think I did. After a few minutes, he took a deep breath and his chest expanded and broke my hold. When I retreated, he turned and caught my hand, then pressed a brief kiss to my knuckles.
“Ever sae grateful.”
“No problem.” I sidled around him and got a cloth out of the trunk. “You’d better dry your hair before you catch your death. I’m sorry I haven’t scrubbed your shirt yet. It’s still soaking.”
He took the cloth and rubbed his plethora of hair that reached a good foot below his shoulders. When he bent over to rub it closer to the open stove door, his butt was higher than my elbow, and I was a tall girl.
He turned his head and caught me staring.
“Sorry. Just noticing…how tall you really are.”
He smiled, then pulled out of his Offroaders and set them to the side of the stove. “Not sae tall noo, aye?”
“Yep,” I lied. I could hardly tell a difference. “Soup’s about ready. You wanna grab the bowls?”
He dug in the trunk first and pulled out a large yellow cloth I thought might be a sheet. I took one last taste of the soup and watched him from the corner of my eye. He pulled the sheet over his head and pushed that mane of dark hair through a hole. His arms found two more.
It was a shirt made for a giant bigger than he, and the end of it reached nearly to his knees.
“’Tis called a lay-nuh, Matty. Spelt léine. A longshirt. Ye may look yer fill. Nothing scandalous about it.”
I jumped when he set two bowls on the ledge. “No problem,” I said, embarrassed that I’d been caught watching him for the hundredth time. “I was just worried you were forced to wear a dress, that’s all.”
He pretended to be outraged, and I laughed and dished up the soup, filling his to the brim. He had to be as starved as I was, and he’d need at least double.
He moved the big log close to the table, then pulled the chair out for me. As he sat, he offered to say grace, then held out his hands and waited for me to take them. I pretended it was perfectly normal and sat my hands on his. He wrapped his warm fingers around mine and held tight.
I felt his voice rumbling in my bones as he prayed. I didn’t understand a word of it, and after the amens, I asked if the prayer was Gaelic.
He grimaced. “Ye’ve none of the Gaelic, then?”
“Uh, no.”
He reached out again. “Would ye like me to repeat it in English?”
I laughed. “No. That’s okay.” I realized I’d just given up the chance to hold hands again. “I’m married.” I was horrified! The words just came out, when I’d only meant to remind myself that I shouldn’t be enjoying some other man holding my hands! “I’m… I don’t know why I said that.”
His expression was unreadable. “Because ye’re marrit? Or because ye’re no’?”
“It’s…complicated.” I picked up my spoon and turned it back and forth. “I’m so glad we didn’t have to share a spoon.” Then I started eating to keep from rambling.
He forced a smile and had a taste. I waited for his surprise to register. And when it did, his eyebrows shot up, and he forgot all about my outburst while he devoured the soup, humming and nodding to let me know he liked it.
I ate half my bowl before I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “I…I’m getting a divorce.”
He returned his spoon to his empty bowl and left it there, then he scowled at it for a minute before raising his eyes to mine. “It seems a divorce is not the disgraceful thing it once was.”
“Disgraceful? I guess that’s a pretty accurate way to describe how I felt about it, though. Definitely embarrassing. I was completely blindsided.”
Kee-un found my hand again. “Then it is yer husband who—”
“Served me with papers? Yep. A couple of weeks ago, actually. No warning at all. I’m still in shock.”
“This is why ye went off on yer own, into the Cairngorms?”
He dipped up another bowlful of soup and while we finished eating, I explained just how I ended up alone in Scotland, but that I hadn’t been on some suicide mission to make Nick regret dumping me.
“Damn me, but I am glad of it,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“How else would I have had the chance tae taste…” His attention dropped to my lips. “Tae taste a soup sae fine?”
I felt my face heat, but I ignored it. “Yeah, well, I guess I’m going to have to find some other way to make a living.”
His big fist bounced on the table. “Say him nay, lass.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means deny him the prize. Fight.”
“No. I definitely don’t want to fight the divorce. I don’t want him back. I feel like I’ve been married to a stranger all this time.”
“Nay. Fight fer yer restaurant.” He’d said it like the French do. “Never give up somethin’ ye love, Matty lass. Love is what makes it yers. And to surrender it is to insult the rest of us who have little to love.”
I sat there for a long time, letting his words sink in, letting them take root and spread through me like a tree, making me sit up straight.
“You know,” I finally said, “for the first time since I was served those papers, I just felt a little bubble of hope, a little spark of ambition. I worried I’d never feel them again.
” I shook my head. “Not one friend suggested I fight. Not one! But then again, all my friends had already picked Nick’s side.
If my dad were still alive, he would have kicked his ass… ”
Kee-un grinned from across the table.
“What?”
“I would have liked yer fither, then.”
His nose was nearly back to normal, though I didn’t look too close. I was afraid to know if I’d screwed it up for good. And if it needed to be re-broken, it wouldn’t be me who did it.
“Daddy loved my cooking. My mom died when I was four, so I started cooking young, because he was so bad at it. You can only feed a child pigs-in-a-blanket so many nights a week.”
Kee-un looked horrified, and I laughed.
“Even if he’d been exaggerating, his praise was enough to make me want to be a professional.” I pushed the memories away, even less interested in examining the past than I was in examining Kee-un’s nose. “He died of kidney failure, but he lived long enough to see me open The Last Chair.”
“And now this Nick bastard plans to take it from ye.”
I pushed my bowl back and leaned forward to rest my chin on my stacked fists.
“I don’t know if I want to fight for it.
I’d suspect every customer, you know? I’d wonder if they’d pitched in to buy me off, or if they’d just been cheering for Nick.
He gave me plenty of credit for my cooking, but he let people believe the recipes were his.
So I shouldn’t be hurt that they wanted him to stick around.
But still.” I straightened and shook my head slowly.
“I just don’t want to live the rest of my life being paranoid. ”
He cleared his throat and smiled, trying to get me out of my funk. “I am nae familiar with Vermont. Is it south of London?”
“What? No.” I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I swallowed my laugh. “It’s a state in the US. In the Northeast.” I explained that it was a ski town and why The Last Chair on Bridge was a good name for a restaurant there. “Do they not have ski lifts in Scotland?”
“Auch, aye. I’ve seen one from afar. Clever things.” He rubbed his hand along the edge of the table, in the center, where Hannah’s name was carved. And I wondered if he was aware he’d done it.
I leaned back and looked at the same spot on my side of the table. The letters had nearly been worn smooth, but maybe not intentionally.
“I meant to ask you.” I tapped the table. “Who is Hannah?” I suddenly realized that she might be a dead wife, or worse, a current one, but the question was already out there.
He smiled, though sadly. “Hannah was m’ gran.”
“So, you are the artist in the sketchbook.”
“Hardly an artist.”
“But Hannah #3 is definitely your grandmother.”
“Number three?”
“Number one is the Hannah in the bible. Another one in the dedication of that book of poetry, and… Wait. Those were probably the same one. So, if Hannah from the sketchpad is your grandmother, I guess she’s the same one as the Hannah in the table, right?
Your grandma is Sketchbook and Table Hannah. ”
He blinked at me for a minute, then sighed like he was seriously disappointed for some mysterious reason. “Find yer comfort, Matty lass. I am about to tell ye a story I have only ever told one other…”
“Why do I have the impression I’m not going to like it?”
“Auch, I can guarantee it. But ye’ll listen?”
“Yeah. I’ll listen.”