‘It doesn’t matter about anything. You defend yourself. You defend yourself because your worth isn’t that he’s your lord, or that he pays you, or that you’re in his debt, or that you’re this—’ she waved her hand around him, indicating his breadth ‘—or that you’re a terrible swordsman. Your worth is something far beyond any of those or anything else we can think up.’
Was he understanding what she was trying to say? He was simply staring at her. She’d have to take some faith from that.
She pointed at him, then pointed again. Just to get her thoughts across physically. ‘You’re worth defending—and if no one else does it, it’s up to you to do it.’
His mouth tightened, as if he held back some words. Had no one ever told him these things before? Maybe that was why they’d been put together. So she could straighten him up.
She patted him on the arm and tugged him forward. ‘We’re almost there, aren’t we? Let’s get going.’
He kept still a bit longer, so she looked behind her.
‘Aren’t you coming?’
* * *
Evrart wanted to say no, simply because there was a feral need inside him that wanted to say yes. He wanted to say yes to everything when it came to Margery. He had been agreeing to everything she wanted, and he wondered if he had any discipline or restraint left in him. Was he to be domesticated like a horse or dog? Was he some great task of hers?
What she intended with him he couldn’t fathom.
The fact he even asked himself what a woman intended to do with him was alarming. He was three times as large as her, and one hundred percent more scarred. She might be a mistress, but he was a man who killed, who did tasks that no man should at the request of Lord Warstone.
The fact he did it to keep his family safe was no excuse. If his mother knew it came down to him committing murder or herself killed, she would beg him to protect his own soul. Except, he argued with himself, wouldn’t her death also be on his soul if he couldn’t prevent it?
So here he was—a man who did deeds because he must.
Everything had been as it should and would be until his death. Then Ian had left him in this woman’s clutches and he didn’t know himself any more.
She was tiny...insignificant. If he told her to close the door, she should close the door. If he said no to picking fruit, she should cower in her corner and not pick fruit—not carry her baskets as if they were on a pleasure trip.
They finally crested the hill and could observe the orchard below. Tree after tree, all in bountiful lines, with loads of people chatting and picking.
‘Oh, look at the colours—this will be great fun!’ Margery exclaimed.
The orchard was full of people. It would be a nightmare. It wasn’t as if they were trying to escape notice, but this would be openly defying his lord’s orders. He would be punished. All he could hope was that she wouldn’t be.
What would he do if... What had Margery’s word been? Defend. What if he defended himself against Lord Warstone? No...he made the choice and knew the consequences when he did so.
What would she think of the choices he had made?
For her there was beauty, and she could freely demand he admire the colours in the valley. For him, nothing was free. Simply this...merely walking to an orchard beside a woman he wanted...wrenched him from the maw of his duties.
Even if he deserved them there were no colours for him. There never would be, despite how much she pointed them out. He didn’t see the world like others—he knew that. What would happen when she discovered his flaw?
Deeper and deeper into the orchard they walked. Most of the people ignored them, but just as many stared. He was grateful she didn’t stop to greet them all but kept walking further through the trees, where there were fewer people, but also fewer quince to pick.
Margery seemed to have come to that conclusion too, because she was now frowning accusingly at the trees as if it were their fault all the easier fruit on the bottom branches was already plucked, and it was only those on the top available.
Oh, she was fierce. Entranced by the sight of her hands on her hips, the bucket angled outward from her arm, he sensed the trap too late.
‘I’ll need your help to pick these.’ She pointed.
She’d needed loads of help—and he was envisaging all of it...
Spanning her tiny waist with his hands, hoisting her above his head, catching sight of the curve of her ankle or placing her in such a way that her rear would be directly in his line of vision.
For days now, he had stolen awkward glances, but their height difference, and the fact they often walked close, something he’d purposely done, had precluded him from truly appreciating those rounded curves.
There was a good chance she wouldn’t mind him lifting her. She’d asked for help and she kept touching him.
She wasn’t afraid of him, and she also didn’t approach him as if he was some oddity or a conquest to boast to her friends about. She just ordered him about, which should be insulting. It was insulting. But he also like it. He imagined ordering her about and he liked that better.
‘Are there ladders or stools nearby?’ she said.
She was already forging ahead before he could answer. To help, and to hide his smile, he turned in the opposite direction.
Margery was a force unto herself, and apparently beautiful in ways that others could tell. How had she fallen prey to men like Roul?
Roul... Just the thought of that man anywhere near her curled his hands into fists. And Ian? To Ian it was the game his parents had begun for wealth and power that was sacrosanct. It required messages in the night and information exchanged. It required absolute secrecy.
Why had he held his hand and not killed her? Both of them had killed for far less reasons. The fact Ian deviated from this and allowed Margery, an outsider, to know anything, was odd. As was Ian’s behaviour lately. He’d used to never to leave him behind—now he did it almost constantly.
There was the reason he kept bringing new men who needed to be trained. Ian had argued he only trusted Evrart with them, and Evrart had left it at that, but it was a poor excuse.
