“It certainly doesn’t act like tea, does it, Tavis?”
“Nay, not a bit, I’ll say, but still no reason for you to be unladylike about it.”
Lydia snorted. “Only you, dear Tavis, dare criticize my manners.”
“ ’Tis because you’re usually the spit of perfection, so it fashes me more than a wee bit when you sally.”
“Well, stir it, Tavis! Don’t just let it sit there.”
Tavis flashed her a disgruntled look as he began to stir the mixture rapidly. “These talented hands were made for curing the richest hides in all of Scotia, not stirring a lady’s drink, I’ll say,” he grumbled.
Lydia smiled at his words. How he went on about his talented hands! One would think they were made of purest gold instead of flesh, bone, and a few calluses. She glanced at him a pensive moment while he stirred the brew. Ever faithful Tavis by her side. Her mornings and afternoons wouldn’t be quite so rich without the man. Her evenings, well, she’d spent her evenings alone for so many years that she scarcely noticed it anymore—or so she liked to believe.
“Why don’t you marry?” she had asked Tavis twenty long years ago, when he’d still been a young man. But he had only smiled up at her as he’d knelt by the vats where he’d been soaking a deerskin to buttery softness.
“I have all I need here, Lydia.” He spread his arms wide, as if he could sweep all of Dalkeith into his embrace. “Why would you be shooing me on?”
“But don’t you want children, Tavis MacTarvitt?” she probed. “Sons to take over your tannery? Daughters to cherish?”
He shrugged. “The Hawk is like a son to me. I couldn’t ask for a finer braw lad, I’ll say. And now we’ve the two wee ones running about, and well … you’re without a husband again, Lady Lydia …” He trailed off slowly, his strong hands rubbing and squeezing the hide in the salt mixture.
“And just what does my being without a husband have to do with you?”
Tavis cocked his head and gave her the patient, tender smile that sometimes swam up to linger in her mind just before she drifted off to sleep at night.
“Just that I’ll always be here for you, Lydia. You can always count on Tavis of the tannery, and I’ll say that a thousand times more.” His eyes were level and deep with something she was unable to face. She had already lost two husbands to two wars and the sweet saints knew there was always another war coming.
But Tavis MacTarvitt, he always came back. Scarred and bloody, he always came back.
Back to stand in the kitchens with her while she dried her herbs and spices. Back to lend a helping hand now and again as she dug in her rich black soil and pruned her roses.
There were times when they both knelt in the dirt, their heads close together, that she’d feel a fluttery sensation in her belly. And times when she sat by the hearth in the kitchen and asked his help brushing out her long dark hair. He’d take the pins out first, then unsmooth her plaits one by one.
“Nothing’s happening Lydia.” Tavis’s voice shattered her pensive reverie and forced her mind back to the present.
She shook herself sharply, dragging her thoughts back to the task at hand. Coffee. She wanted coffee for her daughter-in-law.
“Maybe it’s like the black beans or dried peas and has to soak overnight,” she worried as she rubbed the back of her neck. Nothing was going right this morning.
Lydia had woken early, thinking about the lovely lass who had so bedazzled her son. Thinking about how the situation must seem from her point of view. Calamity after calamity had struck since her arrival.
Which is why she’d gone to the buttery to retrieve quite a store of the shining black beans her daughter-in-law so coveted. The least she could do was find Adrienne a cup of coffee this morning before she told her that the Hawk had left for Uster at dawn. Or worse, the news Tavis had discovered a scant hour ago: that Esmerelda had been trying to kill Adrienne but was now dead herself.
So it had come to this … peering into a pan full of glistening black beans that were doing not much of anything in the steaming water.
“Maybe we should smash the beans, Lydia,” Tavis said, leaning closer. So close that his lips were scant inches from hers when he said, “What think you?”
Lydia beamed. “Tavis, I think you just might have it. Get that mortar and pestle and let’s get at it. This morning I’d really like to be able to start her day off with coffee.” She’s going to need it.
“It’s getting out of hand, fool. A mortal lies dead,” King Finnbheara snapped.