“Oh.” I frown. “I didn’t know! That’s just what Peter calls ours, and I—”
Hook rolls his eyes.
“O’ course it is.” He sighs once. “They prefer broonies.”
I shake my head apologetically. “I didn’t know. Broonies?” I repeat.
He adjusts his accent so it’s more like the Queen’s English. “Brownies.” He gives me a long-suffering look. “But aye. That is what he is.”
“We have one at the tree, but I’ve never seen him.”
Jamison shrugs. “Aye, that’s normal.”
“This morning, he did leave me this though.” I pull out the pastry, flashing it to him. “Would you like some?”
Jamison looks at it in my hand, then up to my face, a bit like he’s actually deciding whether he wants to eat a pastry I’ve carried with me the whole day. “Aye.” He nods after a moment.
I follow him over to the dining room table, and he sits at the head of it as I sit to his right. I set the choux pastry bun in front of him, and he pulls out a beautiful dagger from his boot—silver blade, gold handle, dotted in red jewels—and he cuts it in half.
“That’s pretty.” I nod at it.
He licks the blade free of cream and flashes it to me.
“It’s old. My da gave it to me.”
He takes a bite from his half, and his eyebrows lift in pleasant surprise.
“Were you born here?” I ask as I watch him.
He nods.
“And you’ve been here forever?”
He shakes his head. “My da went to Eton, so I went no’ to Eton.” He laughs to himself. “I went and boarded in Armagh. The Royal School.”
I stare over at him, shocked. “You lived in Ireland?”
He smiles a little. “Aye. Well, back and forth atween here and there.”
“Is that where your mother’s from?”
He shakes his head, smiling cryptically.
“Is that why your accent’s so strange?”
Jamison chuckles.
“My accent…is a mess o’ accents that I picked up atween my parents and my nannies and my school. English, Irish, Scottish—I’m a fecking mess.”
“Why, exactly?”
“Well, my da, he’s from England. London, originally. And me marm—she’s an out-of-towner, I suppose ye’d say? I had an Irish nurse, a Scottish nurse, Irish teachers and friends. I s’pose I sound like them all.” He gives me a little look. “We are great products of the folk who raise us.”
I frown a little. “Do you think that’s really true?”
He nods a bit solemnly. “Unfortunately.”
And my mind wanders to Peter… Who raised him? The land.
I purse my lips, then look back up at Jamison.
“Is it unfortunate because of your dad?”
His face goes rather serious all of a sudden. “A’m no’ like him.”
I give him a gentle smile. “Are you like her then?”
His mouth pulls as he thinks about it. “I hope so.”
“Where is she now?”
“Mum?” Jamison shrugs, wide-eyed. “God knows.”
And I wonder what he means by that, but it feels rude to inquire. Mothers and fathers can be such touchy subjects, and knowing where one is isn’t necessarily a measuring stick for anything. Parents come with invisible strings and ties that pull them and fasten them to things besides their children. Sometimes they let you see them. Sometimes they don’t.
“May I ask you something?” I purse my lips, and he nods. “And I’m terribly sorry if this is rude and I’m overstepping, but were you close with your father?”
He stares over at me for a few seconds, then shakes his head. “Not really. Sometimes?” He shrugs, then flashes me a quick smile. “He wusnae all bad.”
I try to imagine it—the fearsome, loathsome, infamous Captain Hook…not all bad?
“Ye have siblings?”
I shake my head.
“Just ye at home then?” he asks, nodding his chin at me.
I take a bite of the bun, and—oh my god—it’s divine.
I give Jamison a nod. “And my grandmothers.”
“Where’s yer mother?”
“Oh.” I take another bite. “Somewhere in Central America on a dig.”
He tilts his head, confused.
“She’s an archaeologist.”
He nods, impressed, and a smile dances over his face. He reaches over and wipes his thumb over my bottom lip, and my heart stops in its tracks. He looks at the cream he just wiped from my mouth, then sucks it from his thumb mindlessly.