24. Penny #2
She may have blushed again, but it was hard to tell before she turned away.
“You know your way around a kitchen, for one thing. And you seem kind.” With the sink full of soap suds and piled with dishes, she took a knife from the countertop block and edged past me to take the position in front of the flattened dough.
Dragging the blade through the shortbread, she created a grid of perfect squares.
Uneven edges were peeled away and rolled into a new ball.
A smile ghosted over her full lips before she asked, “ Are you kind?”
“I try to be,” I replied.
Rosie’s smile returned with vigor. “Yes.” Her head dipped in a nod. “I like you very much.”
I stayed and visited until the shortbreads had baked and cooled slightly.
They flooded Rosie’s house with the most fragrant aroma, and the smell followed me as I carried home a little brown bag filled with cookies.
I got back to Kit’s cottage, excited to share the treats while they had a bit of warmth left, but he wasn’t there .
With nothing to do but wait, I rifled through the pantry and cabinets searching for something I could make into dinner.
“Tessa’s making a ham,” I sneered to myself as I bustled about the kitchen.
“Well, we don’t have a ham, Tessa . We have…
” I pulled a wrapped package from the icebox and slapped it on the counter.
Peeling back the thick butcher paper revealed a pile of chicken legs, pink and white with knobby bone ends.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “Chicken’s fine.”
I was fine, Rosie had said. Strapping, not scrawny. But what strapping man could be held the way Kit had held me? Women, even my own sister, seemed to prefer broad, burly sorts.
What did Kit prefer?
And why did I wonder about that when I wasn’t sure if he fancied men at all?
I chopped a few carrots and onions more carelessly than was prudent and dumped them into a cast iron skillet where they hissed and sizzled in the hot oil.
The chicken legs went in next, and I sprinkled the mix with salt and cracked pepper and some of the dried rosemary I found in the pantry.
Then it was more waiting while the meat cooked through and the vegetables softened.
That was how Kit found me when he finally shuffled in. Since my position in the kitchen had a direct view of the front door, I caught sight of him as soon as he entered. Seeing his face smeared with soot and his dark curls sweat-damp brought my first smile in what felt like hours.
He paused to kick off his boots, then looked up at me and sniffed the air. “Gods, that smells good.” Venturing forward, he came up beside me and peeked at the steaming skillet.
“Just finishing up,” I said, sneaking a whiff of the forge smoke clinging to his clothes. Normally, the stink of anything burnt turned my stomach, but this was different enough that I didn’t mind too much. “You’re right on time.”
Kit grunted. “Later than I meant to be. I couldn’t get a moment’s peace with that buffoon Anders touching everything, moving everything… It took me an hour to put it all right again.”
I smirked. “Rosie’s father doesn’t care for him, either.”
“That’s right.” He dipped his head in an exaggerated nod. “How was your baking lesson?”
Farther down the counter, the brown paper bag waited. I snagged it and opened it for Kit to peek inside.
“I brought cookies.”
Kit’s eyes widened, and he reached into the bag. Pulling out one of the crisp squares, he consumed most of it in one bite.
“Then,” he said with his mouth full, “when I was finished picking up, Levitt came by to see how we were settling in.”
I grabbed plates from the upper cabinet and started filling them with food from the skillet. Kit polished off the shortbread moments before I handed him his plate.
He swallowed hard and seemed to sober. “I told him you decided to undergo the Oaths after all.”
The statement made me pause. Less the statement than the finality of it.
I set the last slice of carrot on my dish. “Good.” I nodded. “That’s settled, then.”
Kit answered with a nod of his own. He stared down at the food with a guarded expression. “Thank you for this, Penny. I’m not used to coming home to a hot meal. Or much of anything, to be honest.”
I searched his downturned face, then the rest of him, thinking back to his home in Forstford.
It had felt lived in; not as hollow as this house, but a far cry from the cozy comfort of Rosie’s cottage.
Perhaps it was the lack of family. Most men Kit’s age were married and had a few children scurrying around.
Was it the shame of his ties to the cult that kept him so isolated? Or something else?
“Have you been on your own a long time?” I asked.
“Some years, since I moved to Forstford.”
“And before that?”
He huffed a breath. “Before that was so long ago it hardly matters. May as well be a whole other life.”
The silence between us grew awkward the longer neither us could come up with something to say. He clearly didn’t want to share the details of his past, but I wasn’t content to leave the conversation unfinished.
“Were you lonely?” I asked.
Through the haze of gray speckling his cheeks, Kit seemed to pale for a moment. Before I could speak again, he stepped behind me and grabbed a fork from the drawer. After loading the tines with vegetables, he stuffed a too-big bite into his mouth, then turned toward the dining table.
“This is good, thank you,” he mumbled.
He was avoiding the question, but I let it go as I took a fork for myself and followed him. “You already thanked me.” I dropped into the seat beside his.
“Did I?”
“Mmhmm. I’m glad you like it, though.”
If I’d had any doubts, the way he was currently tearing into a chicken leg would have removed them. I chuckled to myself.
“What did you think of the others?” I asked. “Reimond and Thoma?”
“They were friendly enough. ”
Stabbing a carrot with the tines of my fork, I held it up to a beam of fading sunlight. “I think they might be a couple.” I meant to sound casual but couldn’t keep my gaze from darting rapidly to Kit, checking his reaction.
Finishing another bite of chicken, he grunted. “Oh?”
I nodded and waited. Surely he had more to say than that. I certainly did. But rather than fuel my curiosity or share my interest, Kit redirected.
“That other one, Otis, makes me uneasy,” he said.
My shoulders sagged. I stuffed the carrot in my mouth. “Why?”
“He knows too much.” Kit’s brows pinched.
“And he cares about things that don’t concern him.
I didn’t think about it until after everyone left, but I wonder if he’s the ‘O’ my father keeps mentioning in his journals.
” Standing, he moved to the cabinets, then got out a tin cup and filled it in the sink.
“I want you to stay away from him, Penny,” he said over his shoulder. “I don’t trust him.”
I rolled my eyes, reluctant to abandon the topic of Reimond and Thoma.
Not only did I hate the way reading those journals made Kit look like he’d been punched in the gut, but he also didn’t know—how could he?
—how novel it was to meet other people like me.
To see two men in a relationship, and as happy as Reimond and Thoma seemed to be, filled me with a kind of wistful hope I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before.
“You don’t trust anyone,” I muttered.
Kit returned to the table but stopped before sitting and frowned down at me. “That’s not true.”
I pitched back in my seat and crossed my arms. “You have nothing but bad to say about everyone here, but they seem all right to me.” Rosie and her father, the vendors in town, even Levitt, all appeared to be normal people like the kind I knew back home.
My brother may have been the most fiendish of them all, which was a sobering thought.
Kit gripped the wooden back of his chair, still on his feet. “I trust you ,” he said softly.
The statement felt somehow profound. “Do you?”
He processed for a moment, then nodded. “I do. Because you aren’t like them.”
With a huffed breath, I grabbed a chicken leg from my plate. “That’s what Rosie said.”
“She seems pretty taken with you. Think you’ll spend more time with her?” Kit slid into his seat and set his cup down.
“She wants to teach me how to make pecan tarts next time. Says there’s an orchard near here.”
Grabbing his fork, Kit set to work on his meal once more. “There is. And as long as you bring some tarts home, I suppose I can’t complain.”
I grinned. “Of course I will.”
Kit waved to the plates piled with food. “Good. Now, eat before it gets cold.”