CHAPTER NINE
“You are aglutton.”
Mira looked at Douglas with her eyebrows lifted, her eyes wide, and an expression bent on murder. They were sitting at a small, rough-hewn table, along with several other people, next to one of the larger bakeries on the street of the bakers.
But this conversation was just between the two of them.
“What did you just say to me?” she demanded.
He was trying very hard not to laugh. “You,” he said slowly, “are a glutton.”
“That’s what I thought you said.”
“It’s true.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You ate more than I did, Douglas de Lohr,” she said. “You even ate that horrible stew that had all of the innards and eyeballs in it.”
“It was delicious.”
“It was disgusting!”
He did laugh then. They’d just come from the street of the bakers where two ovens, one enormous and one smaller, were blazing and smoking and creating some of the most marvelous baked goods. There were eleven bakers on the street—several smaller ones and then three or four larger ones. It was the largerones who also prepared food, like fish pie or cheese tart or that terrible stew Mira had described.
It was called Garbage, and aptly so, because the contents came from the butchers on the next street and this particular vat of Garbage, in an enormous iron pot, had been cooking for almost a year. It was a continuous pot of stew. Every day, one of the bakers added water and another added more entrails or brains or chicken feet to it to keep it going. It was hot and cheap and nutritious and the broth alone, because it had been cooking so long, was rich and dark and salty. Douglas thought that Mira probably would have liked it had it not been for the chicken heads floating in it.
That alone meant she wouldn’t touch it.
But she hadn’t gone hungry. The street of the bakers, from one end to the other, offered a wide variety of foods. There was something for everybody. Mira had a fondness for eggs, so everything they hunted for had to have egg in it. Baked eggs, scrambled eggs, an omelet of eggs, and so on. Mira had been especially fond of a baked egg dish that had cream and cheese in it, and she’d stuffed herself silly with that and about a half a loaf of bread. Given that she was a rather tiny creature, Douglas found it humorous that she’d eaten so much.
Hence the glutton comment.
“Say what you will about the stew,” he told her. “If you were half as brave as you thought you were, then you would try it.”
Mira shook her head even before he finished his sentence. “Not me,” she said. “But I do thank you for the feast. It was lovely.”
He collected his purse, a leather pouch at his belt, and weighed it in his hand. “I spent too much money on you,” he teased. “I am poor, so we must go now.”
Mira grinned. “You are a de Lohr, so I doubt you even know what being poor means.”
“Doyou?”
She shrugged, her smile fading. “Nay,” she said honestly. “Not really. I have some money, money that I have earned from Lady Isabel, but I’ve never gone hungry. I’ve always had a roof over my head and I am determined to keep it.”
She was referring to their earlier conversation about her being destitute if Lady Isabel decided she was no longer effective with the young wards. Douglas was well aware, but he didn’t want to return to that particular subject.
“And you will remain well taken care of if I have anything to say about it,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at a busy intersection where the street of the bakers intersected the avenue that led to the market. “Are you truly finished? Because if you are, we should return to the group. I am not entirely sure Lady Isabel would like you to be alone with me without an escort for so long.”
Mira stood up, brushing crumbs off the traveling dress she wore. It was simple, brown in color, but she wore it like a goddess.
“You are correct,” she said. Then she walked around the table and looked at him. “Douglas, I’ve decided something.”
“What is that?”
“I am not going to let Astoria and the rest of the girls vex me,” she said as they began to walk. “If they are petty and jealous, then that is their weakness. Not mine. If they continue to behave that way, I will tell them so.”
He smiled. “I would expect nothing less from you.”
They were heading toward the intersection now, moving through the crowds of people. Mira lifted her hand, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked on ahead and the marketplace.
