Emyr's Smile Read Online Free PDF

Father Cian was delighted, but he clearly had a firm idea of
what he wanted, and not all of the sketches passed his scrutiny.
That was fair enough. Heilyn knew, and he had more ideas than there
were walls at the moment.
    By the end of the
afternoon, he knew roughly what he’d be doing and that he was going
to love the work. He carried his good mood all the way up the lane
and in Emyr’s front door to babble thanks and excitement at
him.
    Emyr blinked at him
from where he was sitting at his kitchen table. “Did I ask you
in?”
    “You would have done,
but I didn’t knock,” Heilyn said. “How did you know there was such
a wonderful job just waiting for me?”
    “I do live here,
Heilyn,” Emyr reminded him. “That’s my local temple.”
    “I’ve seen it,” Heilyn
told him. “The shrine is lovely, you know. I’m going to put a
picture of it in the entrance way, and derwen blossoms on every
doorframe to bless the threshold, if I can get the right paint.
Father Cian says he knows a supplier and can stretch to that as an
extra, though we couldn’t use it in any quantity. It’s horribly
expensive to get the reflective stuff, and…”
    “I’m the local trade
factor. Who do you think orders Father Cian’s paint?”
    “Then I know we’re
getting a fair price for it,” Heilyn said and beamed at him. “I
like Father Cian. Not as much as I like you, of course, because
that would be a little sacrilegious and more than a little
inappropriate…”
    “Not least because he’s
married with five children.”
    “Five?” Heilyn asked,
distracted. “Dwynwen really does favor her priests, doesn’t she?
Unless they’re naughty, that is. You know what they say about
priest’s children.”
    “They’re nice girls.
Very quiet and polite.”
    “How boring,” Heilyn
said. “I’m never quiet, except when I’m working.”
    “You surprise me,” Emyr
observed.
    “That I talk too
much?”
    “That you ever
stop.”
    Heilyn clapped his hand
to his heart, mock swooning across the table. “You wound me. Come
and kiss it better?”
    “Kiss what, precisely?
Your pride?”
    “If that’s the best I
can hope for,” Heilyn said lightly.
    Emyr regarded him
across the table, frustration, temptation and worry flitting across
his face.
    “No?” Heilyn asked
lightly, though it took some of the bright edge off his good mood.
“Oh well. Whenever you like.”
    “You’re not going to
push?” Emyr asked, sounding a little doubtful.
    “Oh, I’ll flirt,”
Heilyn said, “because I couldn’t not, but you can choose when, or
if, you want more. We’ve got time, haven’t we? Did I mention that I
got a commission? My first commission! You should buy me a
drink.”
    “How about dinner?”
    “You want to cook me
dinner?”
    “I was about to start
on my own when you arrived in my kitchen.”
    “Then I shall wash up
afterward,” Heilyn offered. “I’m a professional when it comes to
washing up, you know. Oh, do you think I should include a kitchen
scene somewhere? I want it all to be familiar comforting
things.”
    “One with a view out of
its window, perhaps.”
    Emyr turned out to be a
rather good cook. The food was simple, rather than the creative
mess that Heilyn usually produced when allowed in a kitchen, but it
tasted good and was filling: fish, samphire, and wedges of bannock
bread. He got a cup of scrumpy too, which made him chatter all the
more as he washed up. Emyr murmured the odd response, but seemed
content to watch him with a quietly bemused expression.
    Heilyn went back to the
inn without a goodnight kiss, to his disappointment, but given how
well the rest of the day had gone, he was still whistling by the
time he got back to the village.
    After that, his days
suddenly fell into an easy routine. He worked breakfasts at the
inn, then headed over to the shrine, and spent his evenings in
Emyr’s kitchen. He still hadn’t been invited in as such, but Emyr
never asked him to leave, so he was going to take that