Chapter 14
Penny
Kit pulled me along like I was a human anchor, stumbling and wiping my sleeve across my eyes that wouldn’t stop leaking. I wanted to leave, go back to Eastcliff and hug my sister and mother. Run away because I hadn’t felt so much like a child since the day my father died.
But Kit held me against him, struggling to keep up with our hostess until she realized the growing gap between us and slowed her pace.
We arrived at a modest cottage in the middle of a row of similar homes.
There was a tree out front with an old wooden ladder leaned against the trunk—presumably some kind of fruit tree—and a small stable visible around the back that might have housed goats or pigs.
The cold had set deeply into me, stabbing like icy fingers through my shirt and trousers and making me shake.
Kit snugged his arm around my shoulders, sharing his body heat but doing little good since he, too, was chilled through.
Coming up the stone-paved walkway, the woman went ahead, pushing into the interior of the house. Kit hung back. He turned toward me, taking hold of both my elbows and ducking into my line of sight.
“Pen?” His eyes were shadowed with exhaustion, and sweat had cut channels through the soot on his face. He looked and smelled like smoke. We both did, and I wanted to scrub it off. Strip out of my clothes despite the cold and the snow just to be free of the stench of char and ruin.
Kit brushed my hair back, touching my skin with fingers creased with black. They looked like that after he’d worked long hours in the smithy, and I hadn’t minded before. I’d grown accustomed to the sight, even enjoyed the scent clinging to his curls before he bathed, but this time, I cringed away.
He frowned at my retreat but spoke anyway. “We’re going to get a bit to eat and warm up for a while before we head back to Ashpoint. You just rest. I’ll handle any questions.”
I nodded, feeling numb inside and out.
Gently, he grabbed my wrists and turned them so he could see my palms, dotted with drying blood and puncture wounds.
Not long ago, I’d been convinced it was more than that.
Not blood at all, but flesh dripping like candle wax, leaving behind raw, red patches.
Those frightful thoughts came in flashes even now, and I looked back toward the barren fruit tree while Kit lifted my quivering hands and kissed my knuckles.
“We’ll bandage these too,” he murmured. “And wash up.”
He stayed quiet long enough that I worked up the nerve to catch his gaze. The moment our eyes met, he wrapped me in an embrace, and I felt a tremor in him I hadn’t noticed before.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
The overwhelming smell of smoke made me want to gag, but I forced myself to stand still, soaking up the warmth and Kit’s words as he spoke near my ear.
“If I’d known what that bastard had in mind, I would never have sent you in there. We would have found another way. Or never come here to begin with.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the tears to stop. I would already look quite the coward to our hostess and her wife, as I must have been the only man in town who hung back and watched their mission burn while everyone else tried to save it.
I hadn’t rescued the Symbiarch, either. Kit did that.
I crumbled. Broke.
I was broken still.
Maybe I always had been.
“I’ll see him punished, I swear it,” Kit said in a gruffer voice. “If Levitt won’t protect us, I’ll do it my damned self.”
“Excuse me?”
A different woman came to the door. She was plump, with ringlet curls and an apron spotted and smeared with the evidence of a meal in progress.
Kit and I looked at her, and she waved us toward the open doorway. “Can’t be letting all the heat out,” she explained.
With a nod, Kit slung his arm around my waist and guided me into the cottage.
It was appointed differently than the houses in Ashpoint, with the entry leading into the dining room. The fixtures and fittings were familiar, though. Wooden furniture with a table set for six and a stone fireplace churning out warmth.
Even that small blaze made me tense. For months after the barn fire, I’d refused to sit near the hearth in my own home, wary of logs that hissed and popped.
They sounded like breaking beams and loosed sparks that singed the rug and sent me scurrying to my room.
I wouldn’t be reduced to that now, though.
I was too grown to live that way. But, as resolved as I was, I struggled to tear my eyes away from the licking tongues of flame as Kit and I advanced into the home.
The woman who had approached us outside the mission flurried into sight. Dark hair hung to her waist in a single braid, and she wore trousers like my own. She took one of the open seats at the table while her wife returned to the kitchen where a large stockpot steamed on the stove.
“I’m Elise, by the way,” she said, then motioned toward her apron-adorned spouse. “That’s my darling Margot. She’s a wonderful cook. You two are in for a treat.”
