Chapter 4: What the Women Smelled

"Open the door, Moira Hartigan," said Hester Petherton. "I can smell him from here."

I stood in the hall with a sheet wrapped around me and my heart going.

Behind me, in the bedroom, a very large man was looking for his jeans.

"One minute!"

"Take two. I'm old, I can wait."

I threw on a flannel and opened the door.

Hester stood on the porch with her blackthorn stick and her brown shawl.

Behind her were two Hearth women I knew by sight, one carrying a basket of eggs, the other a covered dish.

All three of them breathed in.

I have never seen three faces so carefully empty.

"Good morning," Hester said.

"Good morning."

"We brought breakfast. The Hearth likes to know its midwife is eating."

"That's kind."

"It's three eggs a head. We didn't know how many were in the house."

Garrick came out of the bedroom.

He had found his jeans and his shirt, and he had not found his boots, and his sandy hair stood up on one side.

He stopped in the hall and took in the porch.

"Hester," he said, and his ears went red above the beard.

"Your Majesty."

"Don't."

"It's the form."

"I'd like the form to leave me alone this morning."

One of the women made a small noise and turned it into a cough.

Hester stepped across my threshold, uninvited, and set her stick against the wall.

"The law says he may not enter unless you say so," she said to me. "I assume you said so."

"I said so."

"Then the law is satisfied. I'll tell you what the Hearth thinks about it, so you don't have to wonder."

"I'd rather you didn't."

"The Hearth reads it as neither yes nor no."

I stared at her.

"Is that all?"

"A woman may share her bed with whoever she pleases."

"A queen's chair is a different thing. No law links them."

She looked at Garrick over her glasses.

"Though I'd say the man looks better rested than he did yesterday."

He cleared his throat.

"I'll make coffee," he said, and fled into the kitchen.

I heard him open three cupboards before he found the pot.

The women put down the eggs.

"We're delighted," the one with the dish whispered, taking my hand. "Dottie's been insufferable. She had a bet."

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