by Nicole Locke
He deserved worse. But he’d take these snippets of time until then.
Purposely keeping his pace slow, he let them fall further away from the revellers. He soaked up every moment of her walking beside him. The fact that she came no higher than his chest, but her steps were quick. Her cheeks were red from the cold, but the extra colour highlighted the ivory of her skin, the brightness of her grey eyes. Eyes gazing at him warmly.
‘No, we’ve never talked like this.’
Most likely because he didn’t have many pleasantries to talk about. More snippets of time like this and she’d begin to glimpse the darker side to him. He couldn’t keep it from her. He struggled to do so now. They already talked of the King and his spying.
‘And yet nothing’s ever idle between us, Alice,’ he repeated.
‘Do you want it to be?’
He closed his eyes on that, shook his head.
‘I’m glad we can talk this way,’ she said. ‘Be this way.’
When she slowed even more he could almost hear her weighing words. He didn’t know if he could take any more closeness to her.
‘Why? Because of your vow?’
He’d tried to keep his tone light—knew he missed it when he saw her frown.
‘You won’t tease me on that, will you? You never have before. Even when I asked you to kiss... Well, you were there.’
He stopped then—didn’t want anyone to hear this part of their conversation. ‘I could never tease nor could I ever forget.’
‘I haven’t either,’ she whispered.
Her words were a sweet balm that also stung his heart. So many years lost between them. What had happened in the years he’d been away; why was she alone? ‘You must have had many suitors since I left.’
‘Are you asking me if I turned them all away because of you?’
Foolish words, of course she would have many, and it wasn’t as if he lived like a monk since he left. ‘I have no right to know.’
Silence from her. Silence he didn’t want. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned them.’
She started walking again. ‘My projects, as everyone calls them, kept me busy from...proposals. It’s probably why my plan to find the Seal has been so difficult.’
‘Why’d you do it then?’
‘I needed suitors for distraction from what I have to do to find the Seal. I knew if they thought I liked them they’d be more open with words and conversations. Secrets. I’d also have access to rooms and conversations I wouldn’t have normally.’
Now that he knew the details, he understood the cleverness of her plan—and he shouldn’t be talking to her. She was close to the truth now. He wanted to be her suitor. He wanted to hold her and kiss her again. To spill his secrets and lose his life. Just for these moments.
‘They’d never stand a chance if you were after them in truth.’
Alice took a breath, braced herself for whatever would happen next. ‘I was after you in truth.’
He paused. ‘Too much honesty you give me.’
She was now realising she hadn’t given enough. ‘Why not? Holding things in secret hasn’t worked for us.’
‘There is no “us”.’
‘There is—why deny it? You kissed me.’
They stopped walking before they reached the town square. Boys blew whistles and banged drums. Off-key singing and raucous laughter indicated that ale was being poured. It was early afternoon, but the temperature was dropping fast. The day had started off with blue skies, but now it was darkening with heavy clouds rolling in.
Alice was freezing, but nothing would stop her from standing out here in the cold with Hugh.
Since they’d been in Lyman’s house she had felt the pull to him stretch and tighten, like wool to a spinning spindle. He was right. Nothing had ever been idle between them, and with his comment she knew he felt the pull as well, though he denied it.
Yet there were still so many questions. Why had the King sent him here? Why hadn’t he said something about the Seal earlier? And, more troubling, why had he seemed so angry when she’d mentioned it?
The room at Lyman’s house had been dark; she had been able to gauge nothing from his expression, from his eyes.
Not like now.
The winter sky highlighted his every beautiful asset to her. His almost white-blond hair, tousled with curls and the wind. The cleft to his chin, his nose that crooked just a little to the left. His clear blue eyes.
‘You kissed me,’ she repeated. ‘You held me close when we were dancing. You’re looking at me...have been looking at me all this time...like—’
‘Don’t say it.’
His tone was full of censorship.
She wouldn’t stand for it. ‘Like you want me.’
He closed his eyes and she saw his body shudder. They were out in the open, and yet she wasn’t looking to see if someone watched or listened to them. She didn’t care. She had a monarch who threatened her. If now was the only time they had, she was going to take it.
She couldn’t get any more vulnerable with Hugh. When it came to this man her pride had been lost since she was six. As a woman, she would fight with her heart.
‘Maybe I did make a childish vow, but it was the truth. Maybe I did ask for kiss as a girl asks for a kiss, but I meant it then, too. Here’s another truth: I’m not a child nor a young girl now, and I still want that kiss. I still want that life with you.’
‘We have a traitor to catch. You’re not thinking.’
‘I’m thinking more clearly than you. The fact there’s a traitor in Swaffham, that the King has demanded I catch him, seems insignificant now. It will happen or not, but now there is the two of us and there’s a better chance we’ll be successful.’
‘I’m no hero,’ he said, with a curl to his lips.
‘I always thought you were.’ She said the words softly, teasingly, but they were the truth.
