Chapter 26
In the loft, Marigold changed into her blue dress. The sleeves were dotted with soap stains, but she didn’t care. In Jask’s
eyes, she felt pretty in everything. But in this, she felt magnetic.
She held up her looking glass.
Her hair was wild, as usual. And the sparkle in her eyes was back. Roses bloomed in her cheeks from the sun and running home
from the forest. This was a happiness she’d not known in years. She inspected her feelings, turned them over like rocks. There
was no sadness.
No guilt.
Everything she’d told Jask about her numbness, her grief—that had all been true. But she’d been the only one to know the depths
to which she carried that burden, couldn’t share her troubles with anyone without revealing her true relationship with Bram.
She’d played the sunny, bubbly princess Thornwick expected when forced into public.
Here, with Jask, she’d been able to be herself.
Let someone else, for once, see her tears.
“Marigold, you can come down now.” Jask’s voice rumbled up the stairs.
Eagerly, she descended. As she rounded the turn on the stairs, her heart skipped a beat. Perfect pumpkins of varying sizes lay scattered across the kitchen table. The hearth oven’s flames lent the kitchen a lovely glow, and something aromatic—cottage pie, her favorite—baked in its warm embrace.
“Happy birthday,” he said. “Besides the gazebo, jack-o’-lanterns were the last thing on your list. Ready to learn?”
She applauded and skipped toward the table. “Show me everything.”
“Start by selecting a pumpkin.” He lifted one and contemplated it. “I stare at it for a bit to allow the shape to inspire
me.”
“I like this one.” She picked a medium pumpkin with some bumpy spots along its crown. “It reminds me of you.”
“I’m not sure I feel flattered.”
“Because of this side.” She rotated it. “See? A green patch.”
“What is it you want to carve?”
“A portrait of you.”
He groaned. “That is very complicated.”
“Why? On the night I arrived, one of the pumpkins had a realistic rendering of an apple tree. You can’t be more complicated
than that.”
“Then I’ll render you.” He selected the largest pumpkin.
“Hey,” she said. “Now who is not feeling flattered?”
“I need a larger canvas to capture your personality.”
“I’ll accept it,” she said.
He handed her a sheet of paper. “Next, we sketch. Easier to render an idea on paper and transfer to the pumpkin than to go
straight to the pumpkin.”
She sat at the table across from him, in her usual seat. “Sit still.”
“I’m not moving,” he said as he sketched.
“You’re looking down.”
“To draw you as I put chalk to paper.” He laughed. “These will not hang in a banquet hall, Marigold. Precision isn’t necessary.”
“But I want it to be good.”
He reached for the ten-minute sandglass they kept near the stove. “That’s the beauty of jack-o’-lanterns. Even when they’re terrible, they’re good.”
“Now who’s the optimist?” She laughed.
Jask grunted in response, then set the sandglass on the table “Ten minutes, chalk down, and we carve whatever’s on the parchment.
Agreed?”
“Agreed,” she said.
In silence, as the hearth fire crackled, their chalk whispered across the parchment. Fuzzle prowled among the pumpkins on
the table, then butted his head against her biceps.
“I’ll get your dinner in a minute, Fuzz.” She had to add one of Jask’s ears, the one with the double hoops.
Fuzzle complained but slunk away again.
Jask cleared his throat. “Time. Now we lightly score the designs onto the pumpkins.”
“Mine . . .” She twisted her lips. “I don’t know if it’ll work.”
Jask circled from his side of the table. “I bet it’ll be—oh.”
He drew his brows together as he contemplated the warped sketch. She glanced from him to the sketch. She’d accurately captured
the shape of his head, but everything else was too big, too small, or warped. Saints, had she given him a third eye? Still,
Jask said nothing.
“You said it didn’t have to be perfect.”
Jask erupted into laughter. “Is that—” he snorted “—is that how you see me?”
“No!” She hid her face in her hands. “I told you I’m no artist. Stop laughing—I know it’s terrible.”