There were times when he wondered if Ian was good, and trying to be as his parents wanted, or truly evil and playing at kindness.
He would have sworn Ian had loved his wife and children, but he’d taken them away. Evrart had feared he had them killed, but then those rumours had begun that they’d run, and Ian searched for them.
Why rid himself of his family, only to search for them?
Then there were the rages...the slashing of cushions. The fact his brother Reynold had played against Ian and befriended the men who’d killed their second-eldest brother, Guy.
No one had mourned Guy’s death—not even Ian’s parents. But to befriend the men who killed him... To openly scheme with them against his own family...
The Warstones were usually more united than that.
Ian’s mind seemed to be unravelling, but so was the Warstone loyalty and power.
Where did that leave him or Margery? He didn’t know, and he didn’t know why he thought of her name along with his. It wasn’t as if—
‘Never mind! Here’s one!’ she called out.
What had she found? Oh, yes, a ladder.
Never once in all his years had he a bit of fortune. Those brave enough spoke of their envy for his size, but he had to fight constant challenges, women eschewed him, and those men not brave enough to fight him disdained him. Ian, Lord of Warstone, used him as a prop. He was no more than a sword in a sheath.
Finding no opportunity to stride away from this woman and gain a reprieve was simply another in a line of grievances. Not because he wanted to be away from her, but because he should. There was more here than the risk of his family, there was more risk to hers the longer she stayed.
Striding over, he grabbed
the ladder she was righting and secured it under some laden branches.
‘Can you hold the basket, so I don’t bruise the fruit?’ she asked.
The trees were hardly tall. The fact this woman needed a ladder was testament to how tiny she was. Even so, the distance between the ground and the top of the tree wasn’t significant enough to harm the fruit. He should argue these facts, since none of the other pickers were holding up baskets.
He picked up a basket.
She beamed at him, and he quickly looked up through the tree branches into the sky beyond. Trying to think of anything other than how her smile affected him, he felt the drop of fruit into the basket he held. Each one represented a personal chastisement.
One, two, three...
Last year, he’d chopped two fingers off one of Ian’s hired mercenaries who had already lost one finger to frostbite. Ian had ordered the other two to be cut off because he had been a fool not to wear coverings.
Four, five six...
What would he lose when Ian discovered he stood under a tree like some fool? What finger? What limb? He never took risks. There were reasons he didn’t—
‘Do you think it’s forbidden fruit?’
He shouldn’t have looked, but he did. She’d asked a question and he was standing right next to her. So he did look, and was rewarded by the play of light through the curls haloing her head, the inquisitive expression in eyes framed by thick lashes, and her mouth pursed in amusement because he hadn’t answered her.
‘Do I what?’ he asked.
Margery held a quince. ‘They say that in the Garden of Eden a quince was the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.’
He’d never thought about what the fruit was. Over the years he’d seen paintings and tapestries, but he’d never paid attention. Art didn’t attack or swing a sword. Thread and paint wouldn’t save his family or fulfil his debt and his duty to Lord Warstone.
She dropped the quince into the basket. It felt more substantial than the rest.
‘I don’t mind if it is,’ she said. ‘It’s terribly tart raw, but sweet and succulent when cooked. If I was a fruit that was forbidden, that’s what I’d be.’
His view shifted, and it wasn’t because he’d stopped looking at the tree and at her. He held the basket up for another of the fruits, but it felt almost as if he was the one on offer. As if he was holding himself up and doing a poor job of it.
His arms...shook.
It wasn’t anything to do with the weight as she tossed more quince in, and everything to do with her words of ‘forbidden’, and ‘fruit’, and ‘succulent’ and ‘sweet’. It was the fact she kept touching him and asking him questions that didn’t have to do with killing and protecting and guarding and the loss of digits for a good man.
This woman was forbidden, and he wanted her.
If they were to talk of temptation whilst he held the basket, he wouldn’t last for a day, a heartbeat, a held breath.
On a growl, he placed her basket on the ground, grabbed an empty one, and strode away.
If she wanted quince, he’d get her quince—and it wouldn’t take him long because the damn trees weren’t much taller than him.
‘Good suggestion!’ she said.
As if he’d made one...
Even her encouraging words were affecting him now—making him feel something that wasn’t cold, desolate, alone. Something that wasn’t what he had been since he left his childhood home.
He wondered how much farther he could be from her and protect her; how much further to not see her, hear her, and somehow not still feel her.
CHAPTER NINE
Margery carefully dropped another quince into the basket. She’d preferred it when Evrart had held up the basket, so she didn’t darken the fruit. She attempted again to make conversation with him, but it seemed his unflappable patience had finally abandoned him.
All day she’d wondered why these trees were far from the fortress and not as cultivated as the other fruit trees, which had been pruned for ease of picking. Perhaps this orchard was older, but it was large, the sun shone bright, and the scent from the broken fruit beneath their feet was intoxicating.
