Page 9 of The Witch's Cottage
“Morning.”
Her slender fingers curl around the cup, and she fidgets a bit, glancing this way and that, pressing the toe of her boot into the frost covering the ground. Do I make her nervous? Lydia says I need to smile more. I consider it, then decide it’s ridiculous. What is there to smile about? All the unpaid work I’m about to do? Yeah, right.
“Would you like some tea?” Aurora asks. “I’ve got all kinds.” She gives me a quick smile, and I notice for the first time how red her cheeks turn in the cold. They’re like apples against her pale freckled skin.
“No.”
A furrow forms between her eyebrows, her green eyes narrowing at me.
Seems I said the wrong thing. Lydia says I do that a lot. But Lydia says a lot of things—so many that I don’t even listen half the time.
I drag the cart closer to the cottage. Aurora stands there at the bottom of her porch steps, watching me as I pull my tool belt out of the cart and sling it around my waist. She’s still standing there when I slip my hammer into the belt hook and grab a handful of nails to put into the pouch.
When I glance back over my shoulder at her, she stiffens.
I really do seem to make her nervous.
“You get snowed on last night?” I ask. Maybe I’m trying to take Lydia’s advice, or maybe I’m just trying to get Aurora to stop staring at me. If she keeps doing that, she’s going to makemenervous, and that’s the last thing I need if I’m going to be up on the steep sloping roof today.
“Harrison and I sleep in the kitchen, so we were okay, but I had to mop up the parlor and the bedroom this morning.”
I arch an eyebrow. “You sleep in the kitchen?”
“No mattress upstairs.” She points toward the sky. “Well, thereisone, but it’s hardly usable.”
Right. I remember that now from when I surveyed the upstairs a couple days ago.
Looking up at the cottage, I narrow my eyes against the sun. “You have a ladder?”
“A ladder?” Aurora blinks at me, tea still steaming in her hands. “Right, a ladder. Um, maybe in the shed?”
She sets off around the side of the cottage, her long plum skirt catching on the dried plants as she walks. I follow a few steps behind her. She’s so short I can see clean over her head, and I’m pretty sure I could carry her in one arm if I needed to.
Not that I’ll ever need to.
We get to the shed, and evenitlooks like it’s leaning to one side, desperately in need of some foundational support. I decide against saying anything. If I’m not getting paid for the work I do here, I’m not going to add more jobs to my list.
Aurora sets her mug on a wooden table beside the door, then fumbles with the lock for a moment before it pops free. She disappears inside, and I cross my arms while I wait. After a series of bumps and grunts, she emerges from the dark, carrying a ladder.
“Will this work?” she asks, handing it over with some difficulty. It looks unruly in her small hands.
“It’s fine.”
I should’ve brought mine. Knew I was forgetting something.
We head back to the cottage, and when I test the ladder against the side of the house, I find it’s just the right length for me to climb onto the roof.
“I’ll patch the holes first,” I tell Aurora, because she’s still lingering, and her staring eyes make me feel like I need to say something.
“Okay.” She gives me a small smile, and for a moment, it holds my attention captive. Her upper lip has a dainty dip right in the middle, and her mouth looks so soft and pillowy in this light.
Andthat’senough of that.
With a grunt, I turn away from her and ascend the ladder, leaving her standing there in the frost below me.
Chapter 6
Aurora
