Page 16 of The Wolf in My Tavern

Chapter Seven

Ada

“Apackage came for you,” Betsy says with a wink, bringing me to an abrupt stop as I dump a round of empties on the bar.

It is Friday lunchtime, and trade is already steady. Tonight is usually busy and rowdy, but it’s also the night when Callum and his father call in. I am already in knots of anticipation. There is no hope for it. I can’t think about anything but the kiss… Well, and Master Gray, although there is always a measure of guilt when my eyes drift his way if he is here.

However, for now I am baffled by the news of this mysterious package.

My stomach turns queasy as I worry it might be something to do with my father. Perhaps he knows where I am and is issuing a threat.

Perhaps he will come for me.

“Hey,” Betsy says, turning to me with a frown. “You have lost all color. It was Callum as dropped it by this morning. I think the lad had hoped to catch you, but you were helping May make up the beds in the guest rooms at the time. I don’t think Callum has a nefarious bone in his body, and, if his sorrowful expression when I told him you were busy is anything to go by, the lad is sweet on you.”

All the blood that just drained from my face rushes back, and I blush up to the roots of my hair.

Betsy chuckles, reaches under the counter, and pulls out a cloth-wrapped bundle.

Thank goodness there is a lull in the customers because I gasp when I see it. My fingers shake as I carefully unwrap it, and my prized book tumbles into my waiting hand.

“The Princess and the Pea,” Betsy says.

“Oh, is that the title?” I ask, breathless and shaking with emotion. “I cannot read.”

She smiles. “Aye. It looks like a children’s storybook. It is a strange wooing present, though, to be sure.”

“I—it’s not a wooing present,” I say, confused about how he got it. “I kept it hidden under my bed. H-how did Callum come to have it?”

My heart beats wildly in my chest as I try to determine what this means.

“Oh, there’s a note with it,” Betsy says, indicating the paper I only now notice peeping between the pages of the book.

I draw out the handwritten note with shaking fingers and offer it to Betsy. “Would you read it for me?”

“Are you sure?” she asks. “What if it’s a private kind of message?”

“No, please. I want to know.”

She skims it with her eyes. “It says... ‘I believe this might be yours… You do not need to worry about him anymore. He has been taken care of… signed Callum’.”

Tears pool in my eyes as I take the note from her and carefully fold it again.

“He is talking about your worthless father, I take it?”

I nod. “I think so. But how?”

She shrugs. “How do you think they got us out of that pit? Callum’s pa has always been more than just a blacksmith. Now, that is a fine man.” Her face takes on a dreamy expression. “I don’t mind a bit of maturity. Truly, it’s a pity he thinks himself too old. I swear the man is in his prime.” She makes like she is fanning herself before grinning and pointing at the paper and book clutched to my chest. “Happen this is a wooing present, after all.”

I dash up the stairs to stow the note and my book in my little attic room, and then I breeze through the day in a daze that is every bit as dreamy as the expression on Betsy’s face when she talks about Callum’s father.

I can’t keep my eyes off the clock over the mantel, counting the hours, watching the sunset and the lamps being lit, and waiting for the time when Callum and his father usually turn up. My eyes are constantly on the door—I nearly put my neck out how often it whips around when I hear the familiar jangle of its opening.

By the time they finally enter, laughing as they talk to another man, I have passed through nervousness into a state of anticipation so great that I freeze on the spot halfway across the room, arms laden with a tray full of pints.

“Don’t leave us thirsty, Ada!” a patron calls, but I don’t turn to acknowledge him, for my eyes are on Callum, who has similarly stopped dead and is staring at me.

In an instant, I know all that he did.

---