Page 62 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

Chapter Fourteen

“Do you ever sleep?” Aidan demanded from the kitchen doorway the next morning.

Sorcha, up to her elbows in flour, her hair in a messy knot at her nape, skewered him with a glance. “I did sleep. As you well know. When I could have been doing something else much more fun,” she added with a mutter.

He looked entirely too well rested. He must have brought his own clothing back in the cart yesterday, but he had left off his frock coat and cravat again. He wore a lawn shirt and trousers. He looked very much like a curator who dug in the sand for ancient treasures and was sometimes a wolf, and very little like an earl.

“It’s barely past dawn,” he scolded.

Even if he sounded exactly like an earl, all stern and likely entirely too accustomed to getting his own way.

“I had a nap.” Truth be told, she had never slept so well. She had woken with three pink robins flying down her cold chimney with a song. And then the kittens had invaded, equally thrilled and incensed at the intruders. Since there was no going back to sleep after that, she had decided to see to the bread. There was always dough rising or needing to be punched down. There were charms to coddle the dough, hexes against temperature fluctuations in the oven, and spells to keep the cold from interfering, but it was best not to leave them unattended too long.

Hecuba had stopped in for queen cake leftovers soaked in rosewater and then made her way to her bed as the sun rose higher.

“There’s tea in the pot,” Sorcha told Aidan, covering the dough with a moist cloth before wiping her hands on her apron. “And blackberry scones. Do wolves eat blackberry scones?”

“Wolves eat everything.”

“That’s promising.”

He lifted his head slowly to look at her, eyes molten.

Had she really said that out loud?

She grinned. He shook his head and poured his tea, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Menace.”

Feeling much more cheerful, she decided to move on to the next of the morning chores.

“Now where are you going?” Aidan asked. “Do you never sit either?”

Sorcha shrugged. “Not when there are beasties to feed. Have you ever seen a hungry unicorn? It’s not pretty.” She took off her apron and tossed it over the back of a chair. Aidan wrapped two scones and two pears into a napkin and joined her. “We can find you something more substantial for breakfast,” she said. “There are eggs and potatoes.”

“These aren’t for me.”

“Well, unicorns don’t eat scones. At least, Nimue doesn’t. Not nearly fancy enough for her refined palate.”

“They’re not for her. They’re for you.”

Sorcha stopped. “For me?”

“Do you think I did not realize almost immediately that you spend all of your time feeding your menagerie of monsters and the demanding, brilliant, and yet still somehow absent-minded professors of Hallow, and never yourself?”

“I eat.” Had she eaten yesterday? He might have a point. To be fair, they had been rather busy. Her eyes stung for no good reason. “Thank you.” She swallowed hard. “But speaking of feeding the monsters…”

He followed her out to the courtyard, where one of the bakery boys was already dragging piles of sticks into the bakehouse. “The fire keeps going out,” he huffed when Sorcha greeted him. “That water spell after the fire worked too well.”

“I’ll ask the phoenix to drop a feather for you.”

“That would be grand, thanks!”

Sorcha brought gold-dusted rose petals and raw meat to Nimue, staying well out of reach of the glittering horn and hooves and teeth. Aidan helped her with the hay and the heavy sack of oats.

That was nice too.

Aesop had already fed the kittens. The hippogriff lay on his side, watching them. He flicked his tail when one of them climbed up to curl on his spine and fell instantly into a snoring sleep. Simon and Aesop were in the bakehouse already, Aesop’s horns dusted with flour, red skin redder with the heat from the fires.

A goat wandered past her, bleating.