Chapter 9
Robina took Benjy upstairs and tucked him into his cot. Telling him that the sooner he slept the sooner he would wake up, she went quietly out of the room.
Crossing the landing, she entered her own chamber, relieved to find it empty.
Experience assured her that, without orders to the contrary, Corinne would keep busy elsewhere until it was time to help prepare her mistress for bed.
Robina did not change clothes for supper at Coklaw unless special company arrived or some mishap occurred that precluded wearing the clothes she had worn all afternoon.
Shutting her door and bolting it, she went to the blanket kist and took out the jar.
Having found a small iron crow such as men used to pry bent nails out of wood, she wrapped the lower part of the jar in a towel from the washstand, put the crow’s claw foot under the stiff wire, and pried carefully to avoid breaking the jar.
The wire moved more easily than she had expected, since it had easily withstood her efforts to pry it up with her fingers.
Certain that she had found the right tool but unwilling to linger lest Dev come in search of her, she returned the jar, along with the crow, to the kist. Then, taking her pink and moss-green shawl from its hook, she flung it over her shoulders and hurried downstairs to find Dev on the hall landing, waiting for her.
“You were faster than I’d expected,” he said.
“Where do you want to go?” she asked. “The Ormiston estate?”
“Not today. I’ve been up Sunnyside Hill only once, but it must have some fine views of the surrounding area. Have we time to go and return before supper?”
“Aye, sure. Benjy and I went up and back in a morning without hurrying.”
They set out at once, and Robina easily kept up with Dev’s long stride, although she knew she was taking at least a stride and a half for each one of his.
They walked mostly in silence, and she enjoyed the calls of the birds and squirrels.
Grinning when Dev pointed to a tiny rabbit just before it hopped out of sight behind a bush, she recalled how much she had missed Rab when he was away. No one else at Coklaw had delighted in such simple sights as she did.
They neared the summit much faster than she and Benjy had. By then, most of the clouds had drifted eastward, so the sky was blue with just a few scattered white ones in it.
She felt warm with the sun still well above the horizon. But, knowing that a chilly breeze would greet them at the top, she was glad she had her shawl.
Cresting the hill, they paused and stood silently, looking at the graveyard ahead with its low fence around it. The ends of it met at the lych-gate, in the shelter of which the men had set Rab’s shrouded body before burying him.
Memories and images swooped over Robina, catching her off her guard.
Dev saw the sadness engulfing her. “Do you want to go back?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head. Then, straightening her shoulders, she went to the lych-gate, opened it, and walked into the graveyard.
Dev followed her, noting that the rain had settled the earth mound atop Rab’s grave.
Grass was even beginning to grow there. It came to him then that, having told Corinne to keep close to Robina, he ought to have brought her with them.
Perhaps, though, it was only his eerie sense of Rab’s presence that had stirred the unwelcome thought.
Some guardian he was proving to be, but they were there now, and that was that. With a mental shrug, he returned his attention to Robina, who had stopped with her back to him at the edge of Rab’s grave.
Hearing an odd squeak from her, something akin to the distant scream of a rabbit in a hawk’s talons, he looked more closely. Her shoulders were shaking.
Moving swiftly to her, abandoning all thought of propriety, he put his hands gently on her shoulders and drew her unresisting body close against his.
Noting that the top of her head was a few inches below his chin, he murmured, “There’s no harm in grieving, Robby.
I’ll wager you haven’t shed a tear since he died. ”
She shook her head and, through her sobs, said in a gasping tumble of words, “I was too angry with him for dying and with you for letting him die.”
He had known that, because she had flung similar words at him when he’d brought Rab’s body home. Hearing her say so again now brought a new stab of pain, though.
Then she turned abruptly and, when his hands came to rest on her shoulders again, she looked up at him with tears streaming down her face.
“Oh, Dev, I vowed never to say that to you again! I know it was not your fault, but I couldn’t help thinking, over and over, that if only you’d not taken him with you. If only…”
She gave way to her tears then, her body heaving against his, and he held her close, damning propriety and all who would say he must not hold her.
Helpless in the flood of tears, Robina feared she must have lost her senses to have said such things to him, let alone to succumb to her increasingly selfish emotions right before him as she was now.
