by Jen Black
His surprise must have registered, because Matho added a few terse words. “She may look a leddy, but she’s northern born n’ bred. Like me, she knaws how to use a bow, all reet, an’ no’ just for show, either.”
Not wishing to be skewered, Harry increased the volume of his whistle.
A face appeared at the small, deep-set window at the back of the house. He waved. The face vanished, the door opened and Alina flew across the yard towards him. “Harry! Oh, Harry.”
His horse snorted and backed away, yanking Harry off-balance. Somehow, he held onto the animal and pulled Alina towards him. She thrust her face into the hollow between his shoulder and neck and the scent of wood smoke deluged him.
“I’m here,” he murmured, as much to ground himself as reassure Alina. “Late, but I’m here.”
An indistinct squawk came from somewhere around the level of his collarbone. “What is it? Are you crying?” He laughed and tightened his grip on the reins. “Bessie, come here, you—” The reins slackened in his grip as Bessie’s paced forward. Her whiskers tickled the back of his neck and she snorted warm air around him as he concentrated on getting both arms around Alina. He gathered her close. “Please don’t cry. I’m sorry I was late, but….”
Her brow rolled against his collar bone. “I was afraid you would not come—it was the most miserable night of my life.”
“Bessie cast a shoe,” he murmured against Alina’s ear. “I had to stop and get her re-shod and that cost me half a day and a night at Lanercost.” He held her away from him, and ducked so he could see her face. “I couldn’t help it, Alina. Surely you trusted me to come as I said I would?”
Eyes closed, she shook her head and covered her face with her hands. He wanted to pick her up, take her indoors and find a bed, comfort her, caress her…but he couldn’t leave his horse standing here in plain view. Damnation. Why was there never a groom waiting when he wanted one?
Her head came up. She pushed away and glared at him. “Trust you? I’ve done nothing but trust you since the day I met you, Harry Sc—” She stopped short and sank her teeth in her lower lip. “I couldn’t sit at home and wait for you to appear, Harry! By now I would have been married to John Errington.”
“Matho told me it was today. I’ve been thinking about that as I rode up from Corbridge. I seem to have got my days muddled.”
Alina shook her head. “The fourth day was yesterday. I told you, Harry, in those exact words.” Her steady brown eyes skewered him much as an arrow might have done.
What had he put her through? “Oh, my God.” Even without the problem of Bessie’s shoe, he had been a day later than he thought. “My God, I am sorry, Alina.” He raised her hand and kissed her palm. “So you…you came here? Alone? Matho said you spent the night here.”
She wrenched her hand out of his grasp. “I came last night, after everyone had gone to sleep.”
“Christ, Alina, you took a risk.”
Her mouth flattened. “Don’t lecture me,” she spat at him. “It was bad enough without that.”
“It was very brave of you, but I hate to think of you out here alone in the dark. I should have been with you.” He hesitated, watching her. “Does your father know…will he guess where you are, do you think?”
“He will eventually. Then he’ll come searching.”
Harry glanced around. The house and outbuildings shielded the north and west sides of the yard, trees cut off the view to the east but open fields showed the glorious vista to the south. He squinted. “Is that Aydon down there in the hollow?” Abandoning Alina, he grasped his mare’s reins. “Where shall I take her?” At the ensuing silence, he looked at her. “Alina?”
She gestured to the building behind him. “The stables are there.”
Harry frowned. Obviously he’d said something she didn’t like, but he forced down the sharp rejoinder that sprang to his lips. She’d left home, which was brave, and last night would have been…He couldn’t imagine how she must have felt in the abandoned house wondering why he had not arrived.
Shoulders stiff, she led the way across the uneven yard and through the doorway of a low thatched building. Harry set off after her. Once he had the mare settled he would concentrate on Alina and make it up to her. It didn’t usually take him long to lull girls into a sweeter mood. He hoped she wasn’t the kind of person who held grudges for days and days.
He tugged on the reins. Bessie was tired, and paced slowly after him.
Alina stood to one side and pointed.
He paused on the threshold. “Why are you so angry? Surely you wanted me to come?”
Inside the stable, the light was subdued and her eyes seemed very dark. “I was alone here last night.”
“Ah.” He thought he understood. “I’m sorry you were frightened, but I’m here now, and—”
Her brows rose. “Who said I was frightened?”
Harry lifted his hands, palms open. “I thought that’s what you meant.” Bessie rubbed her head against his back, urging him towards the promise of warm straw and a good feed. Harry resisted her nudging. “According to Matho, you used to live here. Why be frightened of a place you’ve known most of your life?”
Alina stalked into the stable and halted by an empty stall. He sensed rather than saw her glaring at him. Tired and hungry, Harry hid the impulse to yawn behind a gauntleted fist.
“There is straw there.” She pointed to the loft above their heads. “And possibly oats in that barrel.” She lifted the lid to check. “Yes, there are. You may draw water from the well with that bucket.” She kicked it, bit back an exclamation and tucked her foot round her other ankle.
Harry looked at the heavy wooden bucket and then at her lightly shod feet. “That must have hurt.”
