“Oh,” said Libba, blinking. “Nasty.”
“Very nasty,” Errol agreed, dipping the brush into a bucket of water and beginning to lather it up against his hand. “You want to watch the treatment? I have to cut away infected tissue.”
“I… No. No, of course not,” she said, giving a shrill, little giggle and shaking her head. “I’ll get those eggs. Godspeed.”
“Mm,” said Errol, already lost in his work.
Titus, for his part, huffed in evident disbelief at the lack of amorous return from the infected ox, and appeared to be striking his stage to begin his display once more.
That’s the spirit, Libba thought.Surely, it’ll work next time.
She batted away the sensation that she had anything at all in common with Titus the rooster and continued about her business. In fact, she was so incredibly apt at business-doings, that, somehow, within the blink of an eye, she found herself at the door to her father’s house, wearing a heavier pelisse than she’d had on earlier, holding a basket of eggs, herbs, and one tissue-wrapped cylindrical gift, wondering how in the good hell she’d gotten there.
She frowned.
And she knocked.
She didn’t wait for an answer, of course. The knock was only cursory, and as soon as she’d stepped inside, she met Ulysses Lennox standing near his ancient and tilted coat rack, staring in surprise at the door.
“Libba?” he croaked. “It’s not Wednesday.”
“Are you certain?” she replied with a weak smile. She immediately regretted it at the flash of disoriented panic in his pale eyes. “No, it isn’t. I thought I’d pop by, anyhow. Is that all right? There was something pressing I wished to discuss. And I’ve brought you a gift.”
“‘A gift,’” he repeated, still frozen with his coat partway lifted to the hook on the tree. “For me?”
“Yes, that is usually what someone means when they tell a person they have brought a gift,” she replied impatiently. “A few gifts, actually. I’m going to put some water on.”
“I—” He cut himself off, shaking his head as though he wanted to ensure he was not dreaming. “All right.”
She gave a curt nod and crossed to the little kitchenette in the corner of the shack. It brought her right up against the open door of what had once been her childhood bedroom. She glanced in because how could she not?
Inside were still two child-sized beds, arranged at a right angle to one another with a small table wedged in the diamond shape between the walls and headboards. They were still made up, she realized, pausing with a little thump to her heart. Dusty and piled with old toys and books and little clothes they had not taken with them to Starling’s Rest.
“Faither,” she said, setting her basket down and bending slowly with her back to him so she would not embarrass him by asking, “have you not wanted to use that room for aught else in the last decade and more?”
There was a rustling behind her, the squeak of old floorboards as her father shifted his weight. “I’ve what I need in mine own rooms,” he said gruffly. “Besides, you might’ve come back.”
“Ididcome back,” she said, withdrawing a pot and filling it with the pitcher of clean water next to the range. “Tonight, anyhow. Will you come here to stand with me, please?”
She waited until she felt his heat and shadow draw up alongside her to drop the match on the range. “You do not need to burn it as high as it will go every time,” she told him. “In fact, it’s rare that you’d need to. And the eggs don’t go in until the water is already boiling at a roll.”
He frowned, peering skeptically at the pot as she moved it over the flame. “That’d burn my fingers,” he pointed out. “Or break the eggs.”
She sighed, a smile tugging at her lips despite herself. “That is what spoons are for, dear man. Now, while we wait, let’s see the skillet.”
“Oh,” he said, blinking, and he immediately knelt and set to scrambling for the thing.
Libba, from above him, could see the shining hints of his scalp through the thinning layer of white hair over the crown of his head.
“This one,” she said, accepting it and setting it on the second flame, “we let heat before we add aught at all. Watch.”
She dipped her fingers in the cool water and splashed some on the pan. “See? Nothing. But give it a few moments and…” She did the same motion again after a pause; this time, the droplets landed with a sizzle. “Now it is ready. The butter, please. Just a small pat.”
He hesitated, blinking several times. “Your mam used to do that,” he said, wonder in his voice. “With the droplets. I had forgotten.”
She turned to him, eyes wide as he handed over a pat of butter, dangling on the edge of a spoon. “Did she?”
He nodded.
