I returned to my duties, sadder at the prospect of leaving than I had been before.
The following day, Rylan had a folded piece of parchment in his hand, sealed with wax.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“A letter.”
“For who?”
“For you, Kinley,” he said as if it should have been obvious.
“But I can’t read.”
“It’s not long, and I used smaller words.” He lifted a shoulder. “Maybe this will give you a reason to keep practicing your letters.”
I looked at the letter, then at him and back again, feeling panicked. “But what if I can’t figure it out, then I might never know what it says.”
“I promise you’ll be able to figure it out.”
“I hope you’re right,” I muttered as I stuffed it in my pocket.
He merely grinned. “Do you want to see something amazing?”
“Do I ever not want to?”
I risked spending a little more time in the schoolroom that day. I would be leaving on the morrow anyway.
When I ran back to the kitchen, Nancy looked heavenward and shook her head but didn’t say anything. I worked especially hard for the rest of the day to make up for my few minutes of stolen time.
On my last day, I found Rylan sitting at his desk, his chin rested on his forearm. “I suppose this is goodbye.”
I set the tray down, but he didn’t stand. “Don’t look so glum. You will make me glum as well,” I said, rubbing my finger across the edge of the desk.
“Sorry.” He pushed up from his chair and stepped around the desk. “My father has been teaching me the correct way to bid a lady goodbye.” He tugged down on his vest. “I need your hand.”
I held out my hand, palm up. He took it and turned it over so that my fingers curved over his. Then he put his other hand behind his back and bowed low, kissing my knuckles.
I giggled as he straightened.
“It’s not supposed to be funny,” he said. “That’s the proper way to do it.”
“You’re right.” I made my face serious. “It was very fancy and very proper.”
“Only, you’re supposed to do a little curtsy thing and bow your head when I do it.”
“Oh. All right.” I straightened—trying to act like the lady he was pretending me to be—and did as he asked when he bowed over my hand a second time. I managed to stifle the giggle this time.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Kinley.” He sounded so formal and so grown up.
“You as well, Master Rylander.” I hoped that was the right response.
He smiled and dropped my hand, and we each gave a little wave as I left his tidy schoolroom for the last time.
When Gavin came to fetch me that evening, Rylan was outside, not running around with the stable lads as he usually did, but standing straight and tall in his clean shirt and breeches. He bowed to me one last time and then waved as I pulled away. I gave a small wave, hoping not to attract attention from anyone else. Gavin even gave Rylan a tip of his hat, likely in thanks for the chance he had given both of us to learn to read.
I sighed once we were out of sight. “I shall miss him,” I admitted in a voice that I half hoped wasn’t loud enough for Gavin to hear.
“I know the feeling” was his reply.
Chapter Three
“WOULD YOU PLEASE pull your head from the clouds long enough for us to finish?”
Fynn had caught me daydreaming again. I forced my mind back to our task and started the steady rhythm of carding wool once more. Fynn was rolling his eyes so dramatically I thought he might fall over, but I ignored it. He sighed in the huffy way he had of showing he was exasperated. I ignored that as well.
“All right. Who is he?”
I turned my back to him. I wouldn’t let him bait me. Not today. Not when, just a few days ago, I’d had my first dance with Zander. Every detail of that dance was discussed with Suzannah afterward, but I certainly wasn’t going to let Fynn wheedle it out of me. He was always teasing me about something or another. I had thought he would stop once I got older, but I was seventeen now—old enough to be married—and Fynn was just as relentless as ever.
“It’s not Toren Gable, is it?”
I whirled on him, huffing in outrage. “Of course not!”
As if I would ever get dreamy over that awful old man.
His grin of triumph reminded me that I had been trying to ignore him. “Don’t be so sensitive, Kin.”
“It’s Kinley, and I’m not being sensitive. I’m annoyed. You’re impossible to work with and even worse to talk to.” I turned resolutely back to my work.