And Hugh looked stunned.
‘Because of the well?’ he said.
‘Long before and after that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the way you faced the town, your father, the way you always bettered yourself.’
He looked to the sky, as if there were answers there, then back to her. ‘Is that why you never helped me?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You never made me a project of yours. Never swooped in with baskets of food.’
‘You never needed them.’
‘I was starving.’
She had known that. But it was the way he’d stood, it was his pride. ‘You would never have accepted it.’
‘No, I would never have accepted your help.’
‘Because you didn’t need it.’
‘You were the only one to think so.’
‘Why keep bringing up the past? I don’t care about your past.’
‘It’s not the past you have to worry about,’ he bit out, then cursed and spun away.
She waited for him to say more. Waited while she watched his broad shoulders lift and fall with a heavy breath, saw his body held rigid with some anger she knew nothing about.
‘If it’s not the past, then what is it?’
His back to her still, he answered, ‘Can’t you accept there can be no “us”?’
‘No.’ With all the certainty in her heart, no. He’d already alluded to it despite his denials. ‘Maybe this is the wrong time, but this is all the time we have. All the time we’ve ever been given. If it isn’t the past, then it must be something now...or in the future.’
He looked over his shoulder. There was no storm in his eyes now, but she sensed it was there, just under the surface. And she wanted to rage and batter at it. She wanted to break it.
‘There is no future.’
/>
Chapter Fourteen
‘This storm will never let up,’ Esther grumbled.
It had hit with the fierceness of all it had promised. Walking down the stairs, Alice shivered at the wind swirling through her home, despite the servants draping tapestries along the walls and fur along every crack.
Fires blazed, and sputtered against the wind battering against the tiny flues. They made the entire house bright with flame and dark with smoke. It stung her eyes, but she’d take that if it meant warmth.
‘At least this time we knew it was coming.’
Every day since the Boar’s Head Feast the weather had worsened. After Wren Day it had become unbearable.
‘But it’s Holy Innocents’ Day and we can’t eat, and we can’t take our mind off our hunger with work.’
‘Any work done today will fail, and any new project will end badly. The storm is merely reminding us of our duties.’
‘The storm is making Bertrice think her ankle is divine.’
‘Her ankle is simply healing.’
Esther shoved straw around the fireplace. ‘She says it aches with the storm. I’ll never hear the end of it.’
Alice smiled, though she knew she wouldn’t hear the end of it either. ‘At least she’s no longer a burden on you.’
Esther let out huff as she walked to the door leading to the long hallway to the outside kitchens. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.’
Alice’s smile faded. If only she knew what she was up to. After weeks of searching for the Seal, she was no closer to the truth.
No, she was closer—because she was beginning to question everything.
Alice pulled her shawl around her and sat in a chair by the fire. There were shouts from the servants who continued to tighten the shutters. Her father was bemoaning the chill more than his empty stomach. She wouldn’t be left alone for long, and would need to help soon.
Hugh had said he’d help her, and it appeared as if he was. And yet, they’d found nothing during Wren Day nor during their riding of horses the day after.
Nothing.
And amongst her fears of not finding the Seal were questions about why she hadn’t. Of course whoever had the Seal wouldn’t be careless, but there didn’t seem to be a trace of it. She’d received no messages from the King on how to proceed either.
There was a part of her that felt she’d been sent here to look for nothing. And yet why would the monarch engage in games that meant nothing?
She still reeled at the fact that there were spies, that subterfuge and intrigue occurred here. Swaffham was a bustling town, but it wasn’t London, and yet she believed a traitor was here simply because one man, one king, had told her there was.
She was questioning everything...everyone. Mostly Hugh...and herself.
Hugh.
He was a spy, though why he was in Swaffham she still didn’t know. It wasn’t to stop her. Instead there was a certain camaraderie between them now. She trusted him—she had to. But everything in her was still cautious.
There were too many questions. Hugh was right when he said nothing was ever idle between them. Whether it be the tumultuousness of her thoughts when it came to him, or how she craved his nearness.
What had happened at Lyman’s house? He had guessed what she was, demanded to know what she was doing. When she’d told him he’d kissed her.
She wanted to kiss him again. To finally explore what was between them. Not to run away as she had in the past. She’d braved things enough during the Wren Day parade, but again he’d shut her out.
But the questions kept coming. The question of why then and not now. She knew he felt it, too. Because when she turned too fast, when she glanced at him when he wasn’t expecting it, she saw the heat in his blue gaze, felt it linger on her lips.
Wind blasted the house and made the wood creak. The fire before her sputtered and flared and she pushed herself deeper into the chair.
Nothing she did or said had made Hugh repeat what he’d done. She didn’t dare approach him again. She had laid out what she wanted. If he didn’t want her, then...
Yet he had kissed her. There were feelings there. She knew it now. She was certain, too, that he’d rejected her all those years ago because he’d felt unworthy of her.
He couldn’t be more wrong.
