Chapter 5
By midday, Bram had been out of the cottage for hours. Inside, his sweet Marigold was currently darning sheets and pillows.
Tonight she’d sleep on them, likely feet away from him. Bram tapped his forehead with the blunt side of the hatchet’s head.
Maybe if he tapped hard enough, he’d beat sense into himself.
What on earth had he done?
Nothing smart, that was for sure. He paced thirty yards down the fence line to cool his heated blood. Between his true love
and his nemesis arriving within minutes of each other, it was a miracle he’d kept his wits about him. Though if he’d had more wits, to protect her from the curse, he should’ve immediately orcked out and sent her screaming away from his doorstep.
Now he was stuck with her.
Crispin was a puffed-up rogue, and Bram had no regrets about hiding Marigold from him. But harboring her? If Marigold was
caught, Jask Bone-Cracker was as good as vivisected. Had he listened to her five years ago, all this might have been avoided.
The prince, the curse, everything.
They were both twenty-three then, and she’d fought with him tooth and claw over his plan to find his fortune in Harvest Hollow.
Sir Patrick, the knight who raised him, had breathed his last, and Bram’s social status was tenuous at best. Marigold was convinced her parents would allow a love match between them since her father had received special permission to marry her mother.
Magical thinking, that. Love match? A silver lining.
Marigold’s mother, Queen Elowen, belonged to the realm’s wealthiest merchant family.
With her, she brought Thornwick’s coffers a welcome infusion of gold.
He—the fostered child of a mid-level knight—did not.
But he had potential. At least, he used to.
A few paces away, Barnaby stretched his neck, then split Bram’s brain with an impressive shriek.
“Really, Barnaby?” Bram wiggled his pinky in his ear. “It’s almost noon.”
As the rooster strutted away, Bram hacked at the sapling that threatened the fence post’s integrity. In his quest to avoid
the woman in his cottage, he’d blazed through his routine chores. He’d watered, fed, and milked the cow; scattered feed for
the chickens and collected their eggs; then let the pig out to forage in the forest. Normally, the mundane work helped him
sort through his growing list of problems, which included:
Marigold required safe passage back to Thornwick.
He couldn’t leave the farm.
Jask Bone-Cracker had no friends to tap for help. Unless he counted Alfred the Carter or Barnaby, which he did not.
If he revealed himself to Marigold, she would die.
He ached to reveal himself to Marigold. His favorite person in the world was right there, no farther away than a ten-year-old could throw a mid-sized pumpkin. The funniest, smartest, most empathetic, and beautiful
person he’d known in his twenty-eight years. She was stitched into the very fabric of his soul, his heart, his body.
His very excitable body.
Which meant he needed to stay out here. Perhaps forever. Discipline was a core value of knighthood, but this was beyond him.
The root cellar might be an alternative place to lay his head. After watering the pumpkin patch and vegetable garden, he was
no closer to a solution for escorting Marigold to safety when he himself could not escort her. The growl in his stomach begged
him to stop for a meal.
But then he’d be back in the cottage. With her.
He ran his hand down his face. Perhaps there was something in the root cellar besides cider, onions, and carrots? As he headed
toward the cellar door, an urgent bell clanged in the distance. What was that? Had Alfred gotten a new bell that sounded like
the one that called fire brigade? He glanced over his shoulder. No—this ringing came from the front of the cottage.
Marigold.
The world bounced and shifted as he sprinted through the courtyard and around to the front of his home. There she stood, on
the porch, shielding her eyes as she scanned the horizon.
“What’s wrong?” he panted.
She dropped the bell pull. “Nothing’s wrong. Why do you ask?”
“You rang the bell.” He jabbed his finger toward it.
“Because I made sandwiches.”
“I said don’t bother.” For the first time, Bram noticed Crispin’s knights had smashed his artfully carved porch pumpkins.
Knaves, all. The pumpkins weren’t works of art, but there was no reason for this gourd carnage.
“But I did worry about it, and I made them anyway.” She entered the house, then beckoned to him. “I hope you like salted-ham-and-brie
sandwiches.”
He left the hatchet on the porch. “I had salted ham and brie?”
“No, I had salted ham and brie,” she said. “In my trunk.”
Bram wrinkled his brow as he unbuckled his boots and traded them for his house shoes. “What trunk?”
“That one over there.” She gestured toward a steamer trunk the size of his chicken coop. “I minimized it for easier carrying.
It contains my essentials.”
“Brie isn’t essential.”
“Never question the essentiality of cheese.” She lifted a kettle from the cooking hearth and poured fragrant steaming water
into a mug. “And I made my honey-lemon-ginger tisane. As promised, it’ll change your life. So will the petit fours.”
