Tomas delivered the letter, and he did it from a safe distance.
He stood at the edge of our garden with the envelope held out in both hands, bowed three times, and said, "From Sister Margaret. I'm to wait for no reply. I'm also to say that I was not sent to check on the chickens."
"The chickens are fine," I said. "Would you like some tea?"
"Yes, please," said Tomas, and looked horrified at himself. He left twelve minutes later, a little pinker than when he arrived. Noctavia watched him go from the window.
"He's getting braver," she said.
"You gave him the good cup."
"It was the nearest cup."
It was not the nearest cup.
I opened the letter at the kitchen table. It was one page long, and written in the same upright handwriting that had once corrected my spelling in the margins of my hymnal.
Elise,
I am well. The cathedral is cold. Please eat more.
Enclosed is my brother's recipe for Sunday buns. I do not say this is a gift. I only found it while tidying, and it seemed a waste to leave it in a drawer.
Your stew was acceptable.
M.
Under it, copied out in neat columns, was a list of ingredients and a note that read, Do not let the dough rest too long. It dislikes being ignored.
I read it three times, because my eyes were getting hot.
"What does it say?" asked Noctavia, who was pretending to look at the ceiling.
"She sent a recipe. She says it isn't a gift."
Noctavia took the page. She read it slowly, with her tail perfectly still, and read the last note twice.
"...The dough dislikes being ignored," she said.
"I think that's about more than dough."
"Obviously it's about more than dough, Elise, I'm not stupid." She put the paper down on the table and smoothed it flat with both hands. "We're making these."
"We?"
"I'm making them. You're handing me things."
I have fought armies and held a bridge. None of it prepared me for Noctavia and a bag of flour.
She stood at the counter with her sleeves rolled up and the expression of a woman about to lay siege to a city. The recipe was propped against the jar of yellow flowers.
"Flour," she said.
I handed her flour.
"Sugar."
I handed her sugar.
"Butter. Room temperature. What room? Whose room?" She narrowed her eyes at it. "I could fix that."
"Noctavia."
"I know. No magic." She set the butter beside the stove and glared at it until it softened by itself, which took an hour. She did not look away once.
Her first attempt at kneading sent flour straight into her face. She sneezed. Her tail knocked over the milk jug, then the spoon, then the entire bowl of cinnamon sugar, which burst across the floor like a very small, very sweet explosion.
We both stood in the silence of it.
"That's not my fault," said Noctavia.
"No."
"That's the tail's fault."
"Of course."
Flour sat on the tips of her ears. She looked so furious and so hopelessly adorable that I turned around and pretended to inspect the wall.
"Your shoulders are shaking," she said.
"It's the cold."
"Elise."
I laughed. She threw a handful of flour at me, missed, and hit the window instead. Somewhere in the garden, a hen made a noise of disapproval.
The first batch came out of the oven hard as river stones.
One rolled slightly and clicked against another.
"I could build a fortress with these," said Noctavia, in a very small voice.
I bit one. It was like biting a doorknob. I chewed with great dignity and said, "It has... character."
"It tastes like regret." She carried the tray out to a stump for the hens. "I'm doing it again."
"Okay."
"Don't help."
"I won't."
"...Hand me the butter."
The second batch took her all afternoon. She measured everything twice and guarded the dough as if it might escape. When the buns came out, golden and smelling of cinnamon, she stood in front of the tray and didn't move.
"Well?" I said softly.
"They look correct."
"They look wonderful."
"Don't be dramatic." She picked up one with both hands, very carefully, and held it out to me without looking. "Here. I didn't make this for you."
I made this for you.
I took it.
It was warm, and soft, and a little too sweet in the middle and a little burnt on one corner. It was the best thing I'd ever tasted.
"It's good," I said, and my voice wobbled.
"I know it's good," said Noctavia, though her ears had turned bright red. "Eat it before it gets cold."
I did.
She watched me eat the whole thing. When I finished, she let out a long breath through her nose and picked up a second bun, took one bite, and nodded once, as though a treaty had been signed.
Out in the garden, the little tomato had grown a second leaf that morning. Neither of us had mentioned it.
We packed a basket the next day: six buns in a cloth for Sister Margaret, with a note in Noctavia's careful handwriting that said only Acceptable. Tomas could carry it. Two more buns went in a smaller basket for Harlan, since Noctavia had decided he was owed something for the bread incident.
She stayed behind to guard the tomato from "unknown threats," which this morning meant a butterfly. I walked down to Millbrook.
Harlan took the basket with both hands, as though I'd handed him a newborn. He lifted the cloth, sniffed, and went very quiet.
"Sunday buns," he said.
"You know the recipe?"
"My mother used to bake them. Half of Greywater did, before the war." He cleared his throat and gave me a small, shy nod. "Tell the Lady... Noctavia... I said they smell right."
"I will. She'll pretend she didn't hear."
Harlan almost smiled. Then his face changed, and he leaned over the counter and lowered his voice.
"Hero Ashford. Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"There are two children around the square. Strangers. A tall girl, maybe fourteen, fifteen, and a little boy." He looked toward the door. "They don't beg. They don't steal. I've left bread on the step three nights now, and in the morning it's gone, and the plate is always washed."
My stomach tightened in a strange, soft way.
"Where do they sleep?"
"I don't know. The girl won't talk to anyone. The boy does, but only when she isn't looking." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I thought... well. You're the Hero. You'd know what to do."
I looked at the door, at the road beyond it, and at the empty square where the rain had begun to fall, thin and gray, over the cobblestones.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But I'll come back tomorrow."
I walked home through the drizzle with an empty basket and a head full of thoughts.
Back at the cabin, Noctavia met me at the door with a towel already in her hands.
"You're wet," she said, glaring at my hair. "Idiot. You'll catch a cold."
"I'm fine."
"You're dripping."
She dried my hair roughly, with a great deal of complaining. I let her.
I didn't tell her about the children.
I told myself it was because I wasn't sure yet. I told myself that I would, tomorrow, when I knew more.
But I had a very bad feeling, as I stood there dripping on the mat, that this was the first thing I had ever kept from my wife.
And that I was already planning to keep it a little longer.