Shortbread and Shadows - Amy Lane Page 0,64
up with that. No wonder Bartholomew was a little on the shy and quiet side.
“Sounds like fun. My folks will love it. You know we’re just going there for pot roast and Scrabble, right?”
“You’ve said,” Bartholomew told him, and for once, he didn’t sound anxious.
“Good. It’s going to be fine.”
LACHLAN’S mother, Kristen, was beautiful. Willowy, around five feet, seven inches, with a thick ponytail of rich auburn hair, she wore no makeup to hide her laugh lines, and in jeans and a purple-and-orange sweater, she dressed well enough to tell Bartholomew she wanted to make a good impression. Her eyes were a startling blue, and her husband—who was much taller and whose thinning hair was too salt-and-pepper to guess at the original color—had eyes of deepest brown.
Together, they apparently produced Lachlan’s chestnut hair and hazel eyes, and Bartholomew approved.
Lachlan’s sister favored their mother in build, but her eyes were her father’s, and her hair might have been chestnut brown under the bright blond and blue highlights.
She wore a Halloween SpongeBob sweater and a purple sequined miniskirt, even though she looked only a couple years younger than Lachlan.
The way Lachlan widened his eyes told Bartholomew she always dressed that way—but then, he’d warned Bartholomew that his sister was, in his words, “a lot.”
But his mother wasn’t a “little” either.
“Oh my God!” she squealed as Lachlan ushered him into their small ranch-style home in El Dorado Hills. “You are so cute. Lachlan chose well.”
Bartholomew thought the whole world heard him swallow, but he still managed a smile. “Th-thank you,” he stammered, before his Adam’s apple bobbed again. “I’m really happy to meet you.”
“Come on in.” Kristen gestured. “Charlie, stop fussing over the meat! Let it rest!”
“Hasn’t done anything but sit in the oven,” Lachlan’s father said. “Doesn’t need to rest.”
“Meat’s dead, Dad. Can’t do anything but rest,” Lachlan said, face straight, only the corners of his mouth turned up to show he was messing with his dad.
Charlie Stephens chuckled. “As long as it doesn’t rest in peace,” he said, enjoying his own joke. He shook Bartholomew’s hand. “By the way, Lachlan swore up and down he’s seen you eat meat and we didn’t have to do vegetable lasagna. If we’re feeding you anything you can’t eat, feel free to speak up.”
For a moment, Bartholomew was confused, but Lachlan cleared things up almost immediately.
“He’s pagan, Dad, not vegan. He eats anything he wants.”
Oh! “Pagans are very okay with eating meat,” Bartholomew said. “I mean, some of them were even good with human sacrifice, but my coven doesn’t go that far.”
The silence was electric, and for a moment, Bartholomew wanted to die.
Then Lachlan broke that deadly quiet with a hearty guffaw. “Oh my God, Tolly—killing me! I swear, Dad, he doesn’t eat people either!”
The laugh that followed did a lot to ease the knot in Bartholomew’s stomach, and if it hadn’t, Charlie’s dreamy smile would have finished the job.
“I teach European history, Bartholomew, but our textbook is pretty outdated. How about you come help me with dinner and you tell me more about the history of Paganism. I think you could be my new favorite child!”
Bartholomew looked at Lachlan, who nodded, before handing his tin of cookies to Lachlan’s mother. “I’ve never been anybody’s favorite child before, sir. I think that sounds like fun.”
ERIN made an impatient sound as Lachlan guided her and their mother to the china hutch alongside their big open-air kitchen. They set pies or cakes there when they had desserts, and Bartholomew’s cookie tin held a place of honor.
“Lachlan!” she complained. “Why won’t you let me talk to him?”
“Because, honey,” their mother said, “he’s super shy and we don’t want to scare him off.”
Lachlan didn’t want to tell them about how Bartholomew had stood up for him in front of his parents—not right now when it was so new. His Tolly had a core of steel to him, but Erin Stephens could be a crucible if she set her mind to it, and Lachlan didn’t want to put him through that. Not at the first meeting.
“Please,” he said, voice firm, “let Dad do the interrogation this time. Look at him!” They all shot surreptitious looks to the stove, where Charlie was dishing up the roast and putting finishing touches on the potatoes and veggies. Bartholomew was talking with a wide-eyed earnestness about how midwives had been persecuted by the Christians for understanding the mysteries of a woman’s body, and how any herbal knowledge they’d possessed had been relegated to “witchcraft.”