Spinning Gold
Chapter Two: A Man's Love
Recap- Aya has found out that Jake, her employer, returns her affections, she is no longer vain, and her affections toward Jake have been split, half to him and the other half to Eben, the noble she met.
Life progressed as it always did, moving and flowing with perfect ease. Rain falling without a care for what it would do to the crops, sun then beating down cruelly and causing the wet earth to cake with mud and small hairline cracks. And the economy got worse and worse.
I sighed and moved the basket to my other arm. I rarely worked inside of the bakery now, instead I did bread deliveries and sometimes, if he was sick, milk deliveries. Which meant I had to be up early and got home very late.
I had finished my morning run and the sun was just peeking over the horizon I was on my way back to the bakery where I would be milking the cows or sent out to pluck berries. I turned a cornier of the street, my feet kicking up dust when I heard someone say hello.
It was in the point of the morning where the dunk men where walking about, wandering until they stumbled upon their homes. In other words, there was no point for me to answer.
"Hello, Aya!" the man said again. I stopped and turned.
"Yes?" I asked. He came up to me and smiled.
"Do you have anything good in there?" he asked motioning to the basket. I grimaced; the rule was paying personages first, then you.
"Yes a crepe, about one copper." I said. His hand reached into his pocket and he pulled out a coin which he pressed into the palm of my hand. I looked at it dumbfounded. A gold piece? Was he insane? Or was…
"Eben!" I hissed at him, trying to make him take back the coin. He laughed and held up his hands, his cloak loosing about his neck a bit.
"No, you need it more than I do." He said with a wink. I flushed a bit and turned on my heel. He moved easily next to me, chewing thoughtfully on the crepe.
"So, how is your garden going Aya?" he asked me nonchalantly. I grimaced. The rain fall had all but ruined it, except for a couple of potatoes…
"Not so good." I said.
He smiled kindly and stopped at a vegetable seller's cart who was setting up for the market. He slid a coin onto the wood.
"All of your freshest vegetables please, or at least as many as this coin can buy." Eben said.
I fumed silently, tapping my foot but waiting for him none the less. I wasn't a charity case. The man took the coin and bit it he was surprised when it didn't bend so with a brilliant smile he filled up a basket with all of the vegetable which he wrapped in cloth I thought that I could reuse that cloth and make a patchwork apron. Eben thanked the man and handed me the basket.
"So where is your father?" he asked me. His speech was articulate, he was clearly educated, for some reason this put me on guard.
"He's out of town, tryin' to sell some lumber to other towns." I told him. He raised an eyebrow.
"Your mother?"
"She died." I said.
"I'm sorry." He whispered. I said nothing and we walk a bit in silence. I wondered how long he'd follow me for.
"What 'bout you?" I asked him. He looked up at me, eyes flashing and his jaw locked tight.
"What about me?" he asked.
"Where'd you come from?"
"The castle." He said his tone warning. Well I'll be damned if I'm not going to ask him anymore questions.
"You work or prance 'round in those expensive fabrics?"
"The king and I are quiet close." He said his mouth turning down at the corner.
"So you're a noble?" I pressured.
"No, just a close friend of the King."
"All right, so are you like his best friend or something?" I asked him. He shrugged.
"Yeah, I guess, I mean I'm always in the throne room with the poor fellow." He said with another shrug. I stopped walking outside of the bakery.
"This is where I go." I told him. He smiled brightly.
"I'll see you sometime soon then Aya?" he asked me. I nodded my head and went thru the door wondering for the hundredth time how he knew my name.
***
I set the empty bread basket down on the counter and pulled an apron off the hook of the wall. One of the girls looked up at me and raised her eye brow.
"Yer back mighty quick." She said. I smiled, tolerating her searching gaze.
"Yeah." I said simply, looking for a pail. I found one and moved out to the back of the bakery. I grabbed a stool and put it next to the cow that I then proceeded to milk.
I heard someone coming near me their boots caring heavily across the gravel. I turned and whipped my forehead, squinting to make out their features.
"I'm gonna need you to go get some berries." He said.
"Yes sir." I replied, but not breaking the eye contact.
I felt that familiar flush creeping through my veins. I really didn't know how I felt about Jake, and I knew that he didn't know how he felt about me. There where times when I'd catch him looking at me his eye strange and his jaw clinched and often I felt the same way; feeling that hot lick of desire in my abdomen. He didn't break the eye contact we were holding either. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair and took a small stool and sat down next to me, his knee touching mine. And I could feel the heat through my thin dress.
"It's odd not having you in the kitchen randomly busting out in song." He said softly. I laughed quietly.
"Really, I thought you'd be thrilled, since you are always complaining about my songs in the first place." I told him. He sighed.
"No. I miss them and I miss seeing you." He whispered. My fingers stilled on the udders and the cow mooed impatiently I let her go and faced him.
"Jake…I just…I don't-" I said.
"No, I mean I don't know what I did wrong; I mean can't we at least talk about it? I don't think I did anything to make you feel threatened…." He trailed off and I sighed rubbing my fingers against my eyes.
"It's hard. I'm not ready to start a family with how the economy is and honestly, to support a child…I can't…" I whispered. He took my hands in his.
"Please Aya, we wouldn't have to have a child…I mean…please Aya…I love you." He whispered.
I looked at him alarmed. No you don't! I wanted to scream at him. And while a part of me was rejoicing and another part was playing Eben's smiling face….
"Jake… I need…I need time to think, alright?" I asked him. He sighed and nodded his head and gently kissed my forehead and moved away. I hung my head in my hands and felt the pounding being at my temples. Was it possible to love two?
***
Life moved onward yet again, weeks passed and I put off Jake's marriage questions and tended to the garden and rejected Eben's charity and yet I wasn't happy.
Sure everything was going great. Jake was talking to me but we did nothing unless we both consented to the action and that was the problem he was always ready for something! And Eben was a pain in my ass always dropping by unexpectedly, one time even at night, where I woke up to fine him leaning against my window and laughing at me. I had pushed him out of the window and then ran downstairs fearing that I had killed him, but he was fine, angry and demanding a kiss, but fine.
There seemed to be something about him I didn't trust, like he never told me the truth about who he really was and then he was always suspicious about me working at the bakery and he'd ask about Jake often and I wondered how he even knew about my employer. Whenever he asked I would laugh at him and call him jealous and he'd say nothing, just look at me oddly and then smile brilliantly and attempt to buy me something that I had no desire for.
So as was my motto, life moved on, leaving me to decide if I wanted to go with it or not.
Until one day life moved on so well that Jake stopped asking about marriage, Eben stopped asking about Jake, my father came home, and Eben disappeared.
Yes, life was wonderfully dull and unfair.
***
"Aya, come we must go to the castle." My father said. He was a stout man with a big nose and fire red hair his eyes were small and brown and he was hungry for money.
"But why father?" I asked him. He looked at me steadily as he lied.
"We must make a bargain with the king and I need you there to show him that I have a woman I need to take care of." I went with him, but I wouldn't of if I had known what that bargain was…
***
A/N- God! I'm a horrible person! My computer must hate me! Or just the world, but honestly, I have two done! So I'm on a roll! I'd love to tell you all the wonderful stuff that has happened to me lately, but I'll save that for another story :)!
