Wiping her mouth and dabbing at her neckline where the apple cider landed, she turned forward, only to find him watching her. Embarrassment burned through her again. Just a bloody goddess over here, ready to scale to the highest of heights, even though she couldn’t manage to put food and drink in her mouth correctly.
“Have I missed anything?” Prudence asked, hurriedly finishing a plait in her hair.
Justine shook her head, still feeling the lump in her throat from the bread. Why couldn’t she be a normal person, the kind of normal person that didn’t care if Karl Vogel saw her eating?
“Are all people here?” Karl called to the group.
Ophelia turned around, assessed their cadre, and nodded affirmative.
“Then we go,” he announced, and turned on his heel, leaving the rest of them to fall in line.
He trucked them up the same goat path they’d taken earlier that morning. The back of Justine’s thighs burned, and she dragged, waiting for that second wind to lift her into the bliss of a working body. They passed the mended fence and went through the gate, to which the other women and Tristan murmured their appreciation of its ingenuity.
Stopped, Justine had time to look at Karl. His face was mostly impassive. Mostly. Something about the group’s comments on the gate seemed to rile him. His expression changed subtly, and if she hadn’t watched him so closely, she would have missed it. Something about that gate made him mad. What an odd man. Who cared about a gate?
Well, if goats were a person’s only company, that could put things in a very different perspective. He settled his features, and his eyes met hers. She thought she should look away, but she wasn’t a bashful girl. Lady. Woman. What was she now? A Fräulein? Whatever anyone called her was what she would be. As her mind flipped through this progression, Karl’s blue eyes stared her down. She smiled at him, which might have been flirtatious, or simply polite. She honestly couldn’t tell, so she did it anyway.
Karl didn’t return the smile, instead turning and continuing up the goat path. Justine anticipated revisiting the steep climb he’d taken her on earlier that morning, and even looked forward to it. The view had been wonderful, but now at the divergent paths, he chose the one to the right instead of the far left.
Justine frowned, but went along. Was this to be even more challenging? But no, it wasn’t. In fact, it was a far easier amble up a gentle slope. This time, Justine was distracted by the wonderful crispness of the air, countered by the warmth of the sun as it crested out above the trees.
Ahead of them was a wooden building. What would she call it? It certainly could not be considered a house, though, from the children spilling out of it, that was its purpose. The children clambered their welcome to Karl as he approached. He scooped up the littlest girl in one arm and the littlest boy in the other. The rest danced around him as if he were a hero in a folk story.
Karl was treated like a prince among men by these children. In the doorway, the shortest man Justine had ever seen appeared. No, he wasn’t short. His back hunched over so severely, he appeared as if he were permanently bowing. But the man didn’t seem to be in pain or otherwise troubled. Karl ushered their group inside, crowding an already-crowded hut.
It was dark, for the windows were closed, and the air was stale and musty, smelling of overripe cheese and bodies and hay. Soon they found out why. This man was a cheesemaker. There was a pen of goats in the back, separated by a wooden wall and a closed door, but their incessant curiousmaamaamade for funny pauses in conversation. The cheesemaker only spoke in Swiss, as did the children. Karl translated.
They were ushered to the long table, where they sat obediently, unsure of what to do or say, since none of them spoke Swiss German. Ophelia focused on the cheesemaker and Karl, ignoring the rest of them, clearly trying to lead by example. Or lead in some kind of way. Justine exchanged looks with Prudence, who smiled, because Prudence not smiling was a strange event. Even Justine, who smiled an obscene amount, could not out-smile Prudence. Eleanor and Tristan held hands beneath the table’s edge, and that made Justine feel happy for them. Even if Tristan was objectively the worst person in the entire world. She’d forgiven him enough that she'd blessed his and Eleanor’s marriage. Not that they’d asked her.
Light spilled around the room in edges—some from a window frosted along the bottom frame, which had been scratched through by a child’s nail at some point. The canvas curtains were thinned and old, but hemmed nicely. There was a loft that overlooked the table where they sat, and Justine could make out two sets of eyes from beneath a blanket. The shyest of them all, no doubt.
The rest of the children either returned to their tasks or played with the strangers. The littlest girl and boy still sat on Karl’s lap, content to be held. It was such a strange sight, she thought. Her father had never held them on his lap. And she’d never seen any other father do that either. But it looked so natural for him. As if he actually liked them. Did he? Did someone actuallylikechildren? What an appalling thought.
The two men talked, then Karl translated for the rest of them. She’d better pay attention to this, but she couldn’t. There were too many things to look at, and all these children to watch. What were they doing? At least she figured out one of the girls was mending a piece of clothing. Another was hauling a pail of water through the door to the goat pen. For a moment, the bleating of the goats was louder when the door opened, then muted as the girl closed the door behind her.
But Justine’s observations were cut short by a plate offered to them all: dark bread smeared with cheese and a dab of honey. There was enough for a slice for each of them. She held her piece aloft while she waited for all of them to get a slice. The same as her friends, because manners taught them to wait until everyone had their share, and then they could eat.
But the cheesemaker gestured to all of them, emphatically. She knew that gesture: “Eat, eat!” Apparently, the table manners drilled into her did not apply in Swiss cheese huts. So she bit into the hunk of black bread, and fell in love. The sweet honey balanced the tangy cheese, and the lightness of that contrasted with the dry, dense bread.
“He says that he planned to give you dried apricots also, but the children got into them and ate them all.” Karl looked around at them as he translates, ruffling the bright hair of the children on his lap.
Justine looked closer and saw that the children watched them eat. They were thin children, not emaciated, but certainly not plump like she or her siblings had been. This was a great extravagance to share with them. Suddenly, she no longer wanted to eat anymore, but didn’t want to offend anyone by not eating. Still, she chewed. And her stomach growled loud enough for everyone to hear.
Rather than be embarrassed, she played it up, grabbing her middle with her non-bread filled hand and making wide eyesat the children on Karl’s lap. They no doubt knew the sound of a hungry belly. Those children giggled, and her stomach growled again, as if on cue. She looked up at the two sets of eyes in the loft, her eyes wide with alarm. And she hunched over and scarfed down the rest of her bread as if she were a starving mouse, and all of the children laughed then, even the girl mending the clothes in the corner.
With the children giggling, her friends looked on with amusement. The little girl on Karl’s lap slid off and came over to stand next to Justine. When Justine turned to face her, the little girl put one small, hot hand on her belly. When it didn’t growl, the girl nodded with approval, and then climbed onto the bench, pushing Prudence further down the way.
It wasn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon.
**
Chapter Four
Karl should have been exhausted but he found he couldn’t sleep. His pallet by the fire in the dining room was warmer than the goat pen, and smelled better, but at least in the goat pen he could hear the rhythmic breathing of another creature. Here, he stewed in his own thoughts, like limp cabbage in a pot of lukewarm water.
Thoughts, as if he were a profound philosopher. No, he was a lusty young man who couldn’t banish the petite brunette with the big eyes, pert nose and pouty lips. He had believed—wrongly—that she would not show for the afternoon walk with her comrades. Instead, she was there, even though she’d missed breakfast and was dead last in their line up the trails. But still, even as they’d visited Luc Meynet and his seemingly unending passel of nieces and nephews, she had entertained him.
Entertained was not the right idea. No, she had delighted him. Her playful hunger act had engaged the children, and that was enough. The shy twins, Liesl and Luc, had even climbeddown from the loft and stared at the strangers from the corner near the door of the winter goat enclosure. They wouldn’t even come down from the loft when it was only Karl, let alone Karl and his guests.