“It’s perfect.” He lifted the drawing. “I must frame it.”
“Ha ha. Let’s see yours, Mr. Perfect.” She snatched his paper from across the table and . . .
Oh.
It was like she was staring at herself through different eyes. Not overly detailed—there hadn’t been time for that—but in this rendering, she glanced over her shoulder, a mischievous glimmer in her eyes, a smile on her lips, and a cascade of curls down her back.
“You did this in ten minutes?” she asked.
“I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“When? All I ever see is you doing chores.”
“The nights when I can’t sleep. I prefer to occupy my hands. Drawing, whittling, carving, cooking—though I’ve done that last
one less since you arrived. Fritters at three a.m. seem rude when a guest is sleeping.”
“Fritters at three a.m. seem like a gift, and I resent you for never having awoken me with them.” She tapped her finger on
the corner of the portrait. “But Jask, this is . . . You’re so talented. I knew that before, but this is more proof. Running
this farm, carving, furniture making, cooking, baking . . . is there anything you can’t do?”
“I’m sure there is, but I haven’t found it yet.”
“And humble.” She laughed. “Shall we carve?”
With awls in hand, they scored the designs into the rind. Hmph, this required more pressure than Marigold expected. Resilient things, pumpkins. With each stroke, the amber of the pumpkin’s
flesh emerged. When they’d completed the design transfer, Jask handed her a shepherd’s blade.
“Now, we eviscerate the pumpkin. First, saw through the top, like so.” He jabbed the knife into the top and circled around
the stem with rhythmic movements. “When your cuts make a circle, lift the top. But be careful not to break the stem.”
As he lifted, stringy pulp clung to the rind. The thick pumpkin scent, like a garden damp with fresh rain, flooded the kitchen.
He grabbed a sturdy metal spoon, then scraped the fibrous strands free from the top’s underside.
“Now, it’s a lot of scooping. Dump the innards into the bowl.” He flung them into the largest mixing bowl from the kitchen. “We’ll sort the seeds for roasting and comfiting, then feed the pulp to the livestock.”
Marigold plunged her knife into the pumpkin and sawed a circle. “Do the animals turn orange if you give them too much?”
Jask scraped another pile of pumpkin guts into the bowl. “From the pumpkin? No, they’d need to eat a good deal of it before
it would have that kind of impact.”
“I turned orange once.” She freed the cap of the pumpkin and yanked the stringy strands free. “Yuck. You didn’t say they were
slimy.”
With a twist to his lips, he said, “I’d even say they’re moist.”
She pointed her spoon at him. “Say it again and suffer the consequences.”
After his chuckle died down, he asked, “When did you ever turn orange?”
“I was still in leading strings. According to my parents, my favorite foods were carrots, sweet potatoes, oranges, apricots.
One day, I aggressively hugged Rowan, who was a shade of pinkish white, and seeing my skin against his they realized I had
turned the color of the inside of a pumpkin shell. Though Bess fed me endless greens to counteract the effect, my father relished
calling me pumpkin from that day onward.”
Bram roared with laughter. “How have I not heard this before?”
“We haven’t known each other all that long,” she said. “I’m sure you have stories you haven’t told me yet.”
He continued quaking with laughter.
“It’s not that funny,” she said. “My pumpkin’s empty. Now what?”
“You carve out the design,” he said. “Some like to hack at a pumpkin with bigger blades, but the smaller ones work best for
me. Gentle, patient movements. Like so.”
Her heart shifted watching this titan delicately tease slivers of rind and flesh from the pumpkin. She followed suit.
“Where did you learn to do this?”
“Here as well. The nights can be very long. I’ve filled my solitude with lots of hobbies. I competed with myself to improve.”
Sadness laced his words—no, not sadness. Melancholy, with which she was too familiar.
“It must have gotten lonely.” She removed a large chunk to reveal the pumpkin version of Jask’s smiling mouth.
“I managed. The same could be said for you, right? You said you closed yourself in your tower for a long time.”
