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The helper didn’t bring anything in from the shop or pantry, so she assumed they didn’t have anything in the house. “I wonder if it was magic,” she mused aloud. “If it was a memory spell, then my potion wouldn’t have negated it.” When she finished eating breakfast, she went upstairs to consult her books. Magic was beyond her area of expertise, but maybe one of her mentors had encountered something like this. She didn’t find anything useful, but she’d only grabbed a couple of her personal journals with notes from her training. She didn’t have her whole library.
What she needed was a wizard, but for one of those she’d have to go to a city, and she didn’t dare. The baron would find her immediately. She should send Bryn, she decided, since he was the one who needed help. He was well enough to travel. She had money to give him for the journey. Depending on what he learned, he could either return to his life or return to her. It would be his choice.
He’d more than earned a share of the income from the shop, between his handiwork with the labels, the customers who came mostly to see him, and his knack for selling extra baked goods. She tried to think of how long she’d been on the road before she came to this village. It was hard to tell how long a journey it would be, since she’d taken a circuitous route and had avoided towns, but she thought he might be able to reach a city big enough to have a wizard within a few days.
She counted out the coins he’d need for that many nights in inns, as well as meals, and then doubled that to cover the return trip. She added a few more coins to pay the wizard. He could travel with the musicians when they left after the festival or he could get a ride with the next peddler to come through town if he didn’t want to leave immediately. The one danger was that the person who’d wounded him would know him, while he wouldn’t recognize his enemy, but the enemy had to have known where he’d likely be and hadn’t come for him, so maybe the enemy was no longer a threat.
That plan settled, she put the purse on the kitchen table and went out to the garden. There were plenty of flowers blooming, and she cut enough to make garlands for the festival. She was sitting at the kitchen table, twining flower stems together in chains, when he returned to the house at lunchtime. Seeing him, she felt as flustered as she had as a girl when the handsome hired hand at a nearby farm looked her way. She felt her cheeks grow warm, and she could barely make herself look at him. She dropped the garland she was making and he bent to pick it up for her.
“Thank you,” she said. “How is it going?”
“There wasn’t too much to do other than set up some boards on old barrels to make tables. That’s done. After lunch, I’ll start the roast. The fire’s already going in the inn’s kitchen, so it should be ready to cook by then. That kitchen is nice. There’s a whole fireplace just for roasting, complete with spit. I wonder who I can get to turn the spit. Maybe we’ll have to take turns.”
They continued discussing the festival over lunch, but she barely took in anything he said, she was so focused on her plan. This was probably the wrong time to bring it up, but she wanted to say what she needed to say before she lost her courage. When he started to shove his chair back after he finished eating, she forced herself to look directly at him and blurted, “I’ve been thinking, and you need more help than I can give you in order to get your memory back. You need a wizard. You should go to where you can find one. Maybe you could travel with the musicians when they leave. And then if you have someone you need to go back to, you can go to them. If not, you can come back here.”
She thrust the purse full of coins toward him. “Here, you’ve more than earned this with all your help in the shop. I’m not sure I’d have had it at all without you. There should be enough to pay for inns and food on the journey and pay the wizard. You can also take some herbs, since wizards need those.”
He took the purse and looked at it like she’d handed him a particularly warty toad. “You want me to leave?”
“No, I don’t. But I do want you to be able to move on with your life. What you said last night was true, that it’s not right to do anything while we don’t know who you are. If you do have someone in your life, they must be terribly worried about you. You should go to someone who can help you. I can’t. I don’t have that ability. I’ve done everything I can for you, and this is beyond me.”
“I can’t take your money.”
“Like I said, you earned it. I can earn more. There’s enough for you to make the journey back. And if you don’t come back, send a message to let me know.”
“What if you don’t like who I really am?”
“I can’t imagine that you’d be all that different. This must be your true self. You might be affected by things you’ve been through that aren’t affecting you now, but I would hope that having lived as the person you are now, you could find that again. You’ve been reminded who you really are, regardless of who you’ve been. And like you said last night, I can’t be with you now. I want to give us a chance, or else know that it’s impossible”
“You’re putting a lot of trust in me.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know, since I don’t know who I am. I may turn out to be a total louse who’ll take your money and run.”
“I’d rather learn that than get involved with someone who turned out to be a total louse, which I find highly unlikely.”
“And what about my enemy, the one who gave me this?” He gestured toward where the wound had been. “He’ll know me, but I won’t know him.”
“He hasn’t come looking for you, and I should think it would be fairly obvious where you went.”
“Unless he left me for dead.”
She couldn’t help but grin. “In which case, you’ll give him the shock of his life.”
He grinned in response, and she felt the tension in the room ease. “That might give me a moment’s advantage. I’ll know if someone looks like they’ve seen a ghost that this is my enemy.” He took her hand and clasped it. “I thank you for your generosity and trust. You’re right, we can never move forward until we know, and it’s not right for me to remain forever in this state of not knowing. Now, I have a roast to get started so it will be ready in time.”
“And I need to help Mair decorate, so I’ll join you.”
He took the purse up to his room, and she gathered the things she needed for decorating. He helped her carry the baskets of flowers to the marketplace, where the transformation had already begun. Mair had set up lanterns on posts installed around the square. Elwyn wound garlands of flowers around the posts and on the market pillar. It looked like there would be enough torches and lanterns to light up the place once the sun went down, which was late at this time of year. Bryn stayed busy in the inn’s kitchen, roasting not only the mutton but also some chickens. The aroma wafting out of the inn made Elwyn’s mouth water and stomach grumble.
Once everything was set up and the meats had been removed from the spits to rest, Elwyn and Bryn went home to change into their festival finery, after a quick check on Mair’s injured cow. Mair had brought over more clothes for Bryn, and Elwyn had the new dress Gladys had made for her, ruffles and all. She left her hair loose, even though she was too old to pretend to be girlish and was certainly was no maiden. It had a slight wave from the braids she’d worn for most of the day, but that probably wouldn’t last long. Her only shoes were either cloth indoor slippers or her worn boots. The boots wouldn’t be good for dancing, but the cloth slippers wouldn’t hold up to the wear. For a moment, she allowed herself to mourn her old life, when she’d had many pairs of shoes for all occasions. The duke had been generous—or he’d wanted to make sure she was presentable in his court.
She met Bryn at the foot of the staircase. Mair’s brother’s festival clothes were perhaps a bit too large for him, the jacket hanging off his shoulders and the breeches loose. He’d made an attempt to tame his hair, but when he turned his head toward her at her arrival, it fell right back across his forehead and into his eyes. The sight of him made her want to change her plans and tell him not to go, but on the other hand, the sooner he went, the sooner they could be together for real, if that was going to be at all possible.
This could be their last night together, and she wanted to make the most of it.
Chapter 13
