Chapter 6 Kit #2
I’d expected Penny to fill our travel with his usual chatter, and I found myself missing his comments about the fat squirrels crisscrossing the road, or the lone red fox that disappeared into the trees as we passed.
More than that, I missed him serving as a buffer between me and the pair of near strangers we found ourselves stuck with.
Concern gnawed at me. I’d slept poorly since the night of the first Oath, and my intermittent nightmares had gotten progressively worse after starting back on a daily regimen of hemlock, but even I wasn’t so fatigued that I couldn’t make it a few hours without falling asleep wherever I was.
The longer Penny’s cough lingered and the worse it got, the more I worried.
As the day stretched on and still he slept, it was all I could do to feign interest in whatever inane topic Edgar and Cait were talking about, and focus on getting us where we needed to go.
It was a small blessing that they seemed like decent folk, and their presence wasn’t as irritating as I’d expected.
We reached the outskirts of Elsfield as darkness descended from the west. We pulled the horses up in front of a three-story building with a sign boasting a local pub and inn. After Edgar and Cait tied off their mare, I waved them on ahead.
As the door swung shut behind the young couple, Penny sat up, groggy and blinking away sleep.
“We’re there already?” he asked, scrubbing a hand through his hair and making it stick up in the back.
“At our waypoint for the night,” I informed him while smoothing his mussed locks.
Blush darkened Penny’s cheeks. He scrambled for his sketchbook and pencil, tucking the latter behind his ear. “I slept all day? Why didn’t you wake me?”
I hopped down from the driver’s bench and looped the reins over the hitching rail before heading around to shoulder both of our bags. “You looked like you needed the rest.”
He pushed up to his feet and stretched, sending himself into a coughing fit that took longer than I liked to pass. He cleared his throat and glanced over at the other wagon. “What happened to the lamb?” he asked.
I frowned. “What lamb?”
“From Cait’s story. With her brother? And the river?”
“Oh.” Hours of idle chatter had filled the space between then and now, and when I thought back to the story, I couldn't recall its ending. “You know, she didn't say.”
Penny's forehead scrunched with lingering concern, and I chuckled.
“They're just inside. You can ask her.” I offered him a hand down from the cart.
He took it and held on a few seconds longer than necessary after climbing down.
When he pulled away, I fought the urge to catch my fingers in his again.
I would be glad when we parted ways with the other initiates so I could be with Penny the way we were at home, the way we couldn't be in Ashpoint. Out here on the road, I didn’t care who saw how close we were becoming. I’d gladly show them all.
Penny shuffled to the inn’s gnarled wooden door and held it open, then trailed me inside.
The pub was small, with only a handful of tables and rickety chairs scattered about the space.
Nearly all of them were packed with people.
A fireplace nestled in between two clusters of threadbare armchairs on the far wall, but the room was plenty warm with the gathered crowd.
Cait had claimed a table off to the left on the edge of the room, and she waved us toward it.
I dug my coin pouch and the small stack of letters I’d brought from home out of my pack before handing it to Penny. “Why don’t you go sit? I’ll get the room taken care of, and you can find out what happened to the lamb.”
He did as he was told, winding through the room and settling into the chair across from Cait.
I joined Edgar at the bar on the right side of the room to arrange lodging for Betty, Penny, and me, and to order food to be sent to the table. Edgar insisted he’d get both horses put in for the night, and I was happy to let him.
Once he’d disappeared back out the door, I slid the stack of letters to the innkeeper. “I need to get these to Eastcliff.”
He nodded. “There’s a courier a town over who stops in now and again. He gets out that way every couple of months. Four coppers for him, and two for my trouble.”
I handed over the coin, and he tucked the letters away behind the counter.
I reached the table just as Cait was finishing her story.
Penny was grinning, so I assumed the lamb survived.
I sank into the seat beside him, resting my hand on his knee under the table and earning a faint blush across his pale cheeks in response.
When Edgar joined us at the same time the barmaid was passing out our meals, Penny was more than ready to pull them into conversation while I poked at the food I felt too nauseous to eat.
“How did you two meet?” he asked around a mouthful of roast.
Cait flashed Edgar a smile and leaned her shoulder against his.
“I moved to town mid-year, but I settled right in and got to work in the fields. I’d been there a few weeks when Edgar showed up one day to build some boxed beds for the spring and winter barley, and that was that.
There was something about him. I never stood a chance. ”
“I knew the second I laid eyes on her that I was going to marry her,” Edgar cut in. “We started courting a week later and were married before the first harvest.”
“It’s been the best six months of my life.” Cait pecked her husband’s cheek, staring at him with such adoration that it was hard to believe they’d barely known each other half a year.
They’d married within the same amount of time Penny and I had known each other. I couldn’t imagine being so sure of my own feelings to commit to someone for the rest of my life when it had taken me that long to figure out that I might have feelings at all.
“That’s so romantic,” Penny said, his chin propped in his hand and a sappy smile on his face.
“You’re veritable strangers.” I regretted saying it when the other three turned toward me. “How could you possibly know you want to spend the rest of your lives together when you hardly know each other?”
“When you know, you know,” Edgar said.
The answer was too simple to accept. “But how do you know?”
“We just did,” Cait said. “I couldn’t imagine the rest of my life without Edgar in it, and that was all I needed to know.”
