[Envinyatar]

Derufin’s first stop was the kitchen. The morning rush of breakfasts were over and Cook had that rare moment of ease where she was able to sit at the table, her feet propped on a chair and do nothing. Ruby and Buttercup were just finishing up the dishes, their heads bent close together, exchanging tidbits of information on the very handsome, or so at least they thought, Hobbit lad who had recently come to the Inn. Cook sat, resting her head on her hand, her arm propped on the table and listened to their chatter.

‘I’ve not seen him around her before,’ said Ruby wiping the last drops of water from one of the mugs. She stood on her tip toes and placed it in a line one the top shelf of the mug cupboard. Cook nodded her head at her as Ruby looked back at her, knowing Cook was a stickler for having her kitchen just so.

‘Me, either,’ replied Buttercup, wiping her hands on a towel. She smiled dreamily, dropping the towel on the floor as she reached to put in on the peg by the sink. ‘But I sure do intend to see him as often as I can while he’s here!’

A loud ‘Tsk!’ from Cook snapped her out of her reverie, and she colored prettily as Cook pointed to the floor where the towel had dropped. Derufin had come in at the last of this exchange, and gallantly retrieved the towel for Buttercup, who ran to put it in the laundry basket.

‘I was wondering,’ he said, sitting down in the chair opposite Cook, have any of you seen the man from Rohan this morning? Eodwine – the fellow who was bunking in my quarters.’ The trio of women looked at one another, in expectation that one of them would have served him, but the answer was a resolved ‘no’. ‘Why do you ask,’ said Cook, getting up to pour a cup of tea for the man.

Derufin explained that Eodwine had been gone for a while. ‘Visiting some new parts of the Shire I should think, though I cannot recall where he said he would be going.’ Cook laughed at this gloss of the day Eodwine had left the Inn. ‘What you cannot remember is if he said anything about his direction and if he did, what he said.’ She looked at him with an amused smirk on his face. ‘You were, after all quite drunk, as I recall.’

Now it was Derufin’s turn to turn a little red. The tops of his ears crimsoned and he acknowledged that ‘yes’ that may have been the case. ‘All that aside, though,’ he went on, ‘we’ve got his horse come back winded and sweating to the Inn, and riderless, it now appears.’

‘No, indeed, it’s not good that a king’s messenger has gone missing.’ Cook shivered a bit as a presentiment of ill in the Shire brushed through her thoughts. ‘Not good at all,’ she said again more firmly, standing up from her chair, and pushing the sleeves of her cardigan above her elbow.

Ruby and Buttercup stole glances at one another, knowing this was a sign that Cook had made some decision and was about to put them to work. On cue, Cook turned to Buttercup and bade her fetch Miss Aman and Mistress Cami. Ruby she sent out to look carefully about the Inn and the yard for any traces of the missing man. ‘Don’t ask any fool questions of anyone, either of you. We need to sort this out before anyone else gets panicked.’

The Hobbits left the kitchen at a run, and Cook turned to Derufin. ‘And you,’ she said, drumming her fingers on the table, ‘can you think of anyway we might use his horse to find him . . . it’s all we have it seems . . .’