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“We’ll come up with something, dear,” Mrs. Honeycake said, patting my arm.

I ran a shop where people came in cold and went out warm. I was the one with a spare chair and mugs and the right tea blend for whatever was ailing my fellow town folk. Being the one on the wrong side of the counter, with the entire village turning its kindness on me, made me want to climb out a window I no longer had.

Melissant frowned at her list. “What about Mrs. Honeycake’s spare room? She could sleep there.”

“My sister is visiting, and she’s using it,” Mrs. Honeycake said.

The tavern’s two rooms had already been taken by the wheelwright’s family, whose chimney had come through their kitchen. Asha and Aris shared three rooms above the bakery, and I’d have said yes to their floor in a heartbeat.

Asha knew it.

But Asha stared at the tavern entrance, saying nothing.

Everyone in the Silver Bell followed her gaze to a male who’d been standing through the entire meeting, a mug of ale in his big golden hand.

The silence Asha aimed at the ogre could’ve split firewood.

Darkness crept to the tips of his ears, then the base of his horns. The flush went up to his hairline, turning his skin a deeper gold. His jaw worked. His shoulders came off the wall.

Don’t, I begged him silently. Or do. Don’t. Do.

“I have a house,” Goran said. “A bedroom. It’s warm. It’s…” He directed his gaze to his ale. “It’s three miles out of town.”

The Silver Bell had been loud when we discussed stolen spoons and lost roofs. Now it went quiet. Mrs. Honeycake’s tray full of bakery treats stopped floating around the room making offers. Old Tom set his tankard down with a thud. And Asha’s face went so blank I figured she was screaming inside.

“You’d never make it back and forth for my tea shop opening,” I said, heat flaring through my ears, “with the wagon, in the frosts.”

“Wagon’s fast. Roads are good.”

“You have one bedroom.” This was a thing I knew from Mama, who’d delivered him seed catalogs each spring.

“My hayloft’s snug,” he said, still to the floor. “I’ll take the loft. You can have the house.”

“I’m not turning you out of your home.”

“It’s my home,” he said. “Which makes it mine to offer.” This was a speech. I hadn’t gotten this many words out of him all at once in months.

“You’ll have the house,” he said again, to the floor, but firmer, and his horn-bases darkened even more.

Goran did not repeat himself. Yet he kept saying it. Whispering it. To the floorboards, his ale, and the buttons on his coat. Anywhere but at me. Until he ran out of low places to say it to, and his gaze lifted to the room that had gone quiet around us.

Behind me, someone whispered to someone else, and the second whispered back. I didn’t need ogre ears to know the back half of the tavern was making changes to the betting book.

One of the grannies said, “Mark the tower,” and got shushed by three others.

He glanced up at Melissant, who dipped her pen in the ink.

“Resolved,” she said. “Rain will reside at the Brack farm until her roof is rebuilt. Next, we must discuss the matter of the teaspoons.”

The tavern turned to grief about the spoons, and I sat with my heart going like my kettle on high heat.

The spoon discussion took half an hour and produced no spoons.

Rufus came out from behind his bar, which he does about twice a year, and the room quieted.

“Rain’s roof,” he said. “That one’s mine. I’ll write the dales man for the shingles, and the tea witch’s daughter won’t be paying a copper of it. Bellflower & Brew has poured this village through two funerals and a flood.”

Mrs. Honeycake dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron.