After a moment, I shuffled over to standbeside her. My gaze fell to the knife at my waist. Kit had made the weapon and would take it away if he caught me using it to menace women.
“I wouldn’t really cut her hand off,” I mumbled.
Rosie scoffed. “I should think not.” She gave the spoon another swirl around the bowl, then pointed it at me. “And shame on you for saying so.”
I dipped back, frowning. “What she said was bad, too!”
Rosie turned toward me and crossed her arms. “Kit is a grown man. If he has a problem with Tessa, he can handle it himself.”
I was reluctant to admit he told me the same thing.
“I thoughtyouwere a grown man, too,” she added.
My chest swelled with a haughty breath. “I am!”
Rosie shook her head. “Well, you’re acting like a spoiled child. Tessa was right. You aren’t Kit’s guard. You aren’t assigned to defend him or his honor. If he truly doesn’t fancy women, then it’s no matter at all, is it?”
I wanted to tell her that itdidmatter. It mattered very much, and I could explain why, beginning with the fact that I didn’t fancy women either, and I’d grown up afraid I would live and die alone, and then I met Kit, and I loved him. I loved him more every day, and we’d kissed in the pecan orchard and spent our nights cuddled up on the road to and from Ashpoint, and I needed to tell Rosie all of it because it was eating me up inside.
On the stove, a thin cloud of steam thickened into smoke. The forgotten pot of compote had turned to goop and was swiftly scorching.
Rosie bolted past me to move the pan away from the heat. “Oh, Penny, you burned it!”
While she fussed and grumbled, I tugged off my apron and hung it on a hook on the wall. I wandered into theliving area and sank onto the couch, letting my arm fall across my eyes to block the light streaming through the nearby window.
My once-simple life had become confusing. Some parts were wonderful, and others were worse. Kit had warned me that Ashpoint was a dark place, and I was beginning to feel its shadows encroaching. A large part of that was Merrick looming, but there were other things too. It made me want to run, but not away. I wanted to go to Kit because he was my safe place.
The stink of charred fruit and sugar filled the tiny cottage. While I sat quietly, Rosie scraped out the burned compote and set the pot aside. When she’d mitigated the damage, she turned toward me wearing shades of the exhaustion I’d noticed when I first arrived. Maybe it had been a bad idea to drop in the moment she got home. A worse idea to make a mess in her kitchen and stir up trouble with Tessa.
When Sayla was tired, she liked to read or draw together. With my sketchbook to entertain me, I could keep silent for hours. Kit and I passed many evenings that way, reposed by the fire, quiet and content. I missed him, suddenly, craving his company more than Rosie’s. More than that, I wanted his arms around me the way they had been the previous night.
A lonely ache gripped my heart as Rosie crept over and stood before me.
“What say we skip the baking lesson today?” she asked.
I nodded mutely.
“The kittens are in my bedroom,” she said, reminding me of the calico’s litter that I hadn’t seen in weeks. They barely had their eyes open the last time I’d been here.
She smiled. “You won’t believe how big they’ve gotten.”
I brightened at the thought of seeing the potbellied fuzz-balls scampering about.
Rosie held out her hand to help me up. I took it and tailed her toward the back of the house, and I was grateful. Grateful to Rosie for grounding me and reminding me where I came from. Maybe even who I really was. Who I needed to be for Kit.
22
Kit
Aweek after Rosie and Tessa returned from their second Oath, Penny talked me into attempting dinner at the tavern again. He promised Tessa wouldn’t be working and that Rosie had no reason to happen by, so we should be able to enjoy our meal uninterrupted. Considering the tavern always drew a crowd on cold winter nights, I had my doubts about how peaceful our meal would be.
I closed up the forge a little later than I’d planned and tucked a new skillet under my arm to deliver to the tavern kitchen. But the long shadow cast by the Ossuary drew my eye as I stepped out from beneath the canopy.
It had been almost three weeks since Merrick raided our house and took my father’s journals. Penny had been relieved to have them out of the house, and though I appreciated their foreboding presence no longer radiating from the bookshelves by the fireplace, there was lot I hadn’t had time to learn from them. Given that I’d burned so many of them after I left Ashpoint, it was unlikely the ones that remained contained the information I was seeking aboutthe later Oaths. That didn’t mean I should pass up the chance to look.
Levitt said he’d instructed one of his underlings in the library to catalog the journals for study, and transcribe any relevant information so the originals could be returned to me. However, when I’d attempted to see the man at the library a week before to ask after his progress, the librarian said he’d already gone home for the day, and taken the journals with him.
A glance at the setting sun assured me I could spare a few minutes to try again without keeping Penny waiting too long.
