AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The children ran off to the coop, Xerxes under Nick’s arm. Simmons huffed and trudged toward the house, hopefully not to find and strangle his namesake who was still inside.
“She names them?” Lucy smiled.
“Each one, although she gives most of the roosters away, so she doesn’t have to kill them.”
“She doesn’t eat the hens either?”
He shook his head. “She buys unnamed, already-killed chickens to eat, and refuses to ever think they might be one of hers that she sold away.”
“Your mother and I would get along beautifully,” Lucy said.
His gaze never left hers. “I believe you would.”
Lucy chuckled. “Shall we take our unnamed goose inside? Simmons will fuss less with a full stomach.” She turned to the coop and held her hands cupped around her mouth. “I brought bread and roast goose.”
Catherine hooted in happiness from inside. “We will come at once,” Alyce called and all three filed out, Xerxes still under Nick’s arm.
“No roosters at the table,” Lucy said.
“Just goose,” Catherine said, smiling.
“Or unnamed creatures,” Alyce said.
Greer tied Darach to a hitching post and pulled a blanket out of a satchel, shaking it and laying it across the horse.
The inside of the house was cold with only the kitchen hearth lit. Simmons’s frown flattened to approval when Greer placed the goose on the wooden table in the center. They would have their own Christmas feast, free from poison or having to judge every comment and action as a possible treasonous clue.
*
Would they bemissed at Whitehall? Because Greer found he didn’t want to leave Cranfield House. He took the last swallow of the mellow ale that Simmons brewed with pride. The man had roasted some turnips and seasoned some peas to go with the goose and bread. The children proclaimed it the best feast they’d ever had, and Simmons’s glare had mellowed. It was an uneasy truce.
“Where does your mother live?” Lucy asked as they carried bowls and the picked goose carcass to the workbench in the kitchen.
“Outside Edinburgh. She has a small farm there.” Greer set the simple tableware into a bucket that they would fill with hot water to wash. “’Tis in a valley. My father built it when they were newly married. ’Tis bigger than she needs since she’s alone now, but she refuses to leave. ’Tis simple but cozy and smells of the herbs she dries.”
“And you live in Edinburgh without her?”
“Most of the time. When I work for the crown.” With the proof of the Cranfield riches everywhere he looked, he didn’t go into his circumstances any further. “But I visit her often.”
“I’m sorry you are away for Christmastide,” Lucy said.
Greer covered the remains of combined vegetables with a cloth. “She was happy for me to go.”
“Oh?” Lucy asked.
“She wants me to become indispensable to Lord Moray and eventually the king. A mother’s aspirations for her son.” And his work for Lord Moray earned him enough to care for her.
“Then she can go to court with you. My mother used to…before she withdrew and went mad.” Her voice trailed off, but she kept her smile.
“My mother will stay away,” he said. “She had smallpox and despises the scars.”
Lucy’s smile flattened. “I’m sorry.”
“I am, too, for she is a wonderful woman who hides away from the world now. The pox took my two sisters and my father, but Mother survived. She doesn’t see the scars as proof of her strength, even though they are. To her, they remind her of those she lost.”
Lucy leaned back against the wooden table, pain in the pinch of her forehead. “’Tis understandable. I’m sorry you lost so many, well any of them at all.” She turned back to the work. “And I’m glad you survived.”
“I wasn’t at home and was spared the trial.” He’d been on another mission, one of his first for Lord Moray. When he’d returned, his mother wouldn’t let him inside the house, shooing him away until all but she lay dead. The memory of her stubborn tears as she refused him to get near, pressed, as usual, on his chest.