Hearing pounding and shouts at the door, Alice leapt from the chair and hurried towards the entrance just as it swung open.
Ice and snow pelted the two boy servants, the floor, herself and Esther, who had shuffled to her side. Freezing wind shoved in a stumbling man, his cloak buried in snow. A visitor unrecognisable until the door was shut and he raised his face.
Father Bernard.
‘What’s happened?’ Alice asked.
Father Bernard pulled back his cowl. His lips were blue, his cheeks burnt from cold.
It was none of those things that stabbed fear through her. It was the stark hope in Father’s Bernard’s eyes as he asked, ‘Is William here?’
‘No, he’s at home...at Bertrice’s.’
The servants rushed to disrobe him of his cloak, his boots.
‘He wanted to ensure the town observed the day, but I sent him home,’ he said. ‘Bertrice came to me when he didn’t return. Already searching for him, she was freezing, her ankle swollen, and I left her at the church. I then came here.’
Alice ushered him into the hall, to the chair where she’d been sitting. Blankets and hot broth were brought. He looked at it, and shook his head. His hands were shaking so badly, he couldn’t hold it. Alice knelt and steadied it for him.
‘It’s for tomorrow, and the only thing heated. Tell me what happened.’
He nodded; held the cup tightly. ‘It’s Holy Innocents’ Day. He’s gone out to ensure no work is being done. If he’s not here, he’s out there.’
Out in the storm.
Alice own legs almost gave then, even as she pushed herself away and ran to her room for warmer clothes. Father Bernard and Bertrice were already frozen and weak. It was up to her.
* * *
Hugh was freezing to death in his own home. It didn’t matter that he had enough timber to heat a hundred homes. His hearth was too small to warm his toes even though he had them shoved next to the embers.
At least before Bertrice had returned to her home she had prepared food for after the fast and hot water in case he wanted a bath. Already hot stones warmed his bed. Months in Swaffham and he was still being pampered. When he returned to London, he would be able to slip right back into his lavish lifestyle there.
If he returned.
What did the King want of him? After he had seen Alice emerge from the royal chambers, after he’d returned from the garden the next day, he had requested the King’s counsel. He’d thought it spontaneous.
Now he had to wonder if it had all been planned. But the King couldn’t know what Alice meant to him—couldn’t know it was he who carried the Half-Thistle Seal. Well trained, all too careful, he’d watched his back.
His obligations, his vows, were dangerous but necessary. Life-saving for Robert and his family. Whether the King was speculating or not, he needed to be more careful.
The same went when it came to Alice. Alice who was far more noble and brave than he. Not only in her wanting to help others, not only in her stalwart attempts to keep her family from the King’s wrath. Because she had the courage to walk beside him. To tell him of her feelings, her wants.
She wanted him. Still. Traitor that he was.
Coward that she knew him to be.
Only a coward would avoid a woman declaring herself so sweetly, so resolutely.
He reeled from her words. She didn’t care about his past—she wanted him, his touch. She wanted to pledge herself before this town, and God, to
him.
A traitor.
He could never have her. Poor, from a dishonoured family. He had never deserved her.
Yet, fiercely, he wanted to be selfish for once in his life. Hadn’t he paid enough debts already? Hadn’t he earned some happiness as he’s taken the jibes of the townsfolk, as he’d fed his father to sober him up?
He wanted simply to hold her hand. Never for himself. If he did, he’d be sentencing Robert’s happiness. If he did, he’d be damning her and her family.
Still he sought a solution. He hoped it wasn’t in vain.
He looked at his cup—empty, never filled. There were days when he knew to drink deep, and nights when he didn’t dare. This was one of them. At least the weather was as foul as his mood and no one would disturb him.
He hadn’t drunk since the Boar’s Head Feast. He might never drink again. But he needed a drink, needed to free himself from this town, and his memories.
He had nowhere to go.
This house—tidied because of Bertrice, was repaired enough to withstand a storm. He wanted to demolish it all. Because no matter how many days or weeks went by he couldn’t solve the dilemma that was right before him. How to save Robert...how to save Alice.
And why was Eldric pounding on the door?
No, too light to be his friend, too insistent to be polite.
He yanked it open. A boy was shoved through, tripping over his feet and falling to the ground.
‘Hugh!’ a woman yelled.
Alice.
He pulled her in.
* * *
She was cold...so cold. The wind and ice were no longer stabbing her, but she felt no relief. ‘Where’s William?’
‘I’ve got him. He’s safe,’ Hugh said.
Her eyes stinging, she watched Hugh pull William onto his lap and press his cheek to the boy’s lips. Hurriedly, he yanked off his shoes and stripped off his clothes.
‘Get out of your clothes.’
Her teeth chattering, she shook her head. ‘Him first.’
‘I’ve got him. I can’t take care of both of you. Alice, get your cloak off. I’ll get the rest.’
Her bones were frozen, her arms no longer her own. ‘I can’t. I carried him... I can’t lift them.’