I really, really need to stop thinking about how good he looks.
Downstairs, the kitchen greets me with its armful of warmth and antique tile. I drag the red chair to where the light’s best and open the tall cabinet beside the cold pantry. Platters first. Threewhite with blue rims. One oval with a hairline crack that never gets worse.
The top shelf is deep, shadowed, impossible to see from this angle. I reach up, groping toward a stacked tower of bowls, and the whole thing wobbles dangerously.
“Don’t you dare,” I tell it.
The tower doesn’t care what I want. It wobbles once, twice. It’s gathering momentum for disaster; I can feel it. The chair beneath me shifts, and I grab the cabinet’s edge too late. Everything starts to move at once.
For one horrible second, I can already picture it—the crash, the splintered porcelain, the humiliation of kneeling on tile to pick glass from my palms while Wells stands there watching me apologize for bleeding.
But nothing breaks.
The cascade stops shy of the floor. A platter lands softly against my hip. A small mixing bowl hangs suspended in midair, hums faintly, then lowers itself into my open hands as if the house has decided I’m worth saving today.
I exhale, sore butt planted firmly on the tile.
Thank you, I think, and in the quiet, I can almost hear Elspeth’s two-knuckle tap on the banister.
“You saved the plates,” I tell the room. “But you won’t show me where the goddamn wassail bowl is.”
A boot scuffs behind me. I twist around to find Wells leaning in the doorway, arms crossed. He takes in the red chair, the open cabinet, the floating mess of unbroken dishes. His eyebrow lifts in that slow, smug way that makes me want to throw something breakable after all.
“Don’t,” I say before he can open his mouth.
“Don’t what? Chastise you? Because that seems fair game, considering you nearly died by crockery.”
I huff. “The house knocked me off-balance.”
“Don’t blame her for your poor decision-making—or your complete disregard for basic physics.”
He steps neatly through the scatter of dishes and crouches beside the pie safe, where the winter apples used to sit. His hand disappears behind a stack of linens and comes back holding a wooden bowl the color of dark honey, copper glinting faintly around the rim.
I stare at it like I’ve never seen a bowl before.
Then again, I’ve never seen this one—the fabled wassail bowl. I’ve never been here for Old Twelvey, either. Always left after New Year’s Day, back in time for school, back before Blue Willow could thaw.
Midwinter in this town was always something I missed.
“It was right here under the tea towels,” he says, casual.
“Of course it was.”
Of course,youfound it. Of course,Ididn’t. The house probably likes you more than me, you infuriating show-off.
He sets the bowl on the table between us, and we both study it. It’s larger than I imagined, worn smooth where countless hands have passed it along. A faint ring glows inside the wood, where cider and honey once pooled and dried. A single crack runs up its belly.
“You could’ve called out for me,” he says. “I would’ve helped with the avalanche.”
“It was more of a controlled descent.”
He moves past me, close enough that I feel the brush of his sleeve. A dish towel appears in his hands. He wets it, wrings it out, and runs it along the rim in slow, deliberate circles.
“What’s so special about it, anyway? It’s just a boring old bowl.”
“It’s not. It’sthebowl.” He tilts it until the lamplight strikes the copper inlay. “If you ask Bobby, it’s practically holy.”
I arch a brow. “So, we’re worshiping tableware now?”