Penny tangled his fingers with mine and nodded along like it made all the sense in the world.
Was he that sure of me? Did he expect this same rapid progression in our relationship while I was content to let things stay as they were?
I didn’t want to have to keep what we had to myself forever, but what we were was already more than I ever expected to have, and it was enough.
We didn’t know what the next nine months would bring, let alone the next nine years, so how could he know already that he wanted to tie himself to me for the rest of his life?
“How old are you?” I asked.
“We both turned twenty this year,” Edgar said.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. They were both wide-eyed and innocent, as naive as Penny had been when he first showed up at my door. Still, at almost eleven years my junior, they were surer of themselves than I’d ever been.
I was starting to think that I was the odd one out. I was the problem.
I poked at the roast on my plate and avoided their eyes. “You’re practically children.”
Penny’s fingers tightened around mine. “I’m twenty-two. Do you think I’m a child?”
I may have briefly thought him childish when we first met, but not anymore. Sheltered, maybe, and inexperienced in the ways of the world outside Eastcliff. That didn’t change the fact that marrying anyone within months of meeting for the first time felt immature and ill-advised.
But I couldn’t say that outright. Edgar and Cait were, as far as I could tell, good people. They didn’t need their happiness tainted by my misgivings.
I glanced over at Penny, dismayed to see his shoulders drooping and his easy smile replaced by one that looked forced.
“Pen…”
“What about Sayla?” His furrowed brow cast his eyes in shadow. “She’s soon to be betrothed, and she’s only nineteen.”
There was little hope of recovering from the hole I’d dug myself into, so retreat seemed the only viable solution. Let them gush over the romance of it all without my doubts casting a pall over the table. I wasn’t hungry anyway.
I pulled my hand from under Penny’s and pushed my chair back. “Excuse me. I’m going to get a drink.”
I didn’t give them a chance to protest before I abandoned my plate and made my way to a seat at the far end of the bar.
Over the next hour, I nursed a glass of whiskey while my mind churned.
Growing up under my father’s thumb must have broken something in me, because all I saw were ulterior motives and transactional relationships.
The idea of loving someone so instinctually, so completely that I didn’t need months to figure out whether or not I could trust them with the rawest parts of myself, was unfathomable.
As much as I wanted to have that with Penny, and as much as I knew he wanted to have that with me, I wasn’t sure I was capable of it.
Penny eventually settled on the stool beside me and startled me out of my thoughts. I glanced back to find the table empty.
“Did Edgar and Cait head up?” I asked.
Penny nodded and leaned an elbow on the bar. “You know, when you said you were going for a drink, I assumed you’d come back.”
I winced. “Sorry. They’re nice people, but I have nothing in common with them, and I offended them enough. Figured you would all be better off without me.” I swirled the whiskey in my cup. “Did you really not find any of their story problematic?”
I saw him shaking his head out of the corner of my eye. He stifled a cough in the crook of his elbow before responding. “I thought it was romantic. Especially the whole knowing you don’t want to live the rest of your life without someone. Everyone should have that.”
I couldn’t disagree with that sentiment at least. Most everyone deserved to be wanted like that, to be someone’s priority, to be the one thing they couldn’t live without.
But those were connections that had to be built and cultivated and nurtured, and six months was barely enough time to plant a seed.
When I took too long to respond, Penny brushed his fingers over my arm. “Why do you find it so hard to believe that people can know they love each other in two months? Edgar and Cait seem happy. Isn’t that proof enough?”
“You can’t even know someone in two months, Pen.” I lifted my eyes to meet his. “People lie. They pretend. A lot of times, they put on an act. You can make someone believe almost anything for two months. Or six.”
His brows creased. “You make it sound like you've done that before.”
I shrugged and dropped my gaze back to the cup that wasn’t nearly full enough for me to want to have this conversation. “I've seen it done, and for much longer than six months.”
“But you wouldn't do that if it was someone you loved.”
Wouldn’t you? I didn’t remember much about my mother, but I knew she’d been kind.
Soft-spoken, tender, and the first to offer help even before she was asked.
My father had managed to convince her he was a good man.
He played the part so well that, as a child, even I’d been sure he was as gentle a soul as she was.
He claimed to love her, and maybe he had, because his true nature didn’t come to the fore until she died.
Maybe it was just me he didn’t love.
I made a noncommittal sound.
“Haven't you loved anyone before?” Penny asked.
I knew the kind of love he meant, and I had a feeling he wouldn’t like my answer. He wanted me to love him, but he'd turned his attentions on a man too world weary and full of doubt to believe in things that required such blind faith.
I didn’t know what love felt like. How could I profess a feeling I couldn’t even identify?
“No,” I said.
Penny’s shoulders curled in again, and he dropped his eyes. “I suppose you said as much when we had Reimond and Thoma over.” He was quiet for a moment before leaning closer. “Do you think you ever could?”
I shifted on my stool. “I’d like to, but…”
I didn’t know how to tell him that I wasn’t sure I knew how to love someone, or how to trust someone enough to let them love me. The mere thought of letting someone in and relying on them like that terrified me. Maybe I just wasn’t made for it.
Penny dipped his head to try to catch my eye. “But what?”
I tossed back the last of my whiskey, then dug some coin from my pocket to drop on the bar. “But it's late,” I said and slid off my stool. “We should get to sleep.”