“Kit Mosel.” Kit gestured to himself, then squeezed my shoulders. “And this is my darling, Penny.”
I glanced aside in time to catch his smile. He was showing me off even in this sorry state. Rather than warm to his affection, I wanted to hide.
“Well, Kit, Penny,” Elise nodded to each of us, “it seems you’ve come upon our town at a difficult time. Thank you for trying to help with the fire. You certainly weren’t obligated.”
My teeth ground together. Kit and I may not have set the mission ablaze, but we were responsible. And obligated to do more than stand and watch it be consumed like I had done. I twisted the toe of my boot over a knot in the floorboard.
“It was no trouble,” Kit replied. “I just wish we could have done more. I can’t imagine the hardship such a loss will cause for the town.”
Elise’s expression sobered. “We’ll manage. Wendwood is small but full of good people. We take care of each other. But you should sit! No doubt all that scurrying to and from the pond stoked your appetites.”
“I’d hoped we could clean up a bit first,” Kit protested. “We aren’t quite fit for polite company.”
Elise’s cheeks pinked, and she bobbed her head. “Of course! Silly me. I’ll show you to the bathroom, and you can join us when you’re ready.”
The house proved not only structured differently than Kit’s childhood home, but also much smaller. Besides the kitchen, dining, and living areas, it had only one bedroom we had to pass through to reach the washroom.
In the bathroom, Elise grabbed a pair of towels off a high shelf. With those in hand, she turned toward us.
“Plenty of water for a bath. That’ll warm you right up.” She nodded at the wood barrel tub.
Kit hesitated. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“No trouble at all.” Setting the towels in the sink basin, Elise got a box of matches and set a fire in the tinderbox near the boiler. “Are you all right to share?” she asked.
Kit smiled in response. “Quite.”
Elise cast a glance across us, seeming to assure herself we had everything we needed before adding, “I’ll see what I can do about finding you some fresh clothes.
My brother lives a few houses down the lane.
He may have something that will fit you,” she told Kit, then turned a lopsided grin on me.
“As for you, that’s what belts are for.”
I pressed my palm to my stomach, then hissed at the sting of the glass-scraped skin.
Kit perked at the sound and called after Elise as she started out of the small room.
“If it’s not too much to ask, do you have any bandages or strips of cloth? My husband hurt his hands, and they need tending.”
My head whipped aside, unable to mask my shock while Kit remained perfectly placid. I struggled to focus on Elise as she retrieved a narrow roll of linen fabric and a bottle of vinegar from the cabinet above the sink and rested them atop the towels.
She left quickly, but not quickly enough while my mind churned with something besides terror for the first time since we’d left the mission.
Kit pushed the door closed, then tugged the strap of my satchel over my head and started thumbing through the buttons on the front of my shirt.
I stood, wondering if I was too dazed to be trusted in what I’d heard until I couldn’t help but say, “You called me your husband.”
With my shirt undone, Kit pushed it off down my arms and let it pile on the floor. His skin brushed over mine in a way that raised goosebumps, and I found myself short of breath for a new reason.
He moved next to the sink and emptied it before rolling up his sleeves and pumping the water to wash his hands.
I stood back, still dumbstruck, until Kit beckoned for me to come to the basin.
Stepping around behind me, he guided my hands under the flow, holding them steady while the water loosened the blood caked in the creases of my palms and the grime up to my elbows.
His voice was soft in my ear as he finally replied, “That’s where this is headed, isn’t it?”
The cuts on my palms stung as Kit rubbed a hunk of soap over them, but I didn’t move until he dabbed them dry with one edge of the towels and turned me to face him.
Stepping aside, he grabbed the strips of cloth from atop the towels and began dabbing vinegar onto them.
The sour smell mingled with the clinging stink of smoke made my stomach lurch, but I couldn’t look away from Kit’s face.
“Besides,” he added. “I like the way it sounds.”
“I like it too,” I murmured.
His brow furrowed in deep focus as he moved the soaked cloth toward my open hands. “This is going to sting,” he cautioned.
I braced as he dabbed the linen against the cuts, sparking pain that flashed light behind my closed eyelids.
Thoroughly clean but throbbing, I peered out to watch Kit grab the dry cloths and begin wrapping them around my palms. He was so handsome despite how tired he was, gray-smeared and grungy but still gorgeous. Calling me his darling—his husband.