“I did.” She sighed. “But I mostly read. Old letters, books, especially fairy tales. The stories seemed closer to my real
life than anything else I read. Bad things happening to people by chance. Not because they put themselves in harm’s way or
because they deserve a comeuppance, like in fables. Nope. They just happened to piss off a fairy and, bloop, now you’re a
hedgehog.”
Jask’s shoulders stiffened, and he dropped his knife.
“Is something wrong?” She sawed out the whites of one of his pumpkin eyes.
He shoved back from the table. “I need to take the pie out of the oven.”
Liar. If he was any more tense he’d snap a tusk. But she’d learned these moods of his blew out as fast as they blew in.
“Do you have a smaller knife?” she asked. “I need it for your earrings.”
“In my whittling box,” he said.
She ventured to the fireplace and knelt to where he kept the box.
Its hinges creaked as she opened it. Inside, a dozen knives were slotted into the velvet-covered rack.
Various figures in progress were jumbled in the kit’s well.
She grabbed a small knife from the end but couldn’t resist inspecting figures.
More of Jask’s skilled handiwork. These thumb-sized creatures were adorable.
Here was a bear, there a squirrel, and there, under a few others, a . . .
A unicorn. Rough, much less skillfully crafted than the others.
Her blood pounded, and her vision clouded at the edges. She stood, though she wasn’t sure her legs would continue to hold
her.
“Marigold?” Jask stood behind her. “Did you find what you needed?”
Slowly, she turned with the figure in her palm. “Is . . . is this my unicorn?”
Green though he was, he paled.
Marigold’s mind reeled back to the night before her true love departed Thornwick to seek his fortune. They’d met in the hayloft
at the witching hour, and she’d given him the rough-hewn charm, half of their locket, and her handkerchief.
All on loan so he could keep her close.
Not to worry, Marigold. A confident smile played upon lips she’d kissed a thousand times. I’ll be back with a fortune and, with any luck, a title. I’ll ask for your hand, and we’ll have our happily-ever-after. Like
the people in your fairy tales.
Cradled against his steady heart, she’d believed him.
What if . . . what if he had come back to her?
She rubbed the figure’s mane with her thumb, the way she always had. With her gaze trained on Jask, she squinted. Tilted her
head, then squinted again and looked at him, her mind whirring.
The gold flecks in his eyes . . . the expression, private jokes from their past . . . the gentle teasing . . . and the skilled
pleasing in his bed. Saints, how had she not seen it before? Felt the tug on her heartstring?
She laid a hand on his face. “Bram? Is it you?”
“What? I— What, Marigold?” He stepped backward, his leg knocking into his chest, making him stumble and thud onto the divan.
The panicked set to his features confirmed it. Any time she’d caught him in a half-truth, this was the expression he wore.
Certainty settled on her shoulders like a cloak.
“You’re Sir Bram Duncan of Thornwick, my childhood best friend, sweetheart, and true love.”
His grin was more of a grimace. “Did you get into my cider?”
“Don’t you joke with me.” She thrust the precious unicorn into her pocket, then knelt before him. “This is not the time.”
“I’m not him.” Panic laced his voice. “You must believe me.”
She grabbed his left hand. There, at the base of his thumb, was the scar from the deep self-inflicted wound from when he carved
the unicorn for her eighth birthday.
Tenderly, she kissed the scar. “It is you.”
Not a question, a statement.
“I won’t let anything happen to you.” Anguish carved lines in his face as he pulled her onto his lap.
“I know that.” His embrace squashed her nose to his chest. “But I need to breathe.”
“Oh, sorry.” He released her. “But wait. You’re all right. You’re all right? You’re not dying?”
“Sweet mercy, no. I’m fine.” She leaned back from him. “I’m well. Are you well?”
His glistening eyes searched hers.
“Bram?” She placed one hand on his cheek and the other on his heart. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His chest swelled with a long, slow breath.
“We’d better talk.”