Page 12 of Silverbow
Clear blue sky with wispy clouds stretched until it disappeared into the ocean. No, it certainly did not look like there was a storm coming, not unless Liam refused to put his eyes back in his head. She dragged him by the elbow to the chandler.
With bundles of candles added to the satchel and plenty of coppers left in the coin purse, Enya jerked her head toward the peddler in silent question. Liam grinned, dumping the salt and sugar into her arms, and swaggered back across the street.
“What flavors do you have, good sir?” He asked.
“Apple, peach, cherry,” the street vendor barked back.
Liam returned to the hitching post with one of each, splitting them in half so they could both have a bite of all three. They were still licking the sticky mess off their fingers when her father appeared, a small box tucked under his arm.
“How is it you are always eating?” He laughed as he approached. “It is a wonder Alys manages to keep the kitchen stocked at all.”
“You work us too hard,” Enya shot back.
Liam held his hands up defensively. “I have no complaints about my work, my lord.”
Her father chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder. “I know my boy, I know. Shall we then?”
“Lord Ryerson! Lord Ryerson!” The shrill call stopped them short of mounting.
The source was easy enough to locate as a plump woman in a lemon yellow gown waved a ghastly pink parasol over her head. Enya could not stifle the laugh that bubbled up in her throat as Lady Blakwell dragged a girl that could only be her daughter toward them, ignoring the curses that followed in her wake as she shouldered through without regard.
Alma Blakwell, the Widow of Westforks as she was often called, was as jarring as her choice in dress would suggest. And she had been trying to get Renley Ryerson’s boots beneath her dining table since the day she put off her mourning blacks.
For all his bluster abouther, Enya knew her father was rather glad he didn’t have a sociable young lady he had to escort about town. From the time she’d been just a girl, the ladies would cluck over how she needed a mother, how lonely it must be upcountry or that Lord Ryerson did not look well enough tended, and it just so happened they had a sister or a cousin or a daughter who would be most suited to that sort of thing.
Enya had no memory of the woman who had succumbed to yellow-eye fever only months after she was born, but she laid flowers on the grave every year at Sun Day. But more often than not, when Enya rode Arawelo past the stone in the orchard, she saw that it had been adorned with fresh petals, for her father’s devotion never seemed to wither. She once asked him why the gravestone was not with the others at the edge of Greenridge, and he simply said that she had liked the orchard best.
Without knowing what she’d lost, Enya did not feel it so keenly. Her family had always been her father, Liam and Del, Griff and Alys, and Marwar. The stable boys and Del’s hands had been much like cousins and uncles over the years, and she’d never seen a feast day with empty chairs in the dining room of RyersonHouse. Her father had made it abundantly clear he had no inclination to add another, until he started on this suitor business.
She looked over to see how he enjoyed pursuit, and from the set of his jaw, she knew he did not. But the lord of Ryerson House clasped his hands behind his back and gave a slight bow, the picture of good manners.
“Lady Blakwell, you look as well as ever.”
Enya had to bite her lip. The preening woman drew herself up, threatening to spill out of that alarming yellow dress.
“Ah, Lord Ryerson. So good to see you after such a long and dreadful winter. Of course here in town, we managed just fine. How was it upcountry?”
“Fine, my lady,” he answered.
“How you manage alone out there on the estate, I cannot begin to fathom. It must grow so terribly lonely.” As if suddenly remembering the girl she held by the arm, she let her go and shoved the girl forward. “Do allow me to introduce my daughter, Crissa.”
The doe eyed girl dropped a well-practiced curtsy.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, my lord.”
“The pleasure is mine.”
Enya tried to wipe her face blank as her father gestured over his shoulder. “My daughter, Enya, and Liam Marsh, the son of my stablemaster.”
She dropped a curtsy that was not nearly as practiced as Crissa’s, made even more awkward by the britches, and Liam gave a stiff bow. Together, they must have been a sorry sight.
Lady Blakwell sniffed. “So good of you, Lord Ryerson, to be so charitable toward the help.”
Enya’s eyebrows climbed to her hairline, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Liam turn scarlet, but the Widow of Westforks charged on, patting her daughter’s hand.
“I can only hope Crissa finds a man so decent. This will be her first season out in society, you know.”
“Ah.”
