“Not by choice,” said Julian. “I’m out of sugar and yeast, and my supplier can’t get any to me for another week at least.”
There wasn’t much you could bake without one or both of those things. Some muffins, maybe. Sourdough, though that required a starter, something Julian likely didn’t have.
Of course, Mrs. Knox had some starter she could share, and she had plenty of sugar and yeast besides.
But Charlotte could see why Julian hadn’t asked. “Will you manage without it?”
“The wine moves well enough on its own,” said Julian. “I guess we’re going to find out if it’s enough.”
Charlotte bristled at his attitude. “You know, you could have come to Mrs. Knox for help instead of making an enemy of her. If you were worried the shop wouldn’t do well, you could have asked what you could do to make it succeed. The people around here would have helped you out. Keir might have helped you on the rent. Alison and Weyland would have made you fliers. Hells, if you’d told Gwenla what you needed, she would have personally escorted every person in town in here and held thedoor shut until they bought something. That’s what it’s like here. You said you moved here because you were happy here, but it doesn’t seem like you understand this place at all.”
“I don’t need help,” said Julian, straightening his back and pulling himself upright. “I’ve never had help, and I’ve always gotten by. That’s what you don’t understand. I thought maybe you’d get it because you had to strike out on your own even before I did, but you clearly don’t understand. I’ll find a way to manage, with or without the baking. I don’t need your pity.”
The last words were so biting, it left Charlotte feeling as though she had been thrown out even though he hadn’t made a move towards her.
“Fine,” said Charlotte, feeling the heat rise into her face. “You won’t have it. And you won’t have my help. Good luck, Julian. You’re going to need it.”
She slammed the door again on the way out, this time glad to be on the other side of it.
Chapter Fourteen
JITTERS
Keir
It was the darkest part of the night as Keir left Fossholm on horseback.
It seemed to be a rule of complicated pregnancies that the baby always finally came in the middle of the night or on a holiday or right when the doctor had sat down for tea. But the baby—half elf, half human in this case, a combination that sometimes posed a challenge for the smaller hips of the elf mother—had come with little incident, though she did take her time coming.
Keir led his horse through the Fossholm High Street, stopping to admire the new ‘lectric lights that lined the way to the frozen lake beyond. This was what progress looked like, the good kind of it. He’d treated the pixies who lit the lamps in Herot’s Hollow for burns countless times. Now they were responsible for changing the bulbs once they burnt out, a much less dangerous task.
Keir was less certain about the benefits of the manufactory. He had seen the injuries in his time studying medicine in Arcas Dyrne. Lacerations, amputations, severe burns, broken limbs. Sometimes in children barely old enough to hold a wrench, let alone work an assembly line.
It wasn’t that Keir doubted Idris, but he knew the prince shared a bit of his father’s penchant for jumping on new ideas without giving enough attention to the details needed to see them through. But Idris’s flights of fancy were far less destructive than King Derkomai’s, thank the Gods, and with Rinka at his side and Gwenla leading the manufactory charge, he knew they’d do what they could to keep the good people of Wilderise safe from harm.
With any luck, the hospital would be so little used he’d have to shut it down.
Keir peered out over the ice to the eastern shore where the hospital would stand. It was a short ride from Weldan House, his and Alison’s eventual home, but it was a longer trip back to Herot’s Hollow. The town he’d turned his back on had come to mean so much to him since Alison had arrived, and he knew it meant so much to Alison as well.
Could she be happy here in Fossholm? Could she be happy in Weldan House, in its cavernous halls and palatial grounds? She’d come to love tending the little garden in her hedge maze. Would she feel the same telling a team of gardeners what to plant?
And what of being the duchess? If Keir continued practicing medicine, and he couldn’t picture giving it up now, would she be content to host balls and festivals even in his absence? To go to court when called?
Was this the life she wanted for herself, or was it something Keir was imposing on her by virtue of who he was? Who he had been born to be, whether he wanted it or not.
He was terrified to ask her, he realized. Selfishly, he wanted her with him no matter what she wanted. She was such a comfort to him. She made him better.
But was that fair to her? What did he offer her? What could he give her that would make the sacrifices she would need to make worthwhile?
Keir rode through the darkened woods along the road to Herot’s Hollow, lost in contemplation.
He didn’t notice the fairy fire until it was right on top of him.
“If it isn’t the finest dancer in Wilderise,” said a familiar voice.
It was a good thing Genn had spoken. Keir never would have recognized the fairy from their figure alone in the light of the fairy fire. Genn was an eighth of the size from when Keir had seen them last, but it was the same fairy—same blue hair, same white wings, same human features. Same mischief.
“I didn’t know you could leave the place we found you,” said Keir. The woods where they had met had been a strange place that seemed apart from this world in a way that seemed alternately sinister and beautiful.