“How can something be worse than impossible?”
I stood, allowing the cards and wool to clatter to the ground. “You can finish on your own,” I snapped, and headed for the barn door.
“Oh, come now. I only want to know what’s got you so distracted. And Toren isn’t such an outrageous suggestion—”
“Of course he is.” I spun to face him once more. “His oldest son is nearly my age. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Unlikely couples happen all the time. It’s not as though Gavin’s marriage is normal.”
“Marrying a widower with six children is nothing like the relationship that Ella and Gavin—”
“Princess Ariella,” he corrected.
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “She’s married to our brother and has asked us to call her Ella. I’m simply respecting her wishes.”
He smirked, and I realized he had been trying to provoke me. Again.
“Your teasing is trying my patience. I’m not a little girl anymore, so you can stop treating me like one.”
“Says the one throwing a tantrum,” he said as he picked up my wool and held it out to me.
He had a point, but I found it difficult not to overreact when he so blatantly acted as though I had nothing but straw between my ears. I took the cards from him, resisting the urge to snatch them from his hands. I sat and started pulling, over and over, trying to drown out the incessant humming that Fynn had started.
Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t let the argument go. “It’s not as though you are a shining example of maturity.”
He grinned. “I never said I was. But at least I have realistic marital expectations.”
I snorted. “Oh, please. You don’t have marital expectations at all. You can’t see beyond the next pretty face to flirt with. No lass is going to want a fellow who has kissed half the girls in the village.”
“How do you know who I’ve kissed?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I hear things.”
He studied me, trying to get me to squirm under his unflinching gaze, but I knew his tricks and refused to surrender. Truth was, I knew nothing more than what he had told me. Fynn loved to flirt and had boasted of kissing a lass or two.
Finally, he shook his head. “You don’t know anything.”
“Are you going to try to convince me that you’re pining away for someone right now? Contemplating a proposal?”
“If I was, you wouldn’t know anything of it.” He focused on his work again. “Just like you didn’t know about Gavin.”
Ha. Fynn didn’t know a thing about what I did and didn’t know. I was good at feigning ignorance where my brother’s feelings were concerned. Gavin and Ella’s marriage had happened only by the grace of a higher power. I had seen how much he’d struggled in those years of pining for her, then losing her. I hadn’t known the cause of his sadness at the time, hadn’t found out until later that the reason he had been let go as a palace gardener was because of his friendship with Ella. But I had known something was not right, and I had ached to see my brother’s pain. When he and Ella had reconciled, I’d been over the moon to discover I would be related to a princess.
Still, it did complicate some things. Though most embraced Gavin and Ella with open arms, there was a portion of those in our class that resented Gavin for his relationship with Ella. And no o
ne felt right about hiring someone related to a member of the royal family. I doubt I would I have been able to go back into service even if I’d needed to. But we’d made it all work, even though Papa refused to accept the help that Gavin so willingly offered.
I did worry about Fynn sometimes. People treated him differently after Gavin got married, and I wondered if the reason he flirted so much was because he suspected the village girls’ motives were not sincere. Looking at him now, with his brow creased in a frown, so different from mere moments ago, made me feel oddly protective of him.
Of course I would never tell him such a thing, but I could at least try to be a silent support, so long as his teasing didn’t convince me to kill him first.
It was a good thing he had not teased me about Zander. I had no wish to have last week’s dance ruined by Fynn’s comments. I’d admired Zander for what felt like forever, though in truth it had been less than six months. The week he had shown up at the blacksmith’s as the new apprentice had been one to remember. Nearly every girl my age was either falling over herself to meet him or struck completely silent, overwhelmed by his light blue eyes, broad shoulders, and mystique. He spent all day hammering hot metal over an anvil, and it showed. After a while, the female population of the village had calmed down. Some gave up after realizing they had competition; others were put off by his lack of chattering.
