“Oooh, I had never noticed that before.” Tate heard Lady Zahrah behind him, but it was obvious by the hushed tone and snicker that she wasn’t talking to him.

“Noticed what?” Mistress Raquel asked.

“That. Tate’s got a really nice ass.” Tate was glad that he was facing away from them, because his face had to be a red to rival the king’s chair cushions. And it was only getting worse as they both burst into snickers. The giggles lead him to wonder if she was serious, it would be nice if she found something about him to be attractive. It might mean he’d have a chance against Alistair. His hand tightened on the watering can handle to the point of pain.

Damn it. He thought switching the hand that the can was gripped in and reflexively clenching his now free hand. There was nothing like finding yourself short. Except, maybe, short a couple of times over. He knew he couldn’t compete with Alistair on looks, or manners, he was the fifth kid, third son, of an indentured farmer. Plain as the dirt he was currently pouring water over. Alistair was a noble.

Oh sure, he’d been disowned, but the same blood that ran through his veins ran through the veins of some of the greatest men in the kingdom, both past and present. He was a cousin of some sort of Lord Dolph’s, and there was some connection between Alistair and Sir Wesley.

He wasn’t related to King Lachlan, but he had been related, distantly to King Phillip. And he’d grown up in the court, with all the advantages. Tate might as well have grown up in a barn for all the manners he had. He wasn’t charming, or talented at anything except growing plants. Oh, that would impress a girl. He could grow roses, but he had absolutely no idea how to go about giving one.

“Oh, hi, Butterscotch.” Tate heard Mistress Raquel say. He turned around to see the carpenter’s wife bending down to pet his cat. The bending down was no mean feet. Compared to Mistress Raquel’s slim form, her belly seemed almost as big as she was. He had no idea how much longer she had before she was due, but he certainly would have kept an eye on a pet or horse if they’d been her size!

“Mistress Raquel, Lady Zahrah.” Tate bowed, a bit stiffly, Sir Wesley was trying to teach him how to bow. There was still talk of the borders being opened before winter–or at least of diplomats arriving before winter–and Tate had to be ready to receive them and not look like a plowboy stuffed into a page’s uniform–even if that was what he was.

But like when Sir Wesley tried to teach him anything that was graceful, he might as well have had two left feet and a spear shoved up his arse for all the graceful he managed.

“Afternoon, Tate. Blake was wondering if you’d be–attending the King tonight?” Mistress Raquel said, giving the soft fur on the cat’s head one last stroke before standing up.

“Nah, I have the afternoon off. His Majesty says that if I have the day off, I might as well have the whole thing off.” Tate smiled even if he couldn’t keep his eyes from sliding sideways to Zahrah, who offered him a friendly smile back. A friendly smile. It might not be exactly what he wanted, but it was a smile and he had to keep from notching it up to a foolish grin.

“Well, we were wondering if you’d like to come for supper.” She offered.

“Oh, does Master Blake need help with something?” Tate asked trying to rearrange his evening chores to make time to help with it.

“Nope, just dinner.” Mistress Raquel said with an encouraging smile. “Sawyer was moping this morning when he came by to help Blake with some something that Tiffany wants for the pub. Apparently his wife is going to be at Heidi’s all day.”

If Lady Jolene were invited to Lady Heidi’s for dinner, why wasn’t Sawyer? It wasn’t the stigma was it? That Sawyer was just a gutter rat and not fit to eat at a Lord’s table?

“And Sawyer didn’t want to tag along, he says that he’s always afraid that he’s going to sit on one of the chairs and break it or something.” Mistress Raquel rolled her eyes. “Blake’s a better carpenter than that. But I understand what he means. I sorta feel out of place myself when I’m at Heidi’s or Victoria’s, y’know?”

“Aye.” Not that he spent much time at any of the noble’s houses. Still when he’d first come to live with the king, when the plague was really still a rumor in Shadowhaven, he’d felt that way about the house that was now his. While he was still racking his brain to think of something to add onto that, perhaps that it got better with time or something, Butterscotch fell into the fish pond and looked so affronted and dismayed with her wet and bedraggled state that he went to go find her one of those treats that Lady Nessa had given him for her.

“Would you like to come over too?” Mistress Raquel asked, obviously asking Lady Zahrah.

“Can I invite Alistair?” Tate’s heart plummeted and he wouldn’t have been surprised if he looked as miserable and unhappy as Butterscotch at the moment. It was a good thing he as in the barn and not in the yard. “That is a no face, that is definitely a “no” face.” Lady Zahrah pouted, he could hear it in her voice. “I don’t see why you don’t like him.”

“I don’t see why you do.” Mistress Raquel responded.

“He’s a sweetheart.”

