“Mon ange de beauté et d’amour, all I meant was that I never sampled the English cuisine and so cannot tell you what would be best. I will purchase you a French cookbook next, and then I shall have an opinion,” Etienne murmured, staring over his pince-nez at the papers spread out before him.
“Sally should be awake shortly. You can ask her what she’d prefer. Fletcher will be more than happy to do the marketing for you if you leave a list of what you need.” Fletcher had settled into the household rhythm, but he still had a burning need to be useful.
“Oh, good idea,” Addie agreed happily, filling a tin with the cooled biscuits. “Oh! And Christmas is soon! I could roast a goose or make oyster soup—and cranberry sauce! Plum pudding!” Her face glowed with the possibilities.
Genevieve resisted the urge to worry at her fingernails. She had been leaving her gloves off purposefully more and more, trying to be at ease with her hands, but the knowledge that Christmas was so close made her antsy. “You make whatever the staff would like, Addie, though you certainly don’t have to.”
“Oh, but I want to,” Addie assured her as Sally entered the kitchen, her apron fresh and clean and her hair swept up in a knot.
“Want to what, ducks?” Sally asked. She had taken on something of a maternal countenance towards Addie because she appeared so young. Addie didn’t mind.
She beamed. “Cook a Christmas feast! Would you rather a goose, or perhaps a turkey?”
They set to a spirited discussion of possible Christmas menus. Genevieve had just stood to excuse herself quietly when the dirtiest person Genevieve had ever seen emerged from the Ossuary’s lower entrance.
It took her a long moment for her to recognize her husband. “Kendrick! What happened?!” she exclaimed, flying to his side.
“Lor’ lumme, I ain’t never seen any cove so dirty.” Sally blinked rapidly as she took in Kendrick’s appearance. “Except maybe for one night soil man who accidentally fell in.”
“I don’t smellthatbad.” He laughed, a bright smile flashing through the grime. “But don’t embrace me unless you’re resigned to throwing away that gown,” he warned Genevieve.
“Hang the gown!” Genevieve said, seizing him by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”
His eyes twinkled at her. “Yes, I’m fine. We had a little problem in the tunnels, but no one is hurt.”
“What isa little problem?”
“A little cave-in, I should say, but only a small tunnel that probably should not have been there in the first place. We had to dig Marshall Cutter out, but he was remarkably phlegmatic about the whole thing. I’ll meet with the architecture team again tomorrow to determine whether or not we’re going to try to dig it out again or reinforce it and fill it in.” Kendrick looked down at himself thoughtfully. “Could do with a bath, though.”
“I should say so!” Genevieve exclaimed.
“You take him on upstairs, missus; I’ll have one of the girls start heating water,” Sally said, waving them on.
Genevieve sat by the fire in their bedroom and paged throughWynnflaed’s Knight, waiting for the door to open. The sun was nearly up, and she was becoming drowsy, but Kendrick wasstillwashing. The procession of buckets up and down the stairs had been daunting. He had looked like a mud monster when he had come through the door, after all.
She settled deeper into the armchair as she reached the chapter in the book where Wynnflaed and her wounded stranger had a discussion on names and what she should call him, as he would not reveal his true name to her. He rejected Wynnflaed’s suggestions of Æthelweard, “noble guardian,” and Sæwine, “sea friend,” before finally accepting Wærmund, which meant “cautious protection.” It was telling that he had rejected the two names that seemed lofty or open in favor of the one that alluded to the secrets and reasons that he had come to be in Wynnflaed’s home, wounded and alone.
In a lot of ways, it reminded her of the passage in Ruth where Naomi declared to her friends to call her “Mara,” which meant bitter, after the loss of all her menfolk. The text never referred to her that way, though—it was always “Naomi.”
She was still pondering names when Kendrick came into the room in a scarlet dressing gown, scrubbed clean of mud and dirt with his hair wet around his shoulders. “What are you thinking about with such a serious look on your face?” he asked, pulling up another chair beside the fire. He ran his fingers through his hair and winced when he hit a snarl.
“Names, and what they mean.” Genevieve got up and fetched a comb from her dressing table. “Here—I’ll do it,” she said, when Kendrick reached for the comb.
“I knew you married me for my hair,” he murmured, his eyes full of wicked humor.
Just for that, she rapped him on the head with the comb before tackling the knots, which made him laugh. “Are you going to smack my knuckles with a ruler next?”
“You’ll have to see, won’t you?” She slowly pulled the comb through his hair, carding through the strands to remove the tangles and dry it.
“What sorts of names?” he asked after a moment.
“The passage inWynnflaedwhere the warrior won’t speak his name, and she names him. He decides based on the name’s meaning, and he doesn’t accept the more noble suggestions. I was just considering how names can inform character. Certainly, they do in the Ossuary, where people can put on a new name like a different coat.”
“Would you like a new name? A surname,” Kendrick amended, looking up at her. “I like Genevieve too much to change it. But a new family name.”
“For both of us?”
He nodded. “I had the thought during our honeymoon that it might be something you’d like. A signal of the change for the Ossuary, a direction for the people.”