I would have given up myself if Papa hadn’t asked Fynn and me to pick up a chisel from the blacksmith two months ago. While Fynn stayed outside to speak with Lilianna the flirt, I had gone in, expecting to speak with Jeffrey. Even after hiring Zander, Jeffrey had been the one to handle customers. Zander would stay in back, stoking the fire or pounding on something. Instead, on that day, Zander had been the one to greet me.
“Afternoon, Miss Kinley,” he said with a shy dip of his head.
I forced myself not to gape. He knew my name. “Good afternoon, Zander.” I was proud of myself for sounding so normal.
“Are you here for the repaired chisel?”
“Yes. For my father.” I mentally slapped myself. Of course he knew it was for my father.
He pulled it out of a box and handed it to me. Right away I noticed that not only had the handle been fixed, but the blade had been cleaned.
“I sharpened it as well, so don’t cut yourself.” His eyes were kind, his smile humble but genuine. He only kept eye contact for a few moments, but in that time, I had a feeling there was a great deal more to know about him.
“Thank you. That was very kind.”
He nodded, and I bid him farewell, unable to keep myself from looking back over my shoulder as I walked to the wagon. He was looking at me, but his eyes darted away quickly. It was that day that I decided to bide my time.
Suzannah and I liked watching him when he came to dances, which wasn’t as often as we would have preferred. He didn’t really dance with many lasses, and when he did, it was often with the younger girls, who were thrilled to be asked but were much too young to be courted. Suzannah and I enjoyed speculating over why he did it. Was he simply so thoughtful that he would want to give a young girl a chance to twirl around the dance floor on the arm of a handsome fellow? Or was he actually trying to avoid the more eligible young ladies because he wasn’t ready for commitment? My guess was the latter, but I had time, and I was willing to wait.
No one had been more surprised than I last week when he had approached and asked for a dance. I’d daydreamed about it for so long that when he actually said the words, I couldn’t respond. I had managed a nod instead and reveled in the feel of his roughened hands as he led me into the throng of dancers. He hadn’t said much as we twirled through the steps, but he had smiled in a reserved, maybe even shy way. It had been difficult not to trip over my own feet at that little smile.
Such memories would have to sustain me until I could find an excuse to see him again.
I sighed, continuing my work.
By the time we had finished with the wool, it was well into afternoon and I still needed to collect a bushel each of pears and apples from the orchard. I stopped in the house to fill a water pouch and tear off a hunk of bread from the loaf sitting on the counter. There was no time to stop and eat if I was going to return before dark. I stepped into the yard and pulled aside the pieces of wood lashed together that served as a gate for our tiny corral. You might think that the home of a wood-carver would have a decent fence, but my father delighted in detailed construction. A fence wouldn’t present enough of a challenge; and so long as this one held up, he wasn’t going to bother with it.
I picked my way through the paddock, over pails and troughs and around the chickens pecking at the ground. I gave Gerda, the old sow languishing in the corner, a wide berth. No one, including the animals, dared to enter her domain.
My pony, Herman, was snoozing in the corner opposite the cantankerous sow, completely ignoring the chicken perched on his back. I shooed the bird away and gave Herman a pat. He was a good pony, given to me by Gavin for my last birthday. Gavin had taken to buying extravagant gifts for Fynn and me ever since he got married. I suspected it was his way of helping us all without bruising my father’s pride. It was because of his help over the past several years that we had been able to lease this small farm and orchard. A modest orchard and a few animals didn’t provide a lavish living by any means, but we had what we needed and a little to spare. Even without Gavin’s wages, I had been able to stay home and help tend the orchard instead of returning to my work as a maid. I was content here.
I gave a firm tug on Herman’s rope, and he lumbered behind me out of the pen. I stopped at the barn to grab the two woven baskets that I had long ago lashed together with strips of leather and settled it on Herman’s back. He took as much notice of it as he had the chicken. I also snitched one of the ripe pears from where they lay in the barn, taking just a moment to enjoy it and letting its sweet juices run down my hand before getting to work.