But none of this fecund beauty was as vibrant as the warrior who thrashed and huffed, mumbled and growled, and acted completely differently from the man she’d become acquainted with these many days.
This warrior—this man—was magnificent. She watched the arc of his shoulder as he reached overhead and dropped another fruit, before stretching both arms in the air and pacing quickly away, only to roll his shoulders, bow his head and return to the basket. Actions, he repeated many times—until he looked towards her and caught her staring at him.
Then the look he wore tugged at her in a way she’d never felt. It was something dark, surprising—like catching Hades in the daylight...like being tempted by Hades in the daylight.
What was this? Any feelings towards him were dangerous at most, foolish at least. He’d said he must be loyal to Ian—Ian, whom she knew should have killed her.
Ian... When he returned, would he make her his mistress in truth? If not, then what? He wanted something from her, but even in all her experience with men she couldn’t guess. He was so distant and cold.
There was nothing cold about Evrart, and the more time she spent in his company, the more she thought she could know his thoughts. Not by his words, but by his body.
He was striding towards her now, carrying his filled basket, and there was nothing icy about his movements. He was gruff and a little awkward, as if knowing she watched him.
This man didn’t want to pick quince. In truth, she’d say he hated it from the way he bashed at the trees and snatched any and all of the fruit within his reach. He indicated he didn’t want to be here, told her he’d rather train, and in truth trees made for feeble adversaries.
When she looked in his basket, it was clear the fruits had been poor sparring companions as well.
‘Why did you pick these?’ she said.
His brows drew in. ‘They’re quince.’
‘They’re not ripe yet; they’re green.’ She fumbled through the basket. ‘These are yellow. Did you just randomly pick quince?’
‘Two baskets. Two people. It was faster.’
She hadn’t thought to offer him advice on only choosing the ripe fruit. He knew how to pick the ripe, didn’t he?
‘You’ve eaten them before?’ When he shrugged, she added, ‘And you can see my basket?’
He didn’t bother to look. ‘They’re all the same—small round things.’
She wanted to dismiss this as manly disdain. He hadn’t been happy picking quince, had wanted to train... But the two things didn’t match. He wasn’t acting as if it was beneath him, and over the past few days he hadn’t complained when she’d wanted to see inside the cordwainers’ building or the ale house. Nothing had been denied her. So his picking unripe fruit was something else.
Curious, she held up one and then another to his nose. ‘Here—smell these.’
‘They smell different.’
‘But they look the same to you?’ she said.
‘They look almost the same,’ he answered, but there was something in his eyes now. Watchfulness? Amusement?
‘Let me try something else.’
She grabbed his hand and unfurled his thick callused fingers to place a ripe quince in one palm and an unripe one in the other.
‘Can you feel one is softer than the other?’
Keeping his eyes on her, he rolled the fruit in his palms. His hands were the hands of a warrior—one who had wielded a sword every day since becoming a man. If the difference was between a new quince and a ripe one, he would probably be able to tell the difference, but given it was autumn, and these were ripe or almost ripe, it would be an impossible task beneath his thick fingers.
Still, he looked to h
er, and then to the fruit, which were tiny in his large hands. One after the other he brushed his thumbs over the knobby fruit.
When she looked up, his expression of bemusement was gone, replaced by something more intense. Something she had a difficulty blinking away. Something she didn’t want to ignore now his gaze was on her lips.
He swallowed hard. ‘They are the same to me.’
‘What do you mean the same?’ she said, her voice a little breathy. ‘This is green...this is yellow.’
‘If you say so.’ He raised his slumberous lids.
She shook her head. Half to break her gaze, half to break his. ‘Evrart, stop. What colour is this?’
‘You tell me it’s yellow.’
Did the corner of his mouth curl? ‘And this one?’
‘You told me green.’
Was this about the quince or something else?
She lifted a curl of her hair. ‘And this?’
His head tilted. ‘Light...almost white.’
‘My eyes?’
His gaze swept to hers and locked. Stayed. But his stare wasn’t blank...it was searching, searching, searching—until she looked away.
Then he did something startling. He clasped her elbow very gently until she looked at him again.
‘I can’t see colours,’ he said, his voice low, rumbling. ‘Not like you can.’
‘I don’t understand...’ He hadn’t let go of her elbow, and the heat from his palm was rapidly radiating from that insignificant spot.
‘I can tell these are different because they are shades of almost the same colour, but there is no yellow or red, like you see, nor green. My brothers teased me on it when I was a child.’
She’d never heard of such an ailment. ‘Can’t you see a healer?’
Again there was that light in his eyes, as if he was amused at her concern. ‘No—and my soul isn’t the devil’s.’
She remembered how she’d thought he was like Hades in the orchard. ‘I know that.’
‘I’m not in Purgatory, nor one of God’s chosen, either.’
His words were so earnest, she couldn’t help but smile. ‘I never would have suggested it.’
Harlequin Historical September 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 51