garden is awesome. Iris is going to show me how to set up a new beehive, too. She thinks the bees are getting ready to swarm, and we need to keep them here, so we need to give them someplace new to go. I’m going to go to the farmer’s market with her tomorrow morning, early, and help her sell. Veggies and herbs and eggs and jam, but no honey yet, not until December.”
“Good,” I said, because what else was I going to say? “I’ll take you to the farmer’s market to sell?” Clearly not. Everybody needed a mentor, it seemed, and whatever I’d thought, none of those mentors was me. So instead, I said, “Hi, Iris.”
In answer, she nodded. She didn’t snort, though, which I guessed was progress.
I went on, “Just to let you know, Oriana—Honor’s helping Frankie at the lawyer’s today, since I have to work again tonight. Maybe you could make dinner, as I don’t know how late they’ll be, and it’ll be tiring. There’s some mince in the fridge and onions and garlic and pasta in the pantry, and I bought some canned tomatoes. Spag bol, maybe?” When she looked blank, I said, “Spaghetti with meat sauce.”
Iris said, “Spag bol. That’s the best you can do?”
“Without doing another shop?” I said. “Yeh, it is.”
I was going to ask, What, do you have a better idea? She got there before I could.
“Vegetable risotto with roasted chicken,” she said. “Bound to have rice up there, and we’ve got everything else here. Asparagus. Leeks. Peas. Fava beans. Chanterelles. And chicken, because I culled a couple of my poor layers last week. Parmesan, too, because I traded it for veggies.”
“I don’t know how to make anything like that,” Obedience said doubtfully. “I only know how to make regular things.”
“I do,” Iris said. “Never tell me you can’t roast a chicken, and risotto takes some stirring, that’s all.”
“You’re invited to dinner, of course,” I said. Belatedly.
Iris snorted. “Not interested, thanks. I like my own company.”
“Well, that’s told me,” I said.
“Oh, please,” Oriana said. Not to me. To Iris. “Tell me how to make that. Or even better—would you show me? It sounds so good. Much better than spaghetti.”
“I’ll show you,” Iris said. “But I won’t stay.” She scowled some more, and I pondered inviting her again, then gave it up. Oriana would invite her. Gray, I was absolutely certain, would invite her.
Also, how was I going to get any of that courting with this many people around? When Gray had said “courting,” I hadn’t realized he actually meant, “like in Victorian times, with the entire family there to chaperone, so I can’t see anything but your foot and have to imagine the garter, and we do nothing but gaze at each other longingly.” There was slow, and then there was slow. I wouldn’t even have any liquid courage, because I had to work tonight, so I couldn’t … do whatever one did. Sip on a glass of brandy and slip into something more comfortable? Go out to dinner, drink too much wine, and kiss in the car? Marginally less laughable than the negligee-clad seductress, anyway. It might take a fair amount of wine, though.
Hmm. I didn’t have to work tomorrow night. Which meant I was off from Saturday morning at eight until Sunday night at midnight. A weekend. Just like normal people.
That reminded me. I told Oriana, “By the way—Honor’s helping with the identity documents and so forth.”
“I know,” she said, continuing with her weeding. “They told me.”
“And Frankie asked her to help with registering for school,” I went on. “I’m happy to help you, of course, if you’d rather.”
Oriana sat back on her heels. “Do I have to?” she asked.
“Do you have to what?”
“Go to school.”
“Well—yeh,” I said. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Oh,” she said. “I thought it was doing what we wanted.”
I looked at Iris. She looked back at me and gave a shrug. I tried to come up with something to say. Something about being able to support yourself, knowing what an alien concept that would be. In Mount Zion, you didn’t earn money. You worked all day, all week, all your life, and in return, you were given food and clothing and lodging, such as they were. And you gave them babies, more souls to indoctrinate. How did you explain deferred gratification and vocational choice and upward mobility and taxes and rates and mortgages and holidays to somebody who’d never heard of any of them?