“No, Jarrett is a sweetheart. Alistair is an ass.” Mistress Raquel said with a blunt forcefulness that Tate certainly had never heard in her voice before.

“He has never been anything other than a complete gentleman to me, Rae.” Lady Zahrah told her.

“You know, he used to say my lipstick looks like swamp muck and that I had a disease on my face. He used bully Blake too.” Mistress Raquel answered in that same tone.

“Well, you gotta admit, purple lipstick isn’t natural.” Lady Zahrah said. “Maybe it’s just a cultural thing, I mean some people just don’t like that sort of thing. I think my dad would say the same thing.”

“Would you ever call your dad a sweetheart?” Mistress Raquel asked.

“Well, no.” Lady Zahrah said.

“I’m not going to say that you have to choose between me and him or anything.” Mistress Raquel said. “Just don’t ask me to like him.”

“Here you go, Butterscotch.” Tate murmured to the cat who daintily took the treat and made her way off to a patch of sun.

“So, about dinner?” Mistress Raquel asked as Tate as he walked into the shadow along the side of the house, feeling, very definitely, like he was walking into a real life shadow.

“I–uh–well.”

“Great! We’ll see you in a couple of hours then.” She pulled him into a hug.

“All-All right, then.” Tate said. “Lady Zahrah.” Tate bowed again, trying extra hard to do it exactly as Sir Wesley had taught him to. Lady Zahrah smiled and turned to follow Mistress Raquel who was off toward the gate already.

If she was expecting him in a couple of hours, he’d probably better get his chores finished so that he wasn’t trying to get them done after dark. He made his way into the barn, pausing in the doorway as always to look at the beautiful mare in the first stall. Why King Lachlan had given him such a beautiful horse Tate would never know.

Tate wasn’t a noble or anyone who deserved to ride or let alone own a horse like Dumpling. He would have counted himself lucky just to have the chance to groom her. She rattled her oat bucket. She’d grazed that morning, but she was just a wee bit greedy and he–probably–spoiled her. At least there were two girls in his life who liked him. He thought reaching out to stroke the silky mane, his fingers, normally so clumsy, finding that spot behind her ear with ease.

The mare sighed with bliss and tilted her head then she nosed at the bucket again and Tate laughed and went to find her some oats.

“I dunno, Dumpling.” He said to the horse who whickered. “Maybe, maybe Sawyer’s right, Lady Zahrah likes Alistair, and I know I’ll never live up to that. Never.” He shook his head. “You can put a tiara on a goat, that doesn’t make her a queen.”

“He thinks I should court Lady Olivia.” Tate sighed. “She thinks I’m a kid, which I know Lady Jolene used to say about Sawyer. But Sawyer never agreed with that. But I do. I do think, compared to her, I am a kid. Maybe it didn’t matter to him, but it does to me.”

The horse said nothing, which was probably all for the better because if the horse started to talk to him, he’d know he’d lost it. After hanging her grainbucket back on the gate to her stall, he bent to pet Butterscotch who seemed to be mostly dry from her adventures in the pond.

“I just wish…” He shook his head. “If wishes were fishes, beggars’d eat.” What’s the point in wishing and hoping, for guys like him, you just had to appreciate what you had. And he had a lot already, a nice house, a steady job, and his two girls, what more did he really need?

Blake paused at the foot of the stairs, looking around the public room of the cottage. It was still hard to believe this was his. Being the third son of a merchant who was not known for a hardheaded practicality where the cashbox was concerned, Blake was pretty sure that there were more “to be paid later” notes in his father’s old ledger than there was actual notations of payment.

While he had always loved his father’s soft-hearted approach, he couldn’t bear to turn someone who needed something away just because they didn’t have the money right then, it had meant that Blake was set to have a lot of years of traveling to do before he would have a cozy little cottage like this one. And yet here he had one, it was all his, well it was all his for now. Soon-meaning depending on what progress could be made restoring the old chapel-he’d be sharing it.

Lady Tiffany had promised that no matter what state the old chapel was in, she could have it done by week’s end. No one had even thought about it. It had been abandoned after the priests had all died. Not that they didn’t pray, well, he didn’t know what King Lachlan or the nobles did. Nor, actually, what the ladies did. But Fox gathered them once a week and they prayed. It just wasn’t a formal thing. No sermons or speeches or preaching, just a man and the gods and whatever thoughts went between them.

It had remained abandoned all this time, mostly because no one really seemed to think about it, or why they might be needed it. But Blake couldn’t ask Raquel to marry him in the cottage. She deserved a real wedding, in the church. With all the pomp and circumstance that Shadowcrest could provide. Admittedly minimal as it might be.

