Chapter Thirty
For something so momentous, Libba was a little affronted at how quickly and dryly everything unfolded from inside the courthouse.
A magistrate flipped through the papers, frowning up a few times at Lem standing over a head taller than his “father,” and then reached for an ink stamp and a quill. “You’re certain he’s yours, then?” was all he said to Harcourt.
“Of course he is,” replied the barrister with an easy smile. “Can’t you see the resemblance?”
The magistrate just blinked a few times and then slapped the stamp onto the pages. “There will be a cursory review of the documents,” he said. “Should take a week or so. Return upon summons with two witnesses to finalize status. Good day.”
And that was it.
That was the whole of it.
She’d barely even moved from her position two steps away from the entry and it was already over.
Harcourt slapped Lem on the back and the two turned to walk back to their assemblage of supporters, both wearing wide smiles.
Libba almost smiled too, but Malcolm put a hand to her arm and looked down at her with a furrowed brow. “A review,” he repeated, frowning. “That means investigation. Have you handled Faither yet?”
She hesitated, her heart sinking. “No,” she said. “Not yet.”
Mal heaved a sigh, glancing up at the sky through the windows. “He’ll be at the shipyard for another hour or two still,” he said. “I wouldn’t approach him there, but you might be able to catch him before he cracks tonight’s whiskey if you hurry.”
“But, Jasper,” she said, her voice gone tight and thin. “Mal, I need to talk to him.”
“I will handle Jasper,” he assured her, giving a short, sheepish chuckle at her immediate expression of horror. “I won’t kill him. I promise.”
“You swear?”
“I swear,” he assured her. “Trust me, please. Like you used to.”
She gave him a crooked grimace. “All right,” she decided. “Earn it, then. Like you used to.”
He nodded and squeezed her arm, where his hand still rested on it. “Go.”
She slipped out while the troupe was still swarming Lem with well wishes and half-eaten pie, and took a turn toward the Rest.
She had enough time, more than enough, to hurry home and gather a few things before intercepting her sire at his shack for a second time in recent memory. She thought making demands and assumptions about his character and lack of discretion might land a little softer if she arrived bearing gifts.
She went first toward the coops and kennels, hoping to find Errol or his father at some chores.
Instead, she found the bastard rooster, Titus, performing a full strutting display of either masculine threat or hopeful courtship outside his coop in the lowering light.
He was not strutting and dancing about for a hen or another bird of any sort, but for an ox, who was tethered to the coop with one hoof in a light sling behind him.
She stopped and stared for a moment, unable to process what she was seeing in a meaningful enough way to do anything about it, one way or another. And she supposed that also included disregarding it and walking around the scene.
“Libba?” came Errol’s voice as he emerged from the groom’s cottage with a leather bundle of farrier’s tools and a pile of towels over his shoulder.
“Errol,” she answered, turning her head only a little to look at him in periphery. “Your rooster is broken.”
“Oh, that,” he said with a chuckle. “Shoo, Titus. Shoo!”
Titus did not shoo. He paused, one barbed chicken foot aloft, and glared at his master, then went back to spreading his tail feathers and quivering them at the ox.
“Good work,” Libba said. “Very authoritative.”
Errol chuckled and shrugged. “Need something?”
“Ah, yes,” she said, remembering suddenly. “Eggs? Half a dozen or so? And a bundle of dried herbs wouldn’t go astray.”
“What sort of herbs?” he asked, easing into the stool behind the immobile ox and cradling its damaged hoof gently in his hand.
“Whichever sort goes with eggs,” she answered impatiently. “Thyme?”
“Rosemary and salt is my preference,” he answered without looking up. “Both are already in the kitchens. Cook can give you a basket if you ask nicely.”
“I always ask nicely,” Libba said with a sniff. “It’s Ruby who’s rude to her.”
Errol made a noncommittal sound to that and unrolled his tool kit.
Libba understood that at this point, she ought to turn and go into the house and get on with her duties, but she found herself unable to move just now. She didn’t want to move. As long as she stood right here, everything was normal and fine and good.
“Why’d you bring that beast all the way down here?” she asked, watching Titus the rooster complete a series of wiggling sidesteps and then collapse forward in a theatrical bow. “Seems like it’d be easier to bring your tools back up the Downs instead.”
“Foul-in-the-foot,” said Errol, extracting a brush and pressing several petals of caustic-smelling soap into the bristles. “It’s contagious. If I left him up there, it’d spread to the others.”
