My words didn’t seem to convince him at all. He paused his gaze on me, probably remembering the sorry state he’d found me in.
“Just stay in the clearing until I’m back. And run into the cabin if something happens…” He ran a hand over his bald head, his fingers trembling slightly. “Are you sure you’d rather stay? I…I really hate parting from you.”
His voice dropped, and he stared at me in wonder as if discovering the truth of that statement for the first time himself.
I hated seeing him go too. Under any other circumstances, I would’ve come with him. But I couldn’t put him or the people he cared about in danger.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll be right here when you return,” I said, coming closer.
To my relief, he scooped me into a hug, and all the awkward tension that had been hanging heavily over us this morning melted away.
“I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to you, my wild thing,” he murmured, kissing my hair.
CHAPTER 8
KHALA
This place was Grat’s, and I felt his presence in every detail. His pine-soap scent lingered in the cabin. The firewood he’d chopped lay neatly stacked by the fire pit. The coals in the fire he’d made to cook us breakfast were still warm. But he was gone.
We’d loaded all the meat from the cellar into a giant wicker basket with shoulder straps. He heaved it onto his wide back, gave me one last hug and the sweetest forehead kiss, then marched off into the wetlands.
I did the dishes after breakfast, swept the cabin’s floor, then wondered what else to do. With no traps to set or check, there wasn’t much work for me here. I considered doing some laundry and inspected the barrel tub that Grat had positioned over the river-rock stove. The tub was too big and a little too high to do laundry in. But I could use it to heat enough water to wash the sheets for our bed.
I had never laundered sheets before. But I had helped with washing baby clothes in the village in our estate. Rolly and I used to visit the villages often when my husband was alive. I woulduse any excuse to get out of the palace and escape the High Lord’s company.
Grat normally carried the water for his baths straight from the creek, using two giant tin buckets. I’d have to make at least four times as many trips to fill it to the same level. But I could build something that wouldn’t require either of us to carry any buckets.
Stepping back a little, I estimated the distance between the creek and the tub, noted the speed and the direction of the current, then located the few trees I could possibly use to stabilize the joining points.
Pipes were necessary to build a proper water pump, especially one powered by steam. But since there weren’t any pipes at the cabin, I could use wooden grooves and a water wheel instead of a pump.
The prospect of a new project filled me with excitement. Since I was a kid, I’d always had something on the go, and I didn’t even realize how much I’d missed it lately.
As a child, I started out with simple mechanical things. But once I’d learned about the many uses of the steam engine, I started coming up with more complex but also far more practical things.
My parents kept my “tinkering” a secret from the public, afraid that such a lowly and unladylike occupation would deter potential suitors.
My husband mostly indulged me for the first year of our marriage. He even allowed me to use a part of the horse stables to set up a workshop, “just to give her something to do,” he used to tell the visitors to our palace. That was when I built a steam-powered wheelchair for Rolly so that he could easily join me on all my walks.
Eventually, my husband’s healers decided that my “tinkering with metals” and “too much thinking about things” might bedetrimental to my ability to conceive an heir, so he promptly put an end to all my projects and ordered my workshop dismantled.
I cried myself to sleep that night after he’d left my chambers. But weeks after his funeral, I built an even bigger workshop, with a forge and a spacious courtyard for all my trials and experiments.
The years after my husband’s death had been the happiest years of my life. I’d made many improvements to the estate that even the king’s palace didn’t have. I’d brought in running water, built steam-powered mills, and even created a machine that helped the farmers plow their fields each spring.
The workshop was gone now, along with the estate. All I had left was the title of the High Lord’s widow and the royal blood in my veins, both of which Reizon wanted. But I certainly could make filling a bathtub easier for a certain orc who loved bathing.
I chopped down a few thick stalks of giant bluestem plants growing around the creek. Mostly hollow inside, they made the perfect half-pipes after I’d split them in half lengthwise and scraped out the soft flesh inside. Then I fitted the half pipes into a single track that ran from the creek to the tub.
Fully absorbed by my work, I didn’t stop for lunch.
After breakfast, I’d put a sandwich with blood sausage in the pocket of my tunic. Ever since my nearly starving in the woods alone, I felt less anxious when I had some food with me now, even if I wasn’t hungry. But I didn’t want to stop working on my project even to eat lunch.
If I had more time, I’d build a small turbine up the creek where the current was stronger rushing down the rocks. The turbine would turn the wheel with the rope that I had attached several buckets to for scooping the water from the creek. I’d also build in a gauge with a stopper to shut the water off when the tub was filled and a steam whistle that would go off once the waterhad heated to a preset temperature. For now, however, I’d have to use a manual pulley system to turn the wheel.
I wondered what Grat would think about all those improvements. Would he be happy to have more time to spend in the tub instead of spending it to fill it? More time to do the things he did to me in that tub…
The hot memory of his thick fingers thrusting inside me made my inner muscles clench. I missed his touch, not just his hand between my legs and his tongue on my breasts, but also his bear hugs and his bed cuddles.
