The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,15
silence, but this was not that, and her nerves soon got the better of her and set her talking: “So, where is the swarm?”
Mrs. Griffin didn’t answer right away.
Penelope held her tongue and bided her time, step by step.
Wind rustled the grass at the edge of the road.
Finally the woman burst out: “How on earth did you know?”
The mix of surprise and anger was deeply satisfying. Penelope wondered if magicians felt like this, after a particularly mystifying trick.
But unlike the magicians, she didn’t mind giving away her secret. She settled her pack more firmly on her shoulder and began to explain. “If it was advice you needed for a hive you kept, Mrs. Stowe could have given it. She’s a perfectly capable beekeeper. Not much of a walker, though, these days. And if someone had been stung badly enough to send you running—well, you’d have run for the physician, wouldn’t you? But you look vexed, like there’s something of an emergency. And you’ve been sent to find me by name. So that means there’s a swarm somewhere it shouldn’t be, and you need me to find a better home for it. Simple.” She whistled a little, to keep from grinning at the affronted look on the other woman’s face. “And you never answered my question.”
After a moment, Mrs. Griffin gave a decisive nod, and Penelope’s chest went allover warm at this tiny sign of approval. “Some bees have got into my warehouse,” Mrs. Griffin confessed.
Ah, yes, the print-works in what had been the old Huston mill. Penelope’s curiosity pricked up its ears. “There’s a swarm among your books?”
“No—among the printing plates.”
“Which plates?”
Mrs. Griffin blinked, evidently considering the question odd. “An old book of verses by Joanna Molesey.”
“Oh, how marvelous! Which poem of hers is your favorite?”
Mrs. Griffin snorted. “I am far too busy to indulge in poetry.”
This answer stopped Penelope’s tongue dead as a landed fish.
She was saved from concocting an answer, however, as they were now mere steps from her house. She loaded a few things into a wheelbarrow, along with the everyday tools she’d already had in her pack, and turned down the road that led to the print-works.
The load made it more difficult to carry on a conversation, so Penelope clamped her mouth shut and told herself that if the other woman grew uncomfortable with the silence, that was no fault of Penelope’s.
But she felt guilty about it, all the same.
Mrs. Griffin frowned down at the wheelbarrow. “All that just to kill a few bees?”
Penelope stopped dead and dropped the wheelbarrow handles. The wooden legs hit the dirt of the road with an angry thunk. “We are not killing them.”
Mrs. Griffin slowed and halted, her gray skirts swirling around her ankles. “We aren’t?”
“No. We are rehiving them.” Penelope tapped meaningfully on the curve of the straw skep hive that filled most of the wheelbarrow—much easier to lift and tote around right now than it would be once it was full of comb and honey and slumbering brood. “If you want your bees killed, you will have to find someone else to do it.”
“I don’t necessarily want them killed,” Mrs. Griffin retorted. She jerked her head to toss a loose lock of hair out of her eyes. “I just assumed it would be necessary in order to get them out of the way.”
“It’s not.” Penelope took a deep breath, trying to tamp down the anger flaring up in her throat. She felt like Mr. Painter’s pipe, pouring out smoke and heat. It wasn’t Mrs. Griffin’s fault; she just didn’t know. “Some bees may die in the rehiving process—they might sting someone, or get crushed. It happens, no matter how careful a beekeeper tries to be. But the colony will survive. And that’s important.”
“If you say so.” Mrs. Griffin waited, then frowned harder. “Can we get on with it, then?”
Penelope folded her arms. She wasn’t the one in a rush this fine summer’s day. “Not until you agree we’re not going to kill the bees.”
“Fine!” Mrs. Griffin threw her hands in the air. “Though I don’t see why it matters, one way or another.”
“It matters to me,” Penelope said quietly.
The woman shot her a look so searching that Penelope nearly stepped back from the force of it.
Then the anger seemed to go out of Mrs. Griffin all at once, like a lamp being blown out. “Alright,” she said, and blew out a long breath. “My apologies, Mrs. Flood. You know your business, of course.”