Winter didn’t frighten him. He was born in Scotland, where winters were no balmier than in England. The best antidote to the cold was something warm—like pies, for example. This was the perfect opportunity to see if the bakery he’d visited the prior evening was open. They might be baking delectable bannocks and cakes regardless of a little snow.
It had indeed fallen to ankle-length, but the villagers had not been idle. The pavement had been cleared on both sides of the road, leaving an unobstructed walking path between the castle and most of the village. The snow on the road was packed down in long stretches on both sides, likely in part due to the horse-drawn sleighs carting villagers and tourists who preferred not to walk in the snow.
Both efforts appeared to cease at the entrance to the horse farm. There was nothing after that but endless miles of hills and snow and evergreens. The road out of town already looked dangerous and impassible. Horace and Morris were right.
Jonathan pulled down the brim of his hat to deflect the flurries of snowflakes caught in the wind, and headed into the bakery.
The smell of hot fresh bread nearly lifted him off his feet.
“Ho there,” he called out jovially.
“Ho there,” Mr. Bauer, the baker, called back. “Another cinnamon biscuit?”
Jonathan was so startled, he almost toppled out of his kid leather gloves and shiny fashionable boots.
Although he introduced himself to everyone, there was little reason for others to remember him. Jonathan never returned to the same town twice, thereby skipping right past any anxiety about whether he was half as memorable as he tried to be.
“Two cinnamon biscuits,” he replied, then changed his mind. “Two of every biscuit.”
Mr. Bauer’s eyes twinkled. “Are you certain you don’t want three of each?”
“I’d take all the biscuits,” Jonathan admitted, “but then what would everyone else eat?”
The baker pointed at his great oven. “Come back in a quarter hour and find out.”
“Perhaps I will come back,” Jonathan said, surprising himself more than the baker. Being recognized and remembered was just as nice as eating warm, steaming bannocks. He placed a pile of coins on the counter. Enough to cover all the biscuits, just in case the baker had been serious about selling them to Jonathan.
He moved aside as a family burst through the door, exchanging familiar greetings and updates on this sister or that dairy cow with the baker.
Each word struck like lightning through Jonathan’s chest. It was not so much envy as a bone-deep longing, a white-hot yearning to be this familiar to someone else. To be known.
He did not want Cressmouth in specific—anywhere but here!—but part of him had always been searching for a place to belong.
“Now, where did that spatula go?” The baker’s fat, flour-coated fingers tapped an empty peg on the wall. “It should be up here in its little home...”
Jonathan’s chest felt hollow. Home was a place that was incomplete without you, where someone would notice when you left, would wish you were still there so that home would feel complete for them, too.
But no one had ever looked for him with a quarter of the intensity as the baker searching for his missing spatula—or half as much delight when they stumbled across him.
“There it is!” Mr. Bauer boomed, depositing two fresh pies into the outstretched mittens of two rosy-cheeked bairns before placing the spatula back on its peg with a comforting little pat. “There you go, back where you belong, next to your brothers.”
The children’s mother turned to Jonathan with a smile. “Good morning. Are you here to celebrate Christmas, or here to stay?”
Neither.
Why would he live in a place people left? He already knew the pain of being used to someone and having them ripped away. Loving and losing his mother had been hard enough. The only way to escape such heartbreak was to avoid close ties at all costs.
“Passing through.” He accepted two large parcels of biscuits from the baker, and handed one to the children’s surprised mother. “Have a splendid day!”
He slipped out of the bakery door before they could shower him with festive cheer.
The delicious smell of biscuits permeated the cold air. He could take his prize to the Duke of Nottingvale’s cottage and split them amongst the staff, but returning so soon after he set out felt like giving up.
Besides, Nottingvale’s staff had a ducal kitchen at their disposal, as well as a castle with unlimited refreshments up the road. Since His Grace wouldn’t arrive for days, they could nip out and indulge their sweet tooth whenever they pleased.
Miss Parker, on the other hand, was unlikely to leave her shop for something so frivolous as freshly baked shortbread. After accepting that new project yesterday, Jonathan wouldn’t be surprised if she’d stayed up all night working.
If anyone deserved a few dozen biscuits, it was Angelica Parker.
Rather than sweeping in through the tinkling door as he’d done the day before, Jonathan eased it open carefully, lest he disturb her.
She was at the back, behind the long wooden counter, just as she had been the day before.
Indeed, if Jonathan hadn’t been certain that an entire night had passed since he had last seen her, he might believe he had opened the door and accidentally walked into yesterday.
She was wearing the same pink dress as before, though the puffed sleeves now had no wrinkles. Her glossy black curls were in the same chignon, and not the tiniest hair was out of place. Her eyes looked less tired. Her mouth twisted in an adorable expression of concentration.
She looked how he imagined she had looked yesterday morning, hours before he had first walked through her door. As though yesterday were the “after” and today the “before.”
Jonathan had never been so intrigued. He took a closer look around her shop. Yesterday, he had inspected every single one of her beautiful, intricate pieces. They—like bonny Miss Parker herself—had distracted him from what wasn’t present. No artwork hung upon the bare walls. No hanging silk, no wallpaper, just plain wainscoting. The counter itself was free from adornment, the display case naught but plain shelves behind glass.
It was as if she felt no need for the typical decorative flourishes other people strove to add to their homes and workplaces, because the beauty of her creations spoke for itself.
Like her understated surroundings, Miss Parker needn’t add ostrich feathers or other ostentatious touches to draw attention to herself. She was gorgeous and perfect just as she was.
He swallowed. She had granted him permission to touch her art, but he had not done so, because it was not her art he longed to touch. It was Miss Parker he wished to explore. The unwrinkled gown, the soft tendrils of her hair, the contours of her lips.
These were not thoughts he could allow himself to entertain. Not with her.
Due to the snowstorm, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. Intimacy of any kind was far too terrifying to consider when he couldn’t walk away.
“Here for your hair combs?” Miss Parker asked without looking up from her work.
“Aye,” he said. “If you’re willing to sell them today. I also brought you a few biscuits.”
At this, she looked up, and her brown eyes widened at the size of his package. “Do I look like the sort of woman who would eat two dozen biscuits?”