He hadn’t intended to ask Raquel to marry him, not this winter, not so soon. He would have waited. Maybe he should have. But they’d been sitting on one of the hills outside of town, Shadowhaven’s walls at their backs, the light warm, even if the breeze hadn’t been. She’d shivered and he’d put an arm around her still-too-thin shoulders. She’d turned her face into his neck, and sighed. “What?” Blake had asked.

“I wish this could be like this forever.” She had admitted. And then, in a tumble of fumbled words that had made him wish that he had a silver tongue like Fox, he’d asked. And she’d smiled, one of those all-too-rare smiles that lit not just her face, but her eyes.

A knock came a moment later, startling him out of his reverie. “So, what are you up to?” Ren asked.

“Oh, just kinda rattling around the house. It’s still-what’s Raquel’s word-surreal? that it’s mine and even-odder that by this time next week, it’ll be-ours.” Blake pushed a hand through his hair, looking at the falling snow.

“Oh? What about the chapel?” Ren asked. Blake shrugged, which became an almost shiver. It was too cold for shirtsleeves out and of course he hadn’t grabbed his cloak from the coatrack.

“Would you like to come in?” Blake asked. “It might do a bit better to talk where it’s warm.”

“Aye. This is-different.” Ren hesitated in the door, looking around at the newly decorated cottage. Before, it had just been furniture really. Now it really wasn’t.

“Aye, Raquel and some of the other ladies came over the past couple of days. It is different.” Not that it looked bad, he didn’t think it looked bad at all, just it looked nothing like the cottage that he had grown up in, with it’s tapestries that had hung there for generations and the jumbled, slightly mismatched furniture. Nor like any of the other cottages he knew. It didn’t even really look like Lady Kennedy’s barn.

“Where did they get all this stuff?” Ren asked, sitting down on the sofa that Blake gestured to. Blake settled into the chair both of which were now padded with purple cushions and pillows.

“I didn’t ask, some of it was probably made, but I would assume some of it was procured with the King’s help.” Blake echoed the smith’s swallow. It was one thing to know that your king could do things that most men couldn’t, it was different to sit down on cushions that could have been created with magic. But, as he’d told himself probably fifty times today alone, the dye might have been magicked, but the fabric was most likely woven by Fox or maybe Lady Peyton or Raquel who had both gotten pretty good at weaving.

“Doesn’t it seem a bit-disrespectful-to ask the king to-to-to do something like that?” Ren asked.

“Well, to you and me, maybe, but perhaps not so much to Raquel-and definitely not to Lady Kennedy.” Ren chuckled. Raquel called Lady Kennedy a steamroller. Whatever that meant. She did, though, have a way of getting more or less exactly what she wanted. A second knock came at the door, startling Blake although Ren didn’t seem so surprised by it. The young carpenter’s eyes narrowed slightly but before he could stand, Fox had stuck his head in the door.

“May I?” The tailor asked, kicking the snow off his boots.

“Sure.” Blake said standing up. Fox looked around the cottage and said everything that Ren had said with one quirked eyebrow. Blake tried not to blush. Fox had a way of making Blake feel awkward and clumsy, like a lad rather than a man. Still his handshake was warm and hearty, and his smile genuine.

“It was Raquel’s idea.” Blake said with a blush. Rather than the sardonic grin Blake expected, Fox just nodded and sat down.

“I figured, she likes purple.” Blake nodded. He had no idea how he was going to keep her in purple fabric and dye, it was a bit beyond his or anyone he’d ever personally known’s pocketbooks, but he knew he wanted to, because Raquel liked purple.

Fox hadn’t even gotten settled on the sofa when another knock came at the door. Blake shot a suspicious look at his friends but answered the door anyway. Emanuel was standing on the small stoop, looking-well mostly cold. A lot colder than he should have been given his cottage was right next door. Then movement caught the corner of his eye and his jaw dropped a little.

At the foot of his stairs stood Jarrett. “What’s this all about?” Blake asked.

“Well, lad, we haven’t really got a tavern to take you out to, but you are gettin’ married this week an’ all. You didn’t really think we’d forget did you?” Jarrett said with a smile that while slightly shadowed was still warm.

“Come in, won’t you?” Blake asked, gesturing toward the house. As he shut up the door, he shook his head wryly. “You should have told me, I haven’t got anything for you except tea and soup.”

“We couldn’t tell you. That takes the fun out of it. Maybe it can’t be like it was, when there’d have been somewhere to go, something to do. But it’s always been a surprise, that part at least we could keep.” Ren said. Blake nodded, he had been just old enough to go to the tavern with Gregory when he’d been taken out before his wedding.

Everyone, straight down to Blake’s mother, had known what night they were going, but Gregory hadn’t.