“What do you care?” She flounced by him with her nose pointing at the loft.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the house.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” Harry spoke quietly, but grasped her arm and dragged her back to him. He put both hands on her small waist, lifted her and set her on the wooden barrel. “You can sit there and talk to me until I’ve bedded down my horse.”
“I shall not!”
He looked at her. It was a big barrel. Perched on top of it she was at eye level with him. He stepped close and wagged a finger under her nose. “You are behaving like a child, Alina. I made an honest mistake, for which I’ve apologised, and may do so again if you change your tune. Now tell me what’s really annoying you. I can’t believe you were afraid of the dark.”
She attempted to slip down. Harry caught and held her in place. “Get off that barrel and I’ll put you over my knee and spank you.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Nose to nose with her, he glared back. “Who,” he asked delicately, “will stop me?” He spread his arms to encompass the empty stable and smiled. “Certainly not you.”
The mare whickered, nudged him so hard between the shoulder blades he took an inadvertent step forward.
“You’d better see to your horse before she sets about you.” Alina’s lips twitched. “Though you won’t get any oats from this barrel.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m sitting on the lid.” Suddenly cheerful, she folded her arms and crossed one leg over the other. She looked adorable.
Harry leant forward and gently pushed her knees apart. “Dream of what follows this, sweetheart.” He kissed her lightly on the lips and drew back before she could complain.
Her mouth remained open.
Satisfied that her mood had changed, Harry stepped back. With a lingering glance that promised her all kinds of things, he smiled. “My horse will be munching oats before she knows what’s hit her, I promise you.”
He jumped, grasped the rim of the loft, got his feet on the stall and hauled himself up in three easy movements.
“There are stairs over there, you know.”
She sounded unimpressed, but he’d heard her startled gasp as he sw
ung himself up and saw how she craned to keep him in view. Feeling smug, he kicked down enough straw to make a decent bed for his mare, and dropped back down into the stall.
Harry raked the straw into a rough bed, led the horse in and unsaddled her. Grabbing a discarded sack, he rubbed her down, well aware that Alina watched his every move. Returning from the yard with a bucket of water, he dumped it beside the stall, grabbed a wooden scoop and approached the barrel.
Alina gripped the rim with both hands and braced herself. The antagonism had gone. This was to be a challenge and she was ready to defend her position. Harry hesitated, studying the situation.
The barrel stood in the corner. Hiding his grin, he strode toward her, leaned hard against her and pushed sideways. Her weight transferred to the wall and allowed him to tilt the lid sufficiently to sweep the scoop into the oats. He withdrew it, let the lid fall and tilted the scoop over the manger. Oats streamed down. He looked at her, laughing. “Told you so.”
He patted Bessie affectionately as she snuffled among the oats, slung his saddlebag over his shoulder and made to walk out of the stall.
“Harry! What about me?”
He stopped, slapped his forehead and turned back. Halfway he stopped and folded his arms. “Shall we talk sensibly, or are you still at odds with me?”
Alina held out her arms. “I’ll talk.”
She smiled engagingly but he did not weaken. “Promise? You won’t change your mind once you’re on your feet?”
Shuffling forward on the barrel, Alina shook her head and waited for him.
“Do I have your promise?”
“I promise! Now lift me down!”
He caught her beneath the arms and swung her to the floor. Holding her made him want to touch her again, anywhere, everywhere. He wanted to fill his hands with her, smother her with his mouth. He swept an arm under her knees and lifted her to the ground.
Chapter Seventeen
Overwhelmed by his closeness and the easy strength with which he carried and set her down in the big stone-flagged kitchen, Alina remained where he placed her. The scent of burning pine logs and beeswax candles replaced the odour of horse and stable, and beneath it all and much closer, she breathed the subtle scent of Harry.
Her muscles lost their tightness.
“This is nice.” He looked around him.
Alina tried to see the kitchen as a stranger might, and was not disheartened. Firelight shone on the dark wood of the vast carved dresser and gleamed on the few pewter dishes and the copper jug. Everything was clean because she had scrubbed, swept and polished to keep her mind occupied, and found that scrubbing didn’t occupy her mind at all.
The only thing missing was food.
Under normal circumstances, Mama and the servants would have doled out bowls of broth from the big cauldron hanging in the hooded fireplace, and her father would have carved whatever meat had been prepared. She had nothing to offer him and her stomach rumbled with hunger.
Harry heard it. Amused, he looked at her. “Hungry?”
“Yes, but there’s nothing to eat. I thought Matho might have…I haven’t seen him.”
“Matho was in Corbridge. He told me where to find you, and to be sure and whistle otherwise you might shoot me. He gave me bread, bacon, and a couple of eggs.” He walked to the table in the middle of the room and laid his saddlebag on it. “I suppose I was lucky you didn’t let fly at me because I was so late.”
“Eggs!” Her face lit up. “How—”
“He wrapped them in straw and then in a cloth.” He shrugged. “If we have to, we’ll pick out the bits of shell.” He fiddled with the leather straps of one saddlebag. “How shall we cook?”
She rattled the iron frying pan off its hook at the side of the fireplace. “The eggs can fry in the bacon fat.”
