“I wasn’t talking to you,” I muttered, not glancing his way.
“That’s fine. I just needed you to know. Are you hungry?”
“No.” I turned back to the window, clearing decades of grime with the kind of methodical concentration that comes from petulance.
“Do you want a hand?”
“No.”
“Would you mind company? Besides Fenella, I mean.”
“Go break your fast Xander.”
“Tom… You’re right. I don’t know what is best for you. And you deserve to have everything you want.” He was surely waiting for me to turn to him, but I stubbornly refused. “Especially ifthat is breakfast.” When I didn’t respond again, he added, “Keep an eye on him, Fenella. And don’t shit in the shed.”
Fenella bleated her agreement as Xander’s boots crunched along the gravel. As soon as he was gone, I lamented his absence. I was aware, on a purely intellectual level, that mine was an overreaction. But it was also yet more evidence that he didn’t understand my feelings—not truly.
He might be right, that I didn’t know what it was to be ostracized, and I didn’t have responsibilities the way he did. But he didn’t comprehend the loneliness of confusion either. For years I’d wondered what was wrong with me, why I wasn’t quite like everyone else. There was no world in which I could go back to the moment before I’d laid eyes on Alexander Hasket, to return to the darkness of ignorance. I had seen the sun, I couldn’t go back to the unending night.
The empty shed was returned to a more or less presentable state—it could use a new window or two. But a glance out on the lawn reminded me that the shed itself represented very little of the work I’d created. Tools that needed cleaning, sharpening, and sorting lined the space in front of the entrance.
Christ, I was a damned fool. I was also starving now that he’d mentioned it, but I was too proud by half to saunter into the full kitchen looking for a slice of toast and a cup of tea. My head throbbed in that way it always did when sleep eluded me and exhaustion staked a claim to my body.
With a sigh, I set about finding a space for the tools. Cleaning and sharpening would need to wait for another day, perhaps a day after Xander sent me packing for acting the part of a petulant child.
Worse still, if I had any hope of completing the recently run-off Fenella’s fold in the foreseeable future, I needed a second set of hands to cut the lengths of wood. Yesterday, I’d had thefanciful notion of Xander manning the other side of the pit saw. But now I was certain that wasn’t a likely outcome.
The tiny part of my heart that was still hopeful, left a corner of the shed clean and empty. It was absurd. Dukes did not take second sons into tool sheds and instruct them to drop to their knees, no matter what my absurd fantasies might suggest.
The crunch of gravel against boot alerted me to another visitor. Once again, it was Xander, meeting my gaze with a tentative furrow to his brow. In his hands was a small tray with a plate and glass.
“You can be as mad at me as you’d like, as long as you’re full while you do it.” The words poured out of him in an anxious, nearly indecipherable jumble.
“Thank you,” I whispered as he set the tray on an upturned tin bucket. I took another from a stack I’d recently placed beside a shed wall and handed it to him.
“What is this for?”
“Sit. If you want to.”
He set it down eagerly, before rounding it and plopping down.
His limbs were too long by far for the bucket.
“Who is the cricket, now?”
Soft, full lips slid to one side in that way that made my heart skip. “Are you going to eat?”
“Yes,” I said, grabbing the last bucket and turning it upside down. It was taller than the one I’d given Xander because I was just the tiniest bit petty—and my legs were longer.
He humphed but didn’t say anything.Yes, Your Grace, you may have the second nicest bucket.
The bread and jam were good once again and the tea, though cooling, did soothe the ache behind my eyes.
“The shed is much improved. Thank you.”
“Yes, I evicted all the spiders.”
He nodded, clearly for lack of something else to say if his aborted hand gestures were any indication.
