Page 59 of The Pumpkin Bride

Alas, she could not know they were one and the same.

With a hearty sigh, Bram pushed back from the table. “A rug it is, then. Come, Alfred, I’ll see you to your horse.”

Outside, he glanced over his shoulder to ensure Marigold wasn’t within earshot. “There’s something else I’d like from the market. Sunday next is Meg’s birthday. Pomegranates are her favorite fruit. Pick up a few, if you can? They should be in season.”

Alfred climbed onto the driver’s box. “You surprise me again, Jask. You sure your last name is Bone-Cracker and not Cuddle-Pie?”

Bram snorted. “Off with you, then.”

Marigold reveled in quiet birthday celebrations. Now all he had to do was cajole Marigold into revealing her birthday to “Jask” so he could surprise her with a gift.

Autumn sank deeper into the flesh of the Harvest Hollow. They’d done their best to shake off the news Alfred had shared yesterday. All they could do was wait for the wedding to blow over. The indecisive weather matched Marigold’s moods. In the sunshine, the outdoors was temperate. In the shadows, winter had already arrived.

Dark mood or not, there was laundry to be done.

He tapped his good hand with the battledore.

“That’s too fine a dress for this work,” Bram said as Marigold joined him in the courtyard.

After setting her book down on the table he’d carved from the rootstock’s heartwood, she glanced down at herself, then shrugged. Her kirtle was more brilliant than the scarlet oaks that divided the pumpkin fields from the forest beyond.

“My new working clothes are in the pot.” She gestured toward the cauldron of soiled laundry that had been simmering overnight. “This is all I have left. Besides, no clothing is too fine for working.”

Marigold held a healthy skepticism about the division between royalty and everyone else, and he’d loved her for it as a younger man. There was joy in rediscovering her, that time and circumstance had not dimmed her refreshing intelligence and humor.

“Fair, but it’d be a shame to ruin it.”

“I’ve nowhere else to wear it. If a ruined kirtle doesn’t offend you, we’ll be fine.” With her hands on her hips, Marigold turned toward the washtub. “What do we do next?”

“Nothing pleasant. You’re about to discover why laundry’s my least favorite chore.” With a sanded and sealed wooden stick, Bram poked at the sodden pile soaking in the mixture of water, lye, ash, and herbs. “Saints, you go through a lot of clothes.”

“Your pile was as large.”

“Because I’m bigger.”

As he stirred the steaming cauldron, his shirts, braies, hose, and stockings, mixed with her shifts, corselets, drawers, and dresses. Their enmeshment was oddly intimate and mimicked the way he and Marigold had once similarly been enmeshed.

A time better left unremembered.

As he dipped the flat side of the washing stick into the heated low tub, a gasp of lavender-scented steam rose from its depths. She’d insisted on adding the flower to the pot because it calmed the soul and might help him sleep instead of tossing and turning on the divan. What she didn’t—couldn’t—know was fantasies about her had kept him up later than his worries about Crispin returning.

He gestured toward the trestle table laden with laundry tools. “Grab a battledore. Lift what you can, then drop it into the washtub.”

She nodded. “It would be my everlasting pleasure.”

His battledore clattered against the fieldstones.

“Wasn’t that what you said the other day?” She jabbed the flat paddle-like tool in the steaming water. “I liked the sound of it.”

Bram pressed his lips together. Dammit. He’d hoped she chalked his use of the phrase up to coincidence, but her mind was sharper than that. He didn’t know what she suspected, nor could he ask. This moment called for nonchalance.

He shouldn’t—couldn’t—react.

“I’ll beat you again, slowpoke.” Marigold zipped ahead of him to deposit garments into the bucking tub, then flitted back to the pot.

He slid his battledore into the soapy pot. “It’s not a competition.”

“I’m winning,” she trilled as she flew by with sopping clothes.