Page 52 of The Texan Duke
“We came to warm up, Hans,” she said, smiling. She stepped inside, but not before reaching back and gripping Connor’s sleeve and pulling him with her.
“This is the Duke of Lothian, Hans. His Grace feels the same about Scottish winters as you do.”
She made the introductions so quickly that he didn’t have an opportunity to protest theHis Gracepart of it. Stuyvesant did a quick nod of his head, which was, thankfully, the only acknowledgment of his new rank. The man proceeded to ignore him, his attention on Elsbeth. He pointed to a chair with his strange knotted cane.
“Sit, sit. I’ll get you some tea, shall I?”
The inside of the cottage was surprisingly cozy. Connor had expected something like one of their line shacks at home, a sparsely furnished building consisting of a chair or two, a table, one or two cots, and maybe a few bowls and pots.
Here, though, Stuyvesant had surrounded himself with things of beauty. A tapestry hung on a far wall, the scene one of a princess and a white unicorn kneeling at her side. Blue-and-white plates were aligned in a breakfront on another wall. Before it, sat a table with two chairs, with an assortment of dried flowers in a vase atop the table. A selection of pipes with elongated bowls or stems sat on a mantel above a large fireplace with a roaring fire.
A closed door in the opposite wall probably led to a sleeping alcove. All in all, it was a snug little home.
Two chairs sat in front of the fire, but Connor stood beside the mantel, refusing to sit when a man old enough to be his grandfather would be forced to stand.
Elsbeth removed her cloak and hung it on a peg near the door. He merely opened his coat but kept it on. He was still bone-deep cold. He did remove his hat, though, and held it with one hand.
The old man busied himself taking a kettle from the fire and pouring boiling water into a brown ceramic teapot.
Something hot to drink sounded good, but he wasn’t sure he was ready for what the Scots called tea. It was either as weak as water or strong enough to etch his teeth.
There were only two cups, and he was more than willing to decline, but Stuyvesant was adamant.
“Sit, sit,” he said to Connor, handing him a cup.
Elsbeth sent him a look, one of those that said,Whatare you going to do?
He took the cup and sat, thanking the man.
“You get cold, too?” Stuyvesant asked.
Connor nodded.
“I almost left the first five winters. If it hadn’t been for my Moira, I would have. But she loved her country and didn’t want to go back to Germany. So I stayed and told myself I would get used to it. I never did. But I never left, either.”
Stuyvesant sat on the brick hearth, propping his cane on his left side.
“Hans takes care of the cattle on the western side of Ben Ecshe,” Elsbeth said, sipping delicately from her cup. “He also has an uncanny knack for predicting the weather.”
“My left knee,” Stuyvesant said. “It hurts when snow is coming. My right elbow when it’s going to rain. It’s clearing, little one. No more snow for a week or so.”
“That’s good to know, Hans. I’m growing a little tired of it.”
They talked a while of weather and cattle stores. The windbreak in one section needed to be repaired. Elsbeth nodded, put down her teacup on the table between the chairs, and took out a notebook from her pocket to make a notation.
“Do you need anything, Hans?” she asked, her pencil poised above the page.
“A little flour,” he said. “Some honey if you have it. And some bacon.”
He added a few more items and Elsbeth wrote them down. He grinned at her, his eyes twinkling. “And if Addy has any more scones, you might pass them along as well. My baking is not as good.”
The tea was surprising, not as strong as what Connor had had before, but a good flavor. When he said as much to Stuyvesant, the man beamed.
“My Moira taught me how to make tea,” he said. “I think of her every morning. I add a little cinnamon to the tea. Not much, just enough to add to the flavor.” He glanced at Elsbeth. “If you could add cinnamon to your list, little one.”
She nodded.
He wanted to ask about Stuyvesant’s wife, but was reluctant to do so. He had a feeling that Moira might have been gone for some years, but Stuyvesant kept her alive in small daily ways, like the way he made his tea and the tidiness of the cottage.
