Chapter 4 Penny
Penny
Trudging into Rosie's family cottage, I found a fire roaring in the hearth and filling the air with dry heat. I eyed the dancing flames and strayed wide of them on my way to the kitchen where I found something—rather someone—else I would have liked to avoid.
Tessa stood engaged in lively chatter with Rosie's father. She flipped her long dark hair and batted her eyes in a way that would have made me wonder if she wasn't trying to charm the older man, but I knew she had her sights set on another target.
As the door swung shut behind Rosie and me, Tessa turned, and her fur trimmed skirt swished around her legs. “Oh, Rose, you brought Penny,” she said.
I couldn't decide if it was amusement or disdain in her voice.
Rosie came up behind me where I'd stalled in the living area. She tugged my snow-speckled cloak off my shoulders and took it to hang on the rack in the corner while I muttered in response, “Oh, Rosie, Tessa's here.”
Shouldering out of her own cloak, Rosie rejoined me and threaded her arm around mine. “Penny comes for baking lessons nearly every day at this time. You know that.”
Tessa flashed a smug smirk. “Lessons, is it? I assumed by now you'd have let him sample more than your pastries.”
Rosie gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. Her cheeks burned with a deep blush while her father cleared his throat.
“Looks like I'm in the way,” he said. Stepping around Tessa, he passed into the living room to greet Rosie with a kiss on the cheek, then extended a handshake to me. “What's on the menu today?” he asked.
“Apple strudel,” Rosie replied, trading her scandalized expression for a faint grin. “It's a new recipe.”
The familiar tickle hit the back of my throat. I tried to clear it, prompting a rattling cough that drew Rosie’s father’s notice.
“Are you well, Penny?” he asked.
I nodded. “Just a nuisance, I think.”
Her father smiled. “Well, take care of yourself. And good luck with the strudel. I can’t wait to try it.” With a pat on his daughter’s arm, he headed toward the bedrooms and out of sight.
In the kitchen, Tessa stepped back to lean against the wood counter. “Speaking of new recipes, we have roast chicken at the tavern tonight. I seasoned it with herbs from my own garden. You should send Kit by, Penny. Tell him I’ll save him a plate.”
I clenched my teeth to bite back a spiteful response as Rosie steered me into the kitchen.
Ignoring Tessa, Rosie began gathering bags and jars of ingredients, including a large crock of apples picked and preserved from an orchard outside Ashpoint.
I followed her lead, busying myself donning an apron and yanking the strings tight around my waist.
Tessa remained reposed against the counter and thoroughly in the path of progress. Rosie paused her bustling to give her friend a weary look.
“Are you going to help, Tess, or simply take up space?”
“I just wanted to chat with you, Rose,” Tessa replied. “You don’t mind, do you, Penny?”
The way she said my name made my skin crawl.
Everything about her did, including the thought of her saving a plate of food and a seat for Kit at the tavern.
Our last encounter with her there had ended with me spilling my entire stein of ale for the sake of escape.
Kit had managed to slip away even before that, hiding at the bar and away from Tessa’s attentions.
After the developments of the past few days, I should have been smug enough to brag that the man she had been so desperate to ensnare now kept my company in the way she wanted him to keep hers.
We spent mornings and evenings lounging by the fire, but soon, I hoped we would be entangled in my bed.
Kit’s affection and tender kisses spurred my imagination to wander and filled the time I spent awake at night, touching myself and wishing they were his hands on me instead.
I thought that was where things were headed, and Kit seemed amenable as well. He had, at least, until an hour ago, when an offered kiss had ended with me on my backside on the shop floor.
“By all means,” I told Tessa while washing up in the sink. “Chat.”
Rather than move out of our path, Tessa smiled and hopped up to sit in the limited counter space. Rosie’s glare turned stormier still as she tried to position the mixing bowls and utensils around her intrusive friend.
After drying my hands on a flour sack towel draped over the faucet, I stood aside and waited for instruction.
Truth told, I would have rather been at home or even out in the snow than here.
Maybe the cold outside would cool the heat of my anger and help me think more clearly.
Tessa was not a threat to what Kit and I had.
And neither was one rejected kiss. He was distracted, surely.
Thinking of other things. He had a better mind for concentration and productivity than I did, able to focus on things I found tedious or tiresome. That was likely it.
But while Rosie scooped sugar into a bowl, I couldn’t dismiss the sense of rejection. The fact that Kit hadn’t bothered to apologize or even acknowledge me afterward only added salt to the wound.
“I thought we should consider our plan for the second Oath,” Tessa began, surprising me by discussing something of relevance for once. “Namely that I don’t know where to begin looking for a body, lest we start lurking around nearby towns hoping to find some vagrant dead in the street.”
Rosie directed me to add water to the mix and crack the few eggs she’d retrieved from a basket beside the sink.
“It’s too bad it can’t be anyone from here,” Tessa continued while fiddling with her hair. “Old man Arkwright has been in poor health for months. He’s bound to pass any day now.”
“That’s terrible!” Rosie exclaimed.
“He lives alone,” Tessa insisted. “What say when everyone else leaves town, we just move in over there? Claim to want to take care of him? I’ll cook and you clean. Give it a week or so, and if he doesn’t decline rapidly enough, I could add something extra to his evening tea.”
The mention of tainted drinks made me think of mine and Kit’s poison ritual.
It had been hard not to tell Rosie—I wanted to give her the same advantage—but when I mentioned it to Kit, he’d been adamant.
Trading secrets like that put everyone at risk, and Rosie was more likely to survive a dose of poison than the punishment given to those caught cheating their way through initiation.