“Princess, I’ve no time for a leisurely meal.”
“Neither do I. I’m very busy.” She sat at an expertly laid table covered with a floral tablecloth. “Now, wash your hands and
sit.”
He had table coverings?
Not the point. He had two options: continue to fight with her and drag this out, or do as she said and eat with her for five
minutes. Unaccustomed as she was to not getting her way, Marigold would likely follow him if he simply turned on his heel.
The goal was to keep her hidden, at least for this first day.
With a sigh, he pumped spring water onto his hands and lathered with the pine-scented soap he’d made earlier this month. With
the muck scrubbed free, he thumped his ass onto the bench across from her.
He picked the ham from the sandwich and flung it to the floor near Fuzzle. “I don’t eat meat.”
“An orc who doesn’t eat meat?” She tilted her head. “Fascinating. Why not?”
Because the creatures here were his only company, and he couldn’t stomach eating his friends. If he shared that, though, he’d
need to explain he couldn’t leave the farm, leading to the reveal that he was cursed, and . . . No. Too dangerous.
Secrets and lies it would be.
“Doesn’t agree with me,” he said.
“But you have a pig,” she said. “She’s not intended for the spit?”
Paloma, on a spit? The very idea hurt his heart.
“She forages truffles. Everyone here works, Princess.”
As he took an enormous bite of the brie sandwich, he murmured appreciatively. “Jam?”
“Blackberry preserves. I brought that, too.” She sipped from her mug. “By the way, I’ll take the divan tonight.”
Tonight. Where they’d sleep under the same roof since . . . never.
Naps in the hayloft aplenty. But a full night together? Between Bess and his foster father, they’d never managed it in Thornwick.
“Take the loft.” He fixed his gaze on his plate. The sound of his chewing rivaled Paloma at her trough. Deliberate, because
Marigold hated loud chewing. “I’ll take the couch. I barely sleep, and I’m up early for chores. Better if I’m down here so
I won’t disturb your sleep.”
Do not think of her in your bed. In her shift, betwixt his sheets.
Absently, he gulped his beverage, then spluttered the hellish liquid back into his mug.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
His mouth was on fire. “It’s scalding.”
“You did see me just pour it from the steaming kettle, didn’t you?” She shook her head. “You must blow on it to cool it. Or have patience and
wait.”
With another bite, half his sandwich was gone.
She stared at him. “I’ve never seen someone swallow a sandwich whole.”
Couldn’t she pretend he wasn’t here? He didn’t enjoy being observed.
He drummed his fingers on the table. “That’s how orcs eat.”
“Noted. What if I change my scent?”
He cocked his head. “What now?”
This, at least, was unchanged about Marigold. She leapt from topic to topic like a tumbler at a fair. The constancy of her
conversational acrobatics were oddly comforting.
“I’m slathered in stupidly expensive creams and ointments and have a trunk full of clothes that have been cleaned and pressed
in the royal laundry. I hadn’t thought about Crispin’s hounds and their sharp sense of smell. He extolled their perfection
over one particularly long meal.” She sighed and rested her cheek on her fist. “I should bathe with your soaps and shampoo
and wear your clothes. To reduce the concentration of trackable scents. Tonight, perhaps?”
“No,” he said through clenched teeth.
Did she not realize the power of her words? Thinking about her in her shift caused him to burn his tongue. If he pictured
her in a bath, he might impale himself on a fork.
She wrinkled her forehead. “You don’t bathe?”
“Didn’t say that.” He blew on the volcanic beverage before drinking. “I wash in Coldpress Lake.”
“But it’s autumn,” she said. “It must be freezing.”
He wished. “Orcs run hot.”
She drummed her fingers. “Then I shall bathe in the river, too.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Too risky.”
“Then find me a basin—I’ll take anything. Laundry tub, a particularly large soup pot.” She flipped her palms toward the thatched
roof. “As long as those hounds can track me, I’m a sitting target. A forest-filthy target.”
He rolled his neck. Her strategy was sound, but he did not have locate a bathtub among his tasks for today. A tub in which a naked Marigold would rub soap and . . . No. The way it stoked his imagination was not welcome.
“I’ll try,” he gritted out.
She rested her chin on her latticed hands. “Thank you.”
There, that was five minutes. As he shoved back from the table, he popped a petit four into his mouth, and damn, if those
weren’t tasty little sugar bombs. Life-changing? No, but he welcomed the treat and could eat a dozen more.
“Leaving so soon?” She dabbed her lips with a napkin. “I’d prefer your company if you can spare the minutes.”