Chapter 16 #2
“This is the rush!” she laughed, gesturing at the room.
All in all, there were twelve guests (including him) staying at the inn.
“The selkies have requested access to the pond in Spin’s garden, and Spin’s produce is quite depleted due to the guests, so I need to organize a list for a supply run sooner than planned, and Ruraidh said he needs time to sort his broom out with some new straw but the halls need a sweep and the goats must be seen to—”
“Have you eaten yet?” Ainsworth interrupted her, and before she could answer, he took her by the shoulders and steered her into one of the only vacant seats left, a solitary table by one of the windows. “I know you haven’t, so sit there until I bring you something.”
“Oh, very well, then,” she said, settling into her chair with little convincing. “Will you get me something I’ll like, or something you think I should like?”
Honey wasn’t into some of the fancy dishes Alvea had made to impress the new guests.
Alvea, at least, seemed genuinely happy to stretch that particular muscle.
She had admitted to Ainsworth when they’d shared an evening meal some days prior that she now felt she got the best of both worlds, making such dishes in the comfortable atmosphere of the Misnich Inn.
Ainsworth gave Honey a knowing look before heading to the kitchen, a warm flush rising from his chest. Over the past few weeks, the comfortable companionship between them had continued to grow, and while she did enjoy teasing him about his…
occasional snobbish tendences, he felt he could truly consider her a friend. A close friend.
Almost more than a close friend, perhaps?
He shook his head, briefly horrified at himself.
He was still spoken for! Despite how they’d left things, despite everything that had happened, he would not let himself think about Honey in any capacity other than as a friend.
Even if he did find himself flirting, occasionally—and also found himself magnificently pleased when he made her blush or had her roaring with laughter.
Although he had finished his sketch of the standing stones and Beatrice long before the third trip to the mountain, he had insisted Honey take him once more so he could “complete” it.
“Can I grab something for Honey’s breakfast, Alvea?
” Ainsworth asked as he entered the kitchen.
He had, perhaps, made himself a tad too much at home here in Alvea and Quiddle’s workspace after her cooking challenge, but she did not complain.
She had even requested he make more of his auldfruit preserves—but she was by far the superior bannock baker.
“Yes—and yourself, remember!” Alvea called from the pantry.
Ainsworth swooped around the worktables and popped some bread, some auldfruit preserves, and a pot of cream on a tray. He used some water freshly boiled by Quiddle to fill a small teapot for ficklebell tea for two.
“Very romantic,” Quiddle jested as he came in with empty plates for washing, balancing them precariously on his arms.
“Very funny,” Ainsworth replied, reddening at the remark. He heard Alvea laugh from the pantry and took a deep breath so as to not appear flushed when he returned to the tavern room.
He chose to believe he sat down in front of Honey looking composed and with an average complexion.
An amicable silence descended between them as Honey made short work of the food.
She had truly been run off her feet these past few days.
All the staff had—and he, helping when he could, was busy spending every other spare minute writing and poring over the diaries.
As if she read his mind, Honey asked over a mouthful of toasted bread: “Surely you’re almost done with those diaries now?”
He took a sip of tea. It was not quite sharp, but not too gentle, either—a perfect start to the day. “It is not a matter of simply reading them, Honey. I need to go over the data many times during my investigation, and in my own notes I assign codes to certain excerpts and then—”
“Okay, okay. I wish I never asked,” she said, smiling mischievously from behind her teacup. He made himself look away, but he returned the smile nonetheless.
“To be honest,” he said, hoping he could be honest with her, “they are not as useful as I’d hoped. They mostly contain…gossip about guests, and there’s a tremendous number of pages dedicated to Beatrice’s walks upon the mountain.”
“Ah, but those sections are beautiful, are they not?”
They were, Ainsworth had to admit. Indeed, he could hardly believe that the moving accounts of the landscape described the same mountain he had set foot on.
Her accounts, Ainsworth suspected, were a kind of reflective and healing prose, written to come to terms with her fate and perhaps reclaim the land.
He had found himself utterly absorbed, coming away from the page each time with a renewed appreciation for the landscape around him.
“Truly magnificent writing,” Ainsworth agreed. “I am very much enjoying conducting a close reading. I hope, with your permission, I can include some excerpts in the finished manuscript. The earliest journal does have some very helpful accounts of the inn’s establishment, I suppose.”
Indeed, the diaries had been most useful in documenting the early days of the inn.
They were devoid of the motivation behind it (Honey, he had noted to his frustration, had ripped out some pages, which he suspected held those answers), but Beatrice had helpfully described the setting up of the inn some two hundred years ago, and all the wealth required to do so.
And what a wealth indeed! Her journal accounts lined up with the various invoices he had found for all the supplies she needed, from the hiring of an initial workforce to build the place to everything needed for sustenance.
She was not, from the diaries or to Honey’s knowledge, married, and Honey claimed she did not know what profession she had before becoming an innkeeper.
“Surely generational wealth funded this place?” Ainsworth had speculated, but Honey kept tight-lipped.
It felt rude to pry, and…well, it was really none of his business.
He had what he needed to be accurate in his writing, and that was enough.
The inn’s current finances were also really none of his business, but in recent days, he could not see how it could possibly run on anything other than a loss.
Was the money running dry, or still readily available?
Again, his own research covered no such thing, but damn it if he wasn’t curious.
Honey was different from his colleagues at the Skarrow Library: Those affluent academics were both performatively reticent and yet simultaneously showy around the issue of familial wealth, which many of them possessed in great quantities.