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Lilja took her hand, and I realized then I had forgotten to offer her my own. What a dunce I was at manners.

“I hope you like ox bone soup?” Helena said. “That’s what’s on the menu tonight. I’m not much of a cook, but I can boil a shank with some carrots and leeks.”

“I’m content as long as it’s warm,” Lilja said. Again there was a hint of a smile on her lips.

Helena laughed. “Oh, then you’ve come to the right place. My food isn’t the best, but it’s always warm. Isn’t that right, Selma?”

“I suppose burned counts as warm,” I said.

“Always complaining, this one,” Helena said to Lilja with a roll of her eyes and a poke into my arm. “She can make her own soup if she complains again.”

“You’re the housekeeper,” I argued.

“Maybe, but I won’t stand for this eternal grumbling of yours. It’s souring my mood.”

Lilja’s smile grew just a little as she watched us bicker. “What are you sewing?” she asked Helena.

“A doll’s smock. Selma’s making the doll.”

Lilja looked at me. “Can I see?”

I brought her to my bench, showed her the almost-finished head, and explained how next I would make the other pieces of wood into the body and the limbs. She listened with her head tilted and her eyes on my gesturing hands. She seemed to hold her focus well, and that showed some promise for her skill in shopkeeping.

“When all the parts are completed,” I said, “I’ll paint it, connect the pieces, and then we’ll put the clothes on.”

“What else do you make?”

I put down the doll’s head, which I still held in my hand. “Come to the store, and I’ll show you.”

She followed me through the workshop, and when we stepped through the door to the store, she glanced at the window like she had twice when I had first encountered her out here.

“Will you be all right out here?” I asked. “You won’t be frightened?”

She shook her head so hard that a lock of hair fell in front of her face. She brushed it away. “Oh no, they… they don’t know where I am. I traveled far. I’m just a bit, I guess, used to keeping my wits about me.” With another glance at the window, she walked across to my shelves, and I had a strange urge to bend down and brush the sawdust off her hem. It didn’t seem to belong there.

Lilja reached out her hand, then let her fingers hover just an inch from a soldier in a blue king’s guard uniform. “Can I touch it?”

“Of course. They’re sturdy enough. Children can be rough.”

She brushed the tip of a finger over the gold paint of the soldier’s helmet, then picked up a mare in mid-canter with a chestnut coat. Turning it, she studied its woolen tail and mane. “You made all of this?”

“Yes.”

She let her hand with the horse sink just an inch and looked at me over its head. Its color was a perfect match for her eyes.

“You’re very good,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Your father taught you?”

“He did.”

“He must have been good too.”

“The very best.”

“He was proud of you, then?”