Rosie stood with a jar of vanilla in her hand. Her knuckles were white where they wrapped around the small bottle, and her dark eyes flicked toward the bedrooms where her father had gone before she replied in a hushed voice, “Tessa, you can’t be serious. You’re talking about murder.”
Tessa licked her finger and swiped it through the granules of sugar spilled on the counter.
“I’m merely commenting on Mister Arkwright’s failing condition and how two young women would be safer staying home and collecting…
” She paused, then continued with emphasis, “Local resources, than venturing into the wilds unescorted and unguarded.”
“No.” Rosie shook her head. “We’ll do things the proper way. And how would we even present Arkwright’s body? They would see his face and know what we’d done.”
Tessa sighed noisily. “Trawling the streets it is, then. Hoping whoever we stumble across doesn’t have a terrible disease that infects us both.”
“Kit has a place,” I quipped.
Both girls turned toward me with expressions of interest.
“Is that so?” Tessa asked.
Under the weight of their combined stare, I felt myself shrinking. “Yes,” I said slowly. “An old graveyard nearby. He told me about it.”
“Now that’s a real man for you.” Tessa elbowed Rosie in the ribs. “Of course the great Kit Koesters would have a plan.”
The use of Kit’s true surname had come to rankle me as much as it did him. After reading his father’s cursed journals, I understood more than ever Kit’s desire to distance himself from his wicked heritage. He didn’t deserve to be cast in that shadow after working so hard to free himself from it.
“Well?” Tessa’s question stirred me from thought. “Are you going to tell us where it is?”
While Tessa stared at me in open anticipation, Rosie looked more uncertain. I wanted to help her. She had become like a surrogate sister to me in this place, a comfort because I missed Sayla terribly. But I couldn’t give information I didn’t have.
“I…” I hesitated. “He didn’t tell me that part.”
Tessa snorted. “Convenient.”
“I mean it!” I exclaimed, setting the mixing spoon aside.
“Oh, I believe you.” She nodded. “He likely knows better than to trust some bumbling recruit with his secrets. He’s a wise man. Shrewd.”
Rosie tried to step in as tension mounted between Tessa and me, but neither of us paid her any mind.
“Kit trusts me plenty. And how would you know?” I asked, curling my fingers into fists. “You’ve barely met him.”
Sliding off the counter, Tessa closed the distance to me.
Despite having to angle her chin up to meet my eyes, she still managed to look haughty as she said, “I’ll bet I can get him to tell me whatever I want to know.
A woman has her ways.” She cocked one hip forward, almost bumping into me as she chased the advance by dragging her hand across my waist, then down.
When her fingers cupped my groin, she gave a taunting squeeze.
Rosie bolted forward and slapped Tessa’s hand away. “Tess, I think you should go,” she snapped. “We can talk about the next Oath another time.”
Freed of Tessa’s grip, I staggered back, mouth agape and dumbstruck.
“I think I’ll pay Mister Koesters a visit,” Tessa said, sniggering. “He’s at the smithy this time of day. And, with you here, I’ll have him all to myself.”
“Go, Tessa,” Rosie repeated.
Tessa flapped a hand as she skirted past, donning her cloak from the living room rack and opening the front door with a scarce parting comment. “Don’t worry about old man Arkwright, Rose. I’ll have a better plan by nightfall.”
Snow swirled in as the door swung open, then shut, removing Tessa but not the queasy feeling that had settled in my gut. I brushed my hand over where hers had been and shuddered again.
Beside me, Rosie heaved a breath. “I’m sorry she did that. She’s bold sometimes. Too bold.”
I tested my hands and realized they had the slightest tremor. So, I rubbed my palms against my sides to try to still them. “Why are you friends with her?” I asked.
Rosie’s forehead scrunched. “What do you mean?”
“She’s not like you,” I replied. “She’s awful.”
“I’ve learned it’s best to ignore her when she gets like this.” Rosie returned to the counter to spread the ingredients and supplies into the space Tessa had vacated. “She talks a lot, but she only means half of what she says.”
I had a feeling she meant everything she said about Kit, and I was increasingly concerned about her plan to corner him in the smithy. Maybe the idea of flame-hot tongs and fire would force her to keep her distance, but Rosie was right. Tessa was too bold.
“The dough’s ready to be rolled out.” Rosie grabbed a rolling pin and used it to gesture to the bowl.
I glanced back at the door through which Tessa had departed.
I should have told her to stay away. Should have told her that Kit was mine because that was what I desperately wanted to believe.
After what felt like a lifetime of failed starts and fears of a future alone, I had a chance at happiness.
But it felt fragile. A small thing that needed time and room to grow and could be easily trampled by Tessa’s brutish interference.
A lump formed in my throat as I took the rolling pin and smoothed the strudel dough into a long rectangle. The work should have been soothing, but my mind wandered while Rosie chattered and I managed not to hear any of it.
I meant to wait till the strudels were baked so I could take some home to share with Kit, but nervous energy kept me moving, walking circles around the tiny kitchen once they were in the oven until Rosie commented at last.
“Penny, would you settle down? You’re about to wear a track in the floor.”
“I think I’ll head home,” I said, tugging the apron off over my head. “I don’t feel well.”
Blame it on the poison regimen or the sleepless nights or the memory of Tessa’s unwelcome touch, but my stomach was roiling.
But attending to that required putting my sudden and poignant fear at ease, the worry that Tessa might attempt the same and more with Kit and garner a vastly different reaction.
“Are you sure?” Rosie asked, only to be answered by a bout of coughing that left me breathless and my eyes watering. I wiped them with my sleeve, then hurried to the cloak rack, nodding through her farewell and offering my own before stepping out into the dusky evening air.