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As soon as Jinniver saw Snaveling she knew she had to speak to him. The incident with the money had left her feeling deeply embarrassed and she was determined to clear it up. She quite surprised herself at her boldness but the thought of having behaved incorrectly was too strong to succumb to her natural reserve.
She was shocked to hear that he now had no money, and her cheeks went red thinking of how she had thought him a likely source of easy income and taken those coins for the pipeweed. What had happened to him? Had he been robbed? Or had he come off badly in some sort of wager? Her curiosity got the better of her but he skilfully avoided her questions. She was about to try and wheedle some information out of him when she saw Aman approach. Snaveling’s face went white and his mouth fell open.
Jinniver busied herself with twining ivy around the bases of some of the tea roses, but her ears were trained on the conversation between Snaveling and Aman. Several times she twisted the ivy stems too tightly and snapped them as she was so engrossed in what was being said nearby. She stole a few glances and ended up getting a tiny thorn stuck in the end of her thumb. There was the same awkwardness between these two that there had been a few nights before in the inn, but somehow their behaviour had turned frostier, and Snaveling did not have the same proud demeanour he had possessed before.
She was glad when they broke apart as the cut in her thumb was now bleeding quite badly, but she worked for a few minutes more, for the sake of appearances, before she made for the well, where she carefully bathed the small wound in the cool pure water. Her head was spinning with what might have been passing between the innkeeper and the man she had thought of as a nobleman, and she knew she ought instead to have been concentrating on the flowers. Realising she needed a smoke, she stopped and filled her pipe, leaning against the edge of the well. As she savoured the pipeweed she blew out a few smoke rings and relaxed a little. She was determined to find out what was going on, but she also wanted to enjoy this day, and she was not without a little pride as she thought of Zimzi’s face when she would see the new garden.
For a moment, Jinniver thought of how her own handfasting might have been like this all those years ago, but she didn’t dwell on it for long; she knew now that it would have been nothing of the sort. It would have been no merry day in Bree, she would have been carried off to some horrible place and then forced to hand over her father’s farm. Her brother, for all his faults, had been right to stop it from happening, and she reflected on how lucky she had been that dark night in Bree, managing to save not only herself but her father and their home. The sounds of the band practising came to her ears then, and she felt a sudden urge to sing along. She finished smoking her pipe, and set off back to the inn, humming along with the music and thinking about how she would go and put on her best dress soon and join in with the fun.
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