Maylee’s eyes sparkled as she arranged her plate before her, and her delighted expression made Viv smile. The woman was definitely enthusiastic about her food.
Viv dragged her own plate back in front of her and picked up the fork. “Eight hells, I can’t even imagine. I’d go crazy. I feel like I’ve got an itch I can’t scratch waiting around here, and it gets a little worse every day.”
The dwarf enthusiastically sawed off a bite and popped it into her mouth, closing her eyes as she chewed. “Oh, that’s the stuff.” She sighed contentedly. “Anyway, nah, not really. I keep myself busy, and there’s a lot less bleedin’.” She pointed her fork at Viv. “And a lot better food.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes, only the clink of knife and fork on the tin plates marking the time. It was comfortable.
Eventually, Maylee put down her utensils and steepled her fingers over her plate. She was still smiling, but there was something serious about her gaze, too, and Viv had the sense of a curtain being swept aside.
“Look,” said Maylee, and her voice was softer, pitched just for Viv. “I like you.”
Viv cleared her throat as that comfortable feeling evaporated, replaced with a jumble of emotions she couldn’t sort out without time to claw through them. Time she suddenly didn’t have. “Uh, I guess I sort of figured that out,” she said, lamely. And then lower down, “Don’t know why, though.”
Maylee arched a speculative brow. “Well, I woulda said it was when I first saw those arms, ’cause … eight hells! But really it was when I saw you waitin’ in line. Watchin’ the careful way you moved around the other folks.”
Viv’s cheeks went hot, and she couldn’t find any words. She suddenly didn’t have the breath for it.
“All real cute. And okay, then I talked to Fern, too.” At Viv’s widening eyes, Maylee laughed. “She didn’t spill any secrets, hon. But maybe I got a peek at you. Enough to know I’d like to know you better.”
Her smile slipped, and there was something distant and sad in her eyes. “You know, there’s a lot of people out there. Lot of noise. I love what I do, love it every day, but none of us sees more than a tiny piece of all the world, like we’re lookin’ out a little-bitty window. And I saw you through mine, and somethin’ inside me said, ‘That’s somebody you oughta know.’ Simple as that.
“I know you’re gonna be gone,” she said. “Maybe in a couple weeks. You know what, though? Doesn’t matter to me. I’m just gonna make it real simple for you. Do you think you oughta know me?”
Maylee tried to say it casually, but Viv wasn’t so dull she didn’t feel the thread of tension running through those words.
Viv stared at her entirely too long as words turned to vapor in her mind, and all the while she felt that line of tension grow tighter. And when she couldn’t bear for it to break, she suddenly had to answer.
“I’d like that,” said Viv. And while that was true, part of her knew it was a truth with an edge to it. One that might cut them both later.
17
“You own a boat?” Viv looked bemusedly at the dinghy moored to the smallest of the four piers, which benefited from the sheltered, stiller waters off the cove. A long sandbar curled out in a narrowing arm, and the promontory with the unrecognizable structures overlooked it all.
Seawater slopped along the hull of the tiny boat as it seesawed gently back and forth. Viv eyed the size of the vessel with trepidation, having some difficulty mentally fitting herself into it. “I’ve gotta say, I figured it would be … bigger.”
Other watercraft, none terribly large, bobbed in a ragged line down the length of the jetty, which was mostly populated by gulls and terns toward its end.
“I just borrow it when I feel the need to. This old sailor who comes by every day for biscuits lets me use it as I please. Don’t know why he even keeps it, since he’s out on a trawler all day.” Hanging on to one of the pilings, Maylee stepped into the belly of the boat. “Hand that over, hon,” she said, gesturing at the wicker basket on the boards.
Viv obliged, passing along the basket with a soft clatter and clink.
The dwarf tucked it behind the plank seat near the prow and glanced back, brows raised. Viv’s doubt must have been plain on her face, because Maylee laughed that delicate laugh, sparkling as the seawater. “C’mon, you know how to swim, don’t you?”
“I know how,” said Viv. “But it doesn’t seem to matter much. I still sink like a stone. And with a bum leg? I’m definitely headed straight for the bottom.”
“Well, I never learned, so if we capsize, we’re goin’ down together. It’ll be very tragic and very romantic.”
“You don’t know how to swim, and you like to go out on this tiny boat?” Viv made a show of eyeing her from head to toe. “Guess you didn’t give up the mercenary life for lack of bravery, huh?”
“Enough stallin’. Untie that, all right?”
Viv laid her walking staff against a piling where she was reasonably sure it wouldn’t roll off, then unmoored the ship, tossing the rope into the boat. Maylee held it steady to the pier with one hand, then leaned to the side to make room and said, “You can do it. Left leg in first.”
It had been a few days since their dinner together, and Viv had managed to walk down to the pier with only a moderate limp and the aid of her staff. Still, she couldn’t help hissing and wincing as she made her ungainly way into the boat. There was a bad moment when she hiked her wounded leg after her, wobbling precariously, and then Maylee’s hands were on her waist to steady her.
She slowly lowered herself onto the stern seat, next to the shipped oars. Cool air billowed out from the shadowed water under the pier.
“You know how to row?” asked Maylee.
“Seems like something I could figure out.”
The dwarf gave her a considering glance, then held her hands out. “Eh, pass the oars to me.”
Maylee rowed them away from the pier toward the center of the cove. The sunlight shattered to pieces on the gentle, scalloping waves. A brace of terns followed them, scolding with their harsh, burring voices.
The gong of the tolling hour glanced off the cliffside to the north, and in the distance a galleon forged southward, sails belling in the offshore winds.
The baker’s sturdy arms kept up steady, powerful strokes as she charted a course along the sandbar, heading north and around the cape.
For the first while, Viv clutched the sides tightly, sensitive to every sideways swell and feeling entirely too big for the boat. Visions of toppling overboard—and taking Maylee with her—crowded her mind. No matter what Maylee said, Viv didn’t think there was anything romantic about drowning in sight of land. Eventually, she relaxed, though, and enjoyed the feeling of the sun on her skin and the growing hush as they drew farther from shore. The water glinted blue as sapphires, but Viv could see in the distance where it blackened over unknowable depths.
As they rounded the northern promontory, another small cove came into view, this one shaded by the bluff. When they coasted into the shadows, Maylee dug the oars in to slow to a stop.
The cool of the shade was shockingly sudden, and Viv’s arms broke into gooseflesh. Maylee flicked the end of an oar to catch her in the salty spray and grinned mischievously.
“I’ll remember that,” said Viv, with a slow grin of her own. She looked at the exposed rock of the cliff wall above them, a thousand layers sandwiched at an angle. Gulls twirled before it in a whirl of white, but surprisingly kept their voices to themselves, as though reluctant to ruin the hush. “You come here a lot?”
“It’s quiet. Cool. Pretty much the opposite of the bakery,” said Maylee. She hoisted the wicker basket into the center of the boat, between Viv’s legs, which occupied a lot of the room. Unfolding the linen, she withdrew a full loaf of bread and knocked on it with a knuckle. It sounded almost hollow. “Old and stale. And not for us.”