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One by one, he continued as Livvy exhausted the names of those on the Mount. How August knew this about each person was beyond her. Every oddity he spoke of, he did so without judgment. But then, that was nothing new. He’d not once judged Livvy—not even when he’d called her odd.
“Anyone else?” he asked.
“What about ye? What do ye do that be odd?”
“Oh, I be the oddest one there be. Some’ow, ye already know ’bout me habit o’ singin’ only when others ain’t watchin’.” He paused, leaning closer to her. “I will get to the bottom o’ that one day, I promise ye that.”
Her heart skipped a beat at the look in his eye.
“But,” he continued, “what ye don’t know be that if I do sing in front o’ people, I go terribly off tune.”
“Truly?”
“Truly. Now, do ye wish to know the oddest thing ’bout me?”
She waited at the edge of her imagined seat.
He looked around, then whispered, “I love flowers.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“It is better to reveal a weakness than allow oneself be suspected of a vice.”
Jacques the Fatalist, Denis Diderot
Livvy couldn’t help the laugh that burst through her lips. “That ain’t odd. That makes ye refined.”
But August shook his head. “Ye might think that. But other men find it odd when I tell ’em I’d rather tend to me flowers then spend the mornin’ shootin’ or sailin’ or e’en fishin’.”
For some reason, learning that only made Livvy love him more.
“If that don’t count for ye, though,” he continued, “I’ve one that does.” He paused. “I don’t like puppies.”
She pulled back. “Ye what?”
“Ye ’eard me. I don’t like ’em. Not one bit.”
She laughed in surprise. “’Ow can that be so? They be darlin’.”
“No, they be disgustin’. They eat their own…deposits, if ye will, after leavin’ ’em everywhere. They smell. They bite.” He shook his head. “Don’t like puppies.”
Again, she laughed. “All right, ye win. That be the oddest thing I’ve e’er ’eard.”
He smiled in response. “Ye see? ’Tisn’t so very terrible to be considered odd when everyone else ’as their own oddities, too.”
She peered up at him, grateful for his helping her, but a niggling doubt still tried to press its way through to the forefront of her mind.
“All those things ye mentioned,” she began. “They don’t seem too terrible, nor would they make me avoid any o’ those people. They almost make ’em sound…endearin’.”
“Ye think me dislikin’ puppies makes me endearin’?”
She smiled at his teasing. “Ye know what I mean.”
“I do. But the reason ye find ’em endearin’ be ’cause ye be an endearin’ person yourself.”
Livvy longed to reach out and embrace the man for his kindness, but doubt wedged its way between her heart and logic. “I do feel that sometimes…” Her eyes dropped to the stone heart on the pathway, her own heart feeling as stiff as the rock. “Sometimes I feel like I be Cormoran.”
August tipped his head in confusion. “The…the giant who terrorized the mainland by stealin’ animals and eatin’ children?”