Despite what she had said, Dev did not deserve her anger; yet she had no one else to whom she could freely express her feelings, let alone do so in such a humiliatingly undignified way.
He remained quiet, unmoving, and he held her close.
With her cheek against his warm jack, she could hear his slow, steady heartbeat.
She felt as if he’d enfolded her with his body, taking her into a safer place than any she had known since her father died and Rab had ridden off to serve the Douglas.
“Go ahead and cry yourself out, Robby,” Dev murmured to the top of her head. “This is a good place for it. The creatures won’t mind, and the breeze won’t tell.”
Suddenly, it was easier to stop, and she remembered similar times in her distant past when the simple permission to cry had dammed up the torrent.
Drawing a long, shuddering breath, she tilted her head back to look up at him. “I’ve rained all over your jack, and I don’t know what came over me, but you’re right. It is the first time I’ve let myself cry for Rab.”
“I thought so,” he said. “I think you have had a hard time of it here.”
“I cannot control my thoughts,” she admitted.
“They tumble about in my mind, all mixed up. One minute I’ll be furious with everyone, the next I’ll be sad or terrified that I’ll start crying and won’t be able to stop.
Then I remember that everyone else is sad, too, and that a sensible Borderer does not dwell on death. ”
“Blethers,” he said. “Lady Meg said much the same thing when I was at the Hall, and I nearly told her to her head that often one does dwell, that it’s simply human to grieve. It is not an offense against nature.”
Robina’s watery chuckle surprised her as much as it must have surprised him. “I’d like to be there if you do tell her such a thing to her head,” she said in a voice that sounded, to her, almost normal. “She’d snatch you baldheaded.”
“I’d deserve that if I spoke so uncivilly,” he said in that same quiet tone.
She looked at him more searchingly then. “Dev, I do know that it was not your fault. You did what you had to do, as Rab did. Men fight to keep us safe, and men die because of it. Please don’t think I do blame you.”
“Robby, you said nowt to me that I’ve not said to myself many times.
Everyone says ‘if only’ in times of tragedy, whether they admit it or not.
It is natural to be angry, too, even—or especially—with the one who died.
You must not think you are alone in thinking such things.
I have cursed Rab for his heroism more times than I have praised him. ”
With that, he kissed her lightly on the forehead. When he continued to hold her and look into her eyes, she didn’t look away. The moment lengthened until, without thinking, she raised herself on tiptoe and touched her lips to his.
It was as if a flaming bolt shot through Dev. Never before had he felt such warmth spread within him or such yearning. His body ached with it.
Without thinking, let alone considering consequences, he tightened his arms around her and took what she’d offered him.
She melted trustfully into him, the warmth of her body adding to the heat of his own, and let him capture her lips.
He teased and tantalized them with his and with the tip of his tongue until her lips moved eagerly under his and she moaned in his arms. Then a bird whistled from a tree beyond the graveyard fence.
Common sense restored itself, or his natural sense of survival awoke.
He growled, low in his throat, and released her.
She smiled and stepped back. “I’d wager that that whistle means Rab is watching,” she said lightly.
“I hope not,” he said, trying to keep his own voice light. “If he has access to lightning bolts up there, I’d liefer he not fling one at me.”
“Faith, do you think he would object to a friendly kiss?”
Startled to hear her define it so, he said, “Do you think he would not?”
“Well, he might not approve of you licking my lips as you did,” she said. “But it felt good, and you have made me feel much better than I did. I’m all warm inside and, and tingly. I’ve not felt so before.”
“If it were possible for Rab to watch us, I doubt he’d be as pleased about what I did as you seem to be.”
“Do you not believe he watches?”
He hesitated, reluctant to speak the truth lest he upset her again.
“You don’t,” she said. “Well, I know that he does, Dev. I can feel him here. I feel his presence often, and I know—”
“Robby, I think it is good that you feel as if Rab watches over you, but…”
Again he hesitated, and she stepped into the void, saying, “You believe he is just cold and dead in that grave, aye?”
“That is what I think,” he admitted. “But none of us really knows the answer to that mystery, nor will we until we are dead ourselves.”