Entering the orchard always made me relax. The cool shade and lack of animal refuse probably had quite a bit to do with that. Harvesting fruit was so much more dignified than slopping pigs.
After finding my rickety ladder just where I had left it, I started with the apple trees, working quickly while still grabbing only those that were truly ripe. Fynn had no patience for harvesting fruit, which is why I had banned him from helping me some time ago. He picked as many as he could reach and called it a success. That is, until we tried to sell them at market and could sell only a portion of them. I had happily volunteered to take charge of our little orchard and liked to think of myself as quite a shrewd negotiator. Or at least not a novice.
I checked the limbs of my trees as I harvested, caressing their leaves to thank them for their contribution. Fynn would have thought it was ridiculous, but Gavin would have understood. I emptied my apron into the baskets on Herman’s back, then tugged him over to the pear trees. Pears were not nearly as resilient as apples and needed special care after being harvested, so our orchard consisted mostly of apple trees with only a few that offered pears. I ate the chunk of bread from my pocket before setting up my ladder and poking my head into the boughs, humming as I gathered fruit.
The sun was preparing to sink below the horizon when I finished. I was close enough to the road that I decided to circle the orchard rather than attempt to navigate my way through the trees in the waning light.
Herman followed along behind me as we stepped onto the road and I hummed a tune to myself to pass the time. My tune was interrupted by the sounds of a quarrel. I looked up and spotted a gentleman on a horse facing away from me, while our neighbor, Mr. Tanner, shouted at him.
“Oh, dear,” I muttered, dropping Herman’s rope and gathering my own skirts. Mr. Tanner must be having one of his bad days.
“Mr. Tanner,” I called as I ran toward them in an effort to distract him.
He held a long, pointed stick and was brandishing it at the horseman, who sat tall and elegant in the saddle.
“St
and back, miss,” the gentleman warned, reaching out a hand to stop me as I passed. “He is dangerous.”
“He’s not. I promise,” I tossed over my shoulder before approaching my old neighbor. “Mr. Tanner, what seems to be the problem?”
He jabbed the stick in the horse’s direction. “He’s stealing my chickens, that’s what!”
I set a hand over his and tried to get him to lower his weapon. “I promise, this man is not trying to steal from you. Do you remember what Mildred has talked to you about? How sometimes things seem dangerous, but they aren’t?”
His eyes cut over to mine for just a moment, and I could see his fear. I knew that for him, it was very real. Strangers were always perceived as threatening. “I won’t stand for thieving.”
“And neither will I,” I assured him. “And I’m certain that this gentleman doesn’t stand for thieving, either. Why, I’d bet that he stands up against any thief he encounters. Isn’t that right, sir?” I glanced back with a smile that I hoped would convince him to agree with me.
A look of surprise passed over his fairly young face before he caught on and said, “Of course,” a bit uncertainly. “I’d never let a thief get away. Are you missing any of your chickens, my good man? Perhaps I can track them down for you.”
I latched onto the idea. “Shall we go check your yard to see if any of your chickens are missing, Mr. Tanner?” I suggested.
“Yes, yes.” He lowered his stick. “That might be the best thing for it.”
I nodded and took his arm, gently turning him about so that we could head back to his house. I asked him about his other animals, trying to distract him as we walked.
Soon enough his wife appeared down the lane, looking about. “Auden!” she called.
“I’m right here, Mildred. Don’t make a fuss.”
She put her hand to her heart and walked toward us, trying to rearrange her expression from worry to pleasant. “Going for a stroll, are you, dear?”
“He was worried that some of your chickens might be missing,” I explained. “We were coming to see if that was the case.”
Mrs. Tanner let out a sigh. “Auden, I thought we agreed that if anything seemed amiss, you would ask me about it first. Remember?”
Keeping Kinley Page 3