“Lord Gray sent his-and the king’s-regrets, but between the weather and all, they figured it was probably better not to come all this way. Although he did send some ale.” Ren said with a grin.

“You invited the king?” Blake blinked.

“‘Tisn’t like it was with King Phillip.” Jarrett reminded him softly.

“Aye.” They all agreed. Emanuel passed around the bottles of ale, though Jarrett shook his head.

“I’m fine. An’ if I do need somethin’, I’ll be better off with that tea Blake’s got. Can’t be getting a head, I’ve still gotta be up to milk in the mornin’.”

Milking. Looking at Jarrett, Blake felt a wave of guilt wash over him. If anyone should have a warm snug cottage and all to be in, it should be Jarrett. He shouldn’t be living in a barn loft with the animals.

“Jarrett, do you need any help?” Blake asked, noticing that his weren’t the only eyes showing guilt.

“Lads.” The butcher laughed. “Sawyer an’ I manage jist fine, an’ if it’s too bad, we can usually nag M’lord to put in some help. We manage.” He repeated. “An’ the loft is jist fine too, I know you an’ Emanuel have space, Fox. But damned if the barn isn’t near as snug as these cottages, dunno how she did it. Sawyer says Lady Tiffany’s a wizard in her own right.”

“Still.” Fox said looking at his ale bottle.

“Aye, I’ve heard it all before. This wasn’t to be about how can we help poor ol’ Jarrett, you know. So you excited, lad? Nervous?”

“Kinda all of the above.” Blake admitted. Jarrett nodded in understanding.

“I-I remember feeling that way. It’ll pass, I think.” Shadows flickered over Jarrett’s face, settling in the other man’s dark eyes.

“So, do you know when the ceremony will be?”

“Lady Tiffany says she’ll have the chapel done by this weekend. An’ she’s never been wrong before.”

“How’s she getting that done anyway, have you been helping?” Ren asked.

“Not me.” Blake looked around at his friends all of whom shook their head. “Either Lady Kennedy bullied all the nobles into helping-0r…” Blake cut off and left it hanging.

“You never know, Lady Kennedy probably could bully all the nobles into helping.” Ren said with a nervous laugh.

“Aye, we had a talk about children the other day, Lady Kennedy and I.” Blake nodded. The other men looked at him mostly with puzzlement, except for Ren, who’d heard the story. “She told me that she didn’t care that here sixteen wasn’t too young to be having babies, nor that we were supposed to repopulating the country. I’d better respect Raquel’s wishes and-learn to keep it in my hose-I believe is what she said.”

“Keep what in your hose?” Fox asked. Blake blushed scarlet.

“You know, it.” As painfully embarrassing as it was to be talking about this with his friends it had been worse when he realized just what it was Lady Kennedy had been referring to. Women weren’t supposed to so casually refer to your manly bits. Understanding slowly crossed Fox’s face, along with horror. “And if I didn’t, she was going to break my legs, and if that didn’t work, she’d-er-do something worse.”

Jarrett chuckled as the other men cringed.

“And you like her.” Fox said, almost accusingly to Emanuel.

“Aye, so?” The apothecary shrugged. The conversation turned after that, perhaps because castration isn’t anything that most men really wish to linger on for very long. But all too soon Jarrett looked at the snow through the curtains.

“Well, lads, I’d probably be heading on home.” Jarrett said.

“I’ll walk with you.” Emanuel offered.

“Thank you, but ’tis a little out of your way. Considering it’s not even the right direction. Don’t worry, Emanuel, I can find my way home. Just follow the wall, really.” Jarrett dismissed. Blake warmly embraced the older man, thanking him again for coming, as he really hadn’t had to.

Fox was the next to leave, Emanuel right after him. As Blake saw them both off, with slightly less worry, as they only lived across the street and next door respectively, Ren put the dining chairs back and took his seat once more on the sofa.

“Thanks.” Blake said as he sat down himself.

“That’s what friends are for.” Ren told him.

“Aye. So when do you think I’ll be returning the favor.” Blake asked with a faith smile. Ren shrugged.

“I dunno.”

“Haven’t any of the ladies caught your fancy?”

“Not really, no.” Ren admitted. “But there’s only half here, you know.” Blake nodded in understanding. “Besides, I’d rather not be in Sawyer’s position. He is completely moonstruck.”

“Aye.” Blake agreed. He hoped that he wasn’t nearly that bad with Raquel, but even if he were Raquel didn’t seem to mind.

“Well, I ought to be off myself,” Ren said after a stretch. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Aye, more than likely.” Blake said. After all if there was one thing the survivors of Shadowcrest knew, it was that life kept marching on.