Steelhands - Jaida Jones [18]
Seasons change, he’d insisted, and even though it seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go to—not to mention an awful lot of crinoline and lace taking up space in my bags—I’d agreed to go along with his suggestions.
Dealing with Toverre was remarkably like dealing with a herd of cows when only one of them had reason to be spooked but all the rest panicked anyway. If you just stood to one side and allowed them to do whatever they wanted, both parties would come up smelling like posies. Or at least, no one the worse for wear.
I picked up my new plate and set it on the windowsill, figuring I’d decide what to do with it later. Now, at least, I could probably light a fire in my room without feeling like I’d been transported to a blacksmith’s.
“Are you even listening to me?” Toverre demanded, arms crossed over his chest.
“You said you couldn’t begin to tell me what was wrong with it,” I reasoned, going back to stoke the coals with my poker. “So I just naturally assumed you wouldn’t. Tell me, that is.”
“You’re making fun of me,” Toverre said, wrinkling his nose with a disapproving sniff. I wanted to ask him if he needed to blow his nose, but the mere idea would’ve caused spasms of horror or something worse, probably. And me standing there without any of the cleaning solvents that usually soothed his more serious fits of dirt panic.
Fortunately for both of us, someone knocked at the door.
“Looks like someone already heard I was entertaining,” I told Toverre before I could help myself, and went to answer the door. I even wiped the knob first with my skirts, just so Toverre wouldn’t faint dead away then and there. A thin layer of dust and grime came off on the fabric.
Maybe he’d think that was worse.
Standing in the hallway was the same young man who’d helped us with our bags, hand still raised from knocking like he hadn’t quite expected me to get to the door that fast.
“Hello,” he said, glancing over my shoulder toward the fire, and where Toverre was knotted up on the end of the bed like a piece of burned twisty-bread. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. I just wanted to see how the two of you were settling in.”
“Well enough now,” I said, racking my brain to remember his name. “I’m sorry, I’m shit with names. It is Gaeth, isn’t it?”
I knew that Toverre would berate me later for using indelicate language, but there were certain points of etiquette that didn’t make any sense to me. And wasn’t it more polite to ask than to pretend all afternoon that you knew someone when you didn’t? But that was probably just my practical mind getting the better of me once again.
Could’ve done without saying “shit,” though. Probably.
“It is,” Gaeth said, looking marginally relieved.
“Would you like to come in?” Toverre asked pointedly, because I hadn’t yet. I could’ve told him that there were better ways to try and upstage me as a hostess, and sounding like an old magician who lured children into her lair to suck their bones clean wasn’t one of them.
It was all in the tone of voice, really.
For whatever reason, instead of giving Toverre a funny look and suddenly remembering he had a pressing engagement elsewhere, Gaeth stepped inside, leaving me to close the door behind him.
Da would never have stood for a closed door at home with two boys in my room, but as far as I was concerned, he didn’t have anything to worry about. Toverre was no danger to a woman’s virtue, and I could tell by the way he was behaving that Gaeth was about to be the millionth lucky customer—the next great love of Toverre’s life.
It wasn’t so unattainable a title as all that. In fact, it rotated at least once a week, changing heads more often than the Arlemagne crown. He was a hopeless romantic—emphasis on the hopeless part—and anyway, no one ever found him out since his way of showing affection