She took the unbroken eggs from his hands and sent a silent whisper of thanks to Matho. Soon the thick scent of frying bacon filled the kitchen. When the fat ran hot and smoking she cracked the eggs into the pan. Harry used his knife and offered slices of bread cut from the loaf. “Fry those, too. I love bread fried in bacon fat.”
She put the pieces in the pan. It was odd to know he liked bread dipped and fried in bacon fat. There must be a thousand more little quirks she would learn about him now that he was here. But for the moment, they ate in a hungry silence filled with mumbled sounds of satisfaction and enjoyment. While Alina licked a fingertip and picked up crumbs from her platter, Harry used a piece of bread to soak up all the juices from the pan.
“Best meal I’ve eaten all day,” he announced, sitting back from the table.
“It was good,” she sighed. “And there will be enough for breakfast tomorrow.”
Harry stretched his legs out towards the hearth. “We have a whole night ahead of us before we need to think of breakfast. Is this the master’s chair?”
Alina nodded. “An old one. We left it for the shepherd and cowman. They use the house sometimes.” Sitting there, he looked in total control of the situation. He was far more confident than she, but she put that down to education and travel. He had seen a good deal of the world. Edinburgh, at least, possibly London, while the furthest she had travelled was Tynemouth on the east coast.
All the doubts of the dark hours came flooding back. If he wasn’t a Scott, who was he? And the biggest question of all she could hardly bring herself to consider.
But he was here. He wouldn’t have come if he didn’t want her.
She had no idea what would happen next. Her thinking had not taken her beyond the point of his arrival and now a strange sensation of doubt, fear and longing roiled through her. Running from home may not have been the wisest thing she had ever done in her life.
They were alone here, and it struck her forcibly that she had put herself at some risk. If her instincts about him were wrong, she might get her throat slit in the middle of the night. He might take her to bed and then ride off next morning.
She shuddered. These dismal thoughts had to stop. That was Harry ensconced in the old oak chair, not some stray reiver wandered in out of the dark. Smiling at her own fears, she wondered what he would say when she told him all the beds had gone to Aydon.
Her heart beat faster. It wasn’t that she objected, exactly, to the thought of going to bed with him. She knew she wanted to, eventually. But the thought of doing it now, this very night, loomed large in her mind. A question of how, and when and would she know what to do when the time came? She had got herself into this predicament. Her thoughts bobbed about like a rabbit in a meadow.
Harry seemed composed. He rested his head, eyes closed, on the carved chair back. Days of riding under clear Border skies had turned his skin so brown it almost matched his jack and hose. Only the white shirt at his throat relieved the drab shades. Firelight glittered on silver embroidery at the edge of the shirt collar, but no long lace cuffs like those John Errington favoured dangled beneath the sleeves of Harry’s doublet.
An image of John, sitting disconsolate by the fireside, rose in her mind’s eye. At least she had avoided that marriage. She could see how impossible it had been now that she looked at Harry. She thought of the ease with which Harry swung himself up into the loft, and a ripple of excitement rolled through her. And yet, she knew very little about him.
“Harry?”
His eyes opened and he squinted lazily at her before shoving one long, muscular leg towards the hearth. His riding boots, covered in mud and dust, reached above the knee and left very little hose on show between them and his breeches.
She shrugged, looked away. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“Of course you do. You know—”
“I still don’t know your real name. I’ll wager it’s not Scott. In fact you’ve admitted that.” Her hands struck the air in a gesture of helplessness. Rigid in her chair, she fixed him with a steady glare. “You could be anybody, Harry. Don’t you think it’s time you told me who you are? I need to know before I…before we…go any further.
”
He shuffled upright, leant his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. “Why do you think I’m not Harry Scott?”
“Of course you’re not. Any fool can see that. Stop grinning at me, and tell me truth.”
He did not answer immediately, but watched her, his blue eyes shining in the firelight. His skin clung close to the bones of his face, though no one would call him thin. Nervous and on edge, Alina got up and gathered their plates.
“Why did you choose to go through that ridiculous drama with my father? You nearly died, Harry.” She carried their plates to the stone sink. “Why not tell him your real name?”
“Harry certainly is my name.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. The firelight struck one side of his face and threw shadows across the other half. She remembered she had once laughed at the fanciful thought that he was two people. Now she saw that she had been right without knowing why. She scoured the greasy plates with a handful of sand and rinsed them in the bucket of water. “But Scott isn’t, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. But how the hell did you know?”
“Ha! We get to the truth at last. Tell me.” She put the plates into the wooden rack to drain and wondered if his real name would scare her any more than the fictitious one.
Elbows braced on the arms of the chair, Harry glanced down at his clasped fingers. Firelight washed over him and added a ruddy hue to his skin. She walked slowly to the fireplace and stared down. Firelight revealed every line of his face, gilded the curve of his eye, deepened the shadowed socket and lengthened his black lashes.
“Well?”
Firelight hit the dense blue of his eyes as he looked up. “My name is Harry Wharton.”
Wharton. There were several families in the Borders with that name. There was nothing she could think of that would make him hide such a name. Unless…she inhaled rapidly. The name hung in the air between them.