She pointed over at a wagon painted a vibrant blue. “Eliza used to sell them for me. But the rent on my shop is too high, so now I have a market stall in winter back in Eccleston. And I suppose I’ll come here for the summers.”
“Oh that is a shame,” I said. “We love the way your candles smell.”
The candles they make at the keep smell horribly, Fox signed.
“Ah, well, I like to leave the city,” the woman said, shrugging, her eyes on Fox.
“She says the candles our lord’s staff make are of tallow and have a foul smell sometimes,” I interpreted. “And I hate to make my own.”
“Well, I’ve no husband,” said Tessa. “No fear of getting with child. But my courses are irregular and painful. Eliza says the moss eases that for her. All my wares are made from either beeswax, wild nuts, or ground bayberry bushes. No tallow here.”
We began to discuss a fair trade. She was agreeable and easy to barter with.
Rowena had been chatting away with the cobbler, her hand on the back of a sulking Adelaide already bored with the novelty of the tinker camp. When my sister finally followed us into the chandler’s tent, her eyes went to Tessa’s face.
Tessa looked up from a crate she had opened for me.
They stared at each other, unmoving, each taken aback by the other.
“Good afternoon,” Rowena said, breathless as if she had run all the way from Sheridan. She opened her mouth to say more but then shut it.
When Tessa stood up straighter and tipped her hat at my twin, a gesture she had not made towards me, I nearly groaned aloud. For I could see it plain as day. When I recounted it later that night to Jade, I said, “Trouble. That is trouble brewing in a shallow pot. It will boil over and burn us all.”
Avery said I was making a fuss. I said that I wished I was just fussing and not truly worrying.
The following day, Rowena arrived at my house without Adelaide.
“I have closed the apothecary,” she said, overly bright. “Let us go to the tinkers again. There were so many wagons I did not visit. Go into the forest and fetch Jade. And Fox, of course!”
“Where is Adelaide?” I asked, dubious, one hand on my hip while the other gripped a long rake for overturning soil. I stabbed it into the earth and leaned my weight on it, staring up at her, daring her.
“With her father,” Rowena rushed on. “If we go now we can?—”
“If we go now, you can spend more time making eyes at the chandler.” I found myself irritated, as I had seen Tessa as a potential new friend. And that irritation on top of my fretting over my sister’s obvious infatuation made me harsh. Ignoring her embarrassment, I asked, “What do you hope to gain from this, sister? Because all I see is trouble.”
My twin had not even dismounted. She sat on her horse just outside the gate and looked down at me, brows drawn. But she was not angry with me. She was earnest, desperate, near to begging.
“I have to see her again.”
“Good rutting gods,” I sighed. “This way lies madness.”
“What way lies madness?” trilled Jade, climbing through the other side of the fence that bordered the forest.
I huffed. I had told her to come by if she was going to visit the tinkers so she could check to see if I wanted to go back.
“Oh, good day, Rowena,” Jade said. She was always hesitant around Rowena, Thane, and to an extent Adelaide. I believe she worried about their judgment of her, and even more so she was intimidated by Thane’s being the lord’s son.
In response, Rowena had never been unkind to her but had only nurtured a friendship at arm’s length. Now she called out, “Oh, Jade! Do you want to come visit the tinkers with us?”
Jade looked at me and grinned a little at my glower. “Oh, yes! Should I saddle up Zara, Robbie? You can finish up whatever you were doing.”
“Whatever I was doing,” I mimicked, throwing the rake to the ground and stalking into the house to put on breeches for riding. “I was turning over my godsdamn soil; that is what I was doing.”
Fox looked up from her book. She was in the rocking chair. I could have used her help in the garden, but that day she was so engrossed in her reading, I had told her to stay put.
“You’ll bar the door,” I said, pointing at her. “I’ll be home before dinner.”
Yes, I want to stay and finish this, she signed.
