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The market went on around us. The goat had gotten into the fishmonger’s display, and nobody was doing anything about it. Watching us had become the Hollow’s favorite pastime.

The top of her head reached the center button of my coat. Her eyes, when she tipped her head that far back to scold me, caught the light and went the color of strong tea. She smelled of bergamot and mint.

“The pact needs a ruling about whether looming is a violation,” she said at last. “I’ll be speaking with the quartermaster about this.”

“She’s biased.”

“The quartermaster is asleep in your wagon on my good shawl. We’ll hear her verdict tonight.”

She went back to her counter. I went back to my stall. The late-day wind came around the fountain, west to east, carrying the scent of frying oil from the pie cart. Wet goat. And off her, clear above everything, the warm bright smell I’d been refusing to name since after the big storm.

Never fear.

She…

No, it couldn’t be true.

Could it?

I set the last of the bitter greens aside in a crate to take home.

CHAPTER NINE

RAIN

The moonbell herb grew where it wanted, which in our valley meant the Wildwood edge. Picking it was a three-witch job if you wanted to be home by supper.

Asha, Aris, and I went out with baskets on the first still afternoon in a week. The Wildwood in autumn was a great place to talk.

The trees go gold and copper like anywhere else, but they do it when they want, one tree at a time, and sometimes a tree changes back if it feels it went too early. The mushrooms along the path giggled when we stepped near them. Sweet, the first time. Forty of them in a row, and I felt mocked by the forest floor.

We picked along the hedge line where the moonbell came up silver-stemmed between the roots. Aris cut. I bundled. Asha talked.

“So he cooks,” she said.

I nodded and kept working the hedge line.

“Every night.”

“I’ve offered. I’ve been informed the kitchen is his field, and I’m not allowed to work it.” I tied off a bundle and handed it to her. “Direct quote: ‘Kitchen’s mine. You eat.’”

“And breakfast? Struan says there’s porridge. Struan says it’s a full spread, every morning, table set.”

“Struan says? Since when do the Weatherby boys report on my breakfasts?”

“Since always. This is Moonbell Hollow.” Asha snapped a stem with a flourish. “The village knows the ogre feeds you like a prize sow and drives you to work and ran a peddler out of the square for looking at you sideways. Mrs. Piddock’s calling it a courtship. Old Tom’s calling it a scandal. The grannies are saying it’s going too slow. They want heat. Steam. Spicy interaction.”

“It’s a lodging arrangement.”

Aris straightened up with her shears and lifted her eyebrows my way, reading my face.

“It’s a lodging arrangement,” I said again, with less oomph.

“Mm,” said Aris, which is a thing she and Goran had in common.

Your cheeks are pink, Ginger said, from where she was stalking something in the deep bushes beyond the moonbell. For the record. Pink.

It’s the sun, I sent back.