“Meet here next week?” Tasia called after him as he remembered that their deal had been his suggestion in the first place.
He raised his hand in agreement but didn’t look back, still stuck in his thoughts. He raised his hand again when she added a time. Playing bodyguard and guide for the effervescent Tasia was going to have consequences. It remained to be seen what those consequences would be, but Mitch worried about his heart.
All throughout the rest of the evening and into the next day, Tasia reflected on her time with Mitch. Though he was, in many ways, similar to her other guides, she felt unusually safe with him. Sure, he was taciturn and brusque, but she never got thesense that he would do her any harm. Dino gave the impression that he could easily slit her throat if she annoyed him. She was convinced that he hadn’t bothered because he didn’t feel like dealing with the mess that day. Bagni clearly saw her as an object purely for his own amusement, whether his words were suggestive or scary.
Prattling at Mitch for four hours—and Tasia could admit to herself that it was prattle—had relieved some of her loneliness. The man who could transform into a wolf and back hadn’t reciprocated, of course, but she hadn’t expected him to. Yet. Her intuition whispered that she could wear him down with time. And time was something she could afford to spend.
In between answering Chara’s never-ending questions and learning how to do laundry last week, Tasia had set her mind to the task of securing a better spot for her money. She wouldn’t put it past Pagona to search through her trunk, out of spite or boredom. Her mother and sisters liked to remind Tasia that she wasn’t the brightest in their family, but she believed she could come up with something decent. Especially since her new housemates weren’t aware that she wasn’t giving them the full amount.
After Mitch had returned her basket and dropped her off, she split the money in half. One portion went into her dress pockets. The rest she hid in the bottom of a stack of unused buckets in the laundry shed. The others were happy to never touch the laundry again, and the dust and cobwebs on the buckets told her that no one had disturbed them in a long while. With care, she was able to leave the cobwebs intact.
Pagona’s near-daily tea party ritual continued. Chara unintentionally played savior for Tasia during most of those gatherings. The young ladies didn’t care for the toddler’s jam-sticky hands on their outfits, or her insistent (and constant) requests for attention and affection. So after providing the initialrefreshment, and occasional refills, Tasia was most often left to entertain one busy little girl instead of four adult-sized spiteful ones.
One day, the tea time talk made its way around to attractive men again. The conversation topics lacked variety, and this subject came up far too often. After a slew of village men who Tasia couldn’t identify out on the street, Mitch’s name came up. Despite her intention to remain unnoticed, she looked over at the group from her place on the floor with Chara.
“It’s too bad Mitch isn’t from here,” Nomiki repeated the common lament.
Tasia hid her face by turning to stack a few more blocks and rolled her eyes. That obsession would never make sense to her.
“If he was a villager, we would know how he got that delicious scar,” Bianca purred.
The other three murmured agreements, then began positing their favorite guesses. Most of them were outlandishly heroic, involving the rescue of multiple damsels in distress, or puppies.
Tasia had also wondered about the scar, but she wasn’t going to risk his discomfort for her own selfish curiosity. If, and when, he felt safe sharing that with her, she would listen. But not before. For now, she would be thrilled if he deigned to speak without being prodded.
After running out of men to drool over, the girls turned to their other favorite activity: picking on Claudia. Of course Pagona started the topic. “Oh, Claudia, isn’t that the second time you’ve worn that dress this week? It’s becoming a bit sad-looking, don’t you think?” Poisonous sweetness dripped off her fake concern.
This portion of the afternoon always made Tasia cringe. She couldn’t understand what the others found so objectionable about Claudia. With the possible exception of Bianca, none of Pagona’s friends—or Pagona herself—came from wealthyfamilies. The rejects Tasia’s mother had packed for her were made of finer material than anything the tea-drinkers ever wore.
To Tasia’s unschooled eye, Claudia was a sweet-tempered girl whose only deficit seemed to be an inclination toward shyness. Which, Tasia conceded, wasn’t actually a flaw; she just had a hard time understanding it. She also couldn’t understand why the girl remained friends with the others. Surely someone else in the village would treat her with kindness. Tasia might be on the receiving end of the villagers’ chilliness, but she had seen them treat each other with fondness at the dance and whenever she had to venture to the shops.
Anthi took care of most of the shopping, but twice now, she had claimed fatigue and sent Tasia with a list. To her relief, the shopkeepers had accepted the handwritten list and dealt with the foreigner when it became clear that the orders were really from a true villager. Tasia hoped that she could sneak in a list of her own next rest day so she could purchase lunch for herself and Mitch.
Chapter Six
Which Includes a Wild Encounter
Rest day dawned bright—and cold. Mitch had stayed in the village at his actual lodgings for most of the week. Now that the three days of the full moon had passed, he could choose when to turn. Frost lurked in the shadows as he stalked toward their meeting spot.
His foul mood had little to do with being forced to play guide (though that rankled, as well) and everything to do with his continued failure. How blasted hard was it to find a single job outside of this forsaken village?! All he wanted was a simple caravan guard position. That would get him far away from here and in a better place to find something else. But every caravan traveling anywhere near Boschivo already had a full complement of guards, and none were willing to risk an unknown.
The right word from Barone would solve that issue. But that selfish pig kept coming up with excuses for why he couldn’t do that yet. Mitch had only officially been in the man’s employ fora simple protective detail for a week-long journey. A job that should have ended months ago, if the mayor of Boschivo would stop dragging his feet and making up extra tasks—like guard duty at a dance, of all things.
He also couldn’t seek employment in the bigger town by Granny thanks to Barone. Due to an intense rivalry with some bigwig over there, neither man would hire anyone associated with the other. Mitch didn’t even know the bigwig’s name, but a couple of his gang members had recognized him as “one of Barone’s thugs” during the brief time he had lingered to buy food for Tasia. If winter wasn’t looming, he would be giving serious consideration to striking out in his wolf form until he was far from here.
“Is that frown for me?” a sweet voice interrupted his black thoughts.
“Huh?” Mitch looked up from the patch of frost he had been watching slowly melt in the sun. “No.”
Tasia beamed at him. “Good! That would be a lousy way to start our time together.”
He blinked at her. Somehow, the passage of a week had dulled his memory of her brightness.
“Are you ready to go?”
With no other response but the obvious one, Mitch nodded and began walking into the woods.
A serene silence reigned for a whole two minutes. Then Mitch was treated to a running commentary on Tasia’s every thought about every. Single. Seasonal change. Yes, he had noticed the vibrant colors adorning half of the trees. No, he didn’t wonder why some of them were already leafless when others were still mostly green. And yes (again), he did see that dryad off in the distance, but it was rude to point.