“Oh,” said Libba, blinking. “Nasty.”
“Very nasty,” Errol agreed, dipping the brush into a bucket of water and beginning to lather it up against his hand. “You want to watch the treatment? I have to cut away infected tissue.”
“I … No. No, of course not,” she said, giving a shrill, little giggle and shaking her head. “I’ll get those eggs. Godspeed.”
“Mm,” said Errol, already lost in his work.
Titus, for his part, huffed in evident disbelief at the lack of amorous return from the infected ox, and appeared to be striking his stage to begin his display once more.
That’s the spirit, Libba thought. Surely, it’ll work next time.
She batted away the sensation that she had anything at all in common with Titus the rooster and continued about her business.
In fact, she was so incredibly apt at business-doings, that, somehow, within the blink of an eye, she found herself at the door to her father’s house, wearing a heavier pelisse than she’d had on earlier, holding a basket of eggs, herbs, and one tissue-wrapped cylindrical gift, wondering how in the good hell she’d gotten there.
She frowned.
And she knocked.
She didn’t wait for an answer, of course. The knock was only cursory, and as soon as she’d stepped inside, she met Ulysses Lennox standing near his ancient and tilted coat rack, staring in surprise at the door.
“Libba?” he croaked. “It’s not Wednesday.”
“Are you certain?” she replied with a weak smile. She immediately regretted it at the flash of disoriented panic in his pale eyes. “No, it isn’t. I thought I’d pop by, anyhow. Is that all right? There was something pressing I wished to discuss. And I’ve brought you a gift.”
“‘A gift,’” he repeated, still frozen with his coat partway lifted to the hook on the tree. “For me?”
“Yes, that is usually what someone means when they tell a person they have brought a gift,” she replied impatiently. “A few gifts, actually. I’m going to put some water on.”
“I—” He cut himself off, shaking his head as though he wanted to ensure he was not dreaming. “All right.”
She gave a curt nod and crossed to the little kitchenette in the corner of the shack. It brought her right up against the open door of what had once been her childhood bedroom. She glanced in because how could she not?
Inside were still two child-sized beds, arranged at a right angle to one another with a small table wedged in the diamond shape between the walls and headboards.
They were still made up, she realized, pausing with a little thump to her heart.
Dusty and piled with old toys and books and little clothes they had not taken with them to Starling’s Rest.
“Faither,” she said, setting her basket down and bending slowly with her back to him so she would not embarrass him by asking, “have you not wanted to use that room for aught else in the last decade and more?”
There was a rustling behind her, the squeak of old floorboards as her father shifted his weight. “I’ve what I need in mine own rooms,” he said gruffly. “Besides, you might’ve come back.”
“I did come back,” she said, withdrawing a pot and filling it with the pitcher of clean water next to the range. “Tonight, anyhow. Will you come here to stand with me, please?”
She waited until she felt his heat and shadow draw up alongside her to drop the match on the range. “You do not need to burn it as high as it will go every time,” she told him. “In fact, it’s rare that you’d need to. And the eggs don’t go in until the water is already boiling at a roll.”
He frowned, peering skeptically at the pot as she moved it over the flame. “That’d burn my fingers,” he pointed out. “Or break the eggs.”
She sighed, a smile tugging at her lips despite herself. “That is what spoons are for, dear man. Now, while we wait, let’s see the skillet.”
“Oh,” he said, blinking, and he immediately knelt and set to scrambling for the thing.
Libba, from above him, could see the shining hints of his scalp through the thinning layer of white hair over the crown of his head.
“This one,” she said, accepting it and setting it on the second flame, “we let heat before we add aught at all. Watch.”
She dipped her fingers in the cool water and splashed some on the pan. “See? Nothing. But give it a few moments and …” She did the same motion again after a pause; this time, the droplets landed with a sizzle. “Now it is ready. The butter, please. Just a small pat.”
He hesitated, blinking several times. “Your mam used to do that,” he said, wonder in his voice. “With the droplets. I had forgotten.”
She turned to him, eyes wide as he handed over a pat of butter, dangling on the edge of a spoon. “Did she?”
He nodded.
Libba cleared her throat, giving her head a little shake, and turned back to the pan, dropping the butter in and watching it melt.
“Frying is faster,” she said briskly. “But no less delicate. Try to crack the egg only once and then separate it with one hand to save the yolk. Hold it low on the pan so it holds its caul, unless you prefer them scrambled.”