Page 14 of Pippa of Lauramore
“Would I leave you in pain?” I demand.
“No, you wouldn’t.” Anna softens and stands, setting her embroidery on the chair. “All right.”
I follow her to her room and then make my way down to the kitchens. Yuven’s study is just off the hall. Mother has tried to get him to move to somewhere larger, but he likes having access to the gardens, so he stays here. But because the room gets little natural light, and Anna sits here with me while she does needlework, my stoic guardian still nags the poor herbalist to relocate. And weare here often—apprenticing Yuven is my mother’s favorite punishment.
“Yuven?” I call, walking through the door.
He’s not at his workbench, so I check the herb garden out his back door. I would make Anna’s tea myself, but I’m a little nervous about working with the herbs in the recipe.
I find him hunched over with a pair of sheers, snapping away at a flowering yallow.
“Pippa!” He straightens when he sees me. His black hair is in all directions, as usual. He has dirt on his trousers from kneeling on the ground, and his hands are stained yellow from the yallow. “Have they changed their mind? Are you to spend your punishment with me?”
Yuven looks overjoyed. It’s always baffled me how he takes it in stride that assisting him is considered a punishment.
I step forward and flick a wayward twig out of his hair. He turns bright red, which makes me grin. “No, I’m here to collect tea for Anna.”
“Headache again?” He tries to smooth his wayward hair down with the hand that isn’t clutching the bouquet of herbs.
I nod, and he leads me to his workbench. Before he makes the tea, he arranges the cut yallow in a vase. Unhappy with the arrangement, he pulls out a few stems and then inserts them again in different spots.
Finally unable to help myself, I ask, “Whatever are you doing?”
The herbalist glances up and blushes an even brighterred than he did in the garden. “Do you like them? They are for…someone.”
“Really,” I exclaim, teasing him. “Do I know her?”
He purses his lips as if he can’t decide if he should tell me. “She’s one of the garden maids.”
“Which one?” I press.
“Lissy,” he says. “You probably don’t know her.”
“Are you sure you want to give her yallow?”
I peer at his yellow fingers, and his face falls. “I thought it was pretty.”
“Oh, it is pretty,” I say in a rush. “I’m sure she’ll like it.”
Yuven sets the vase to the edge of his workbench and pulls out the dried herbs I recognize as ingredients for Anna’s tea. I watch him closely as he chops the kerrabells.
“Are you sure you don’t have too much there?” I ask, my voice anxious.
He raises his eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Go on.”
“If Anna has a headache, who do they have on guard duty?” he asks, teasing.
I grin. “No one that I know of.”
“Well, if you find yourself in the woods, I could use more merryming and some waterchivel.”
“You’ll cover for me?”
He hands me the package of finished tea. “Don’t I always?”
CHAPTER 4
