Chapter Four #3
Wynter cut him off by flying at him, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly.
She’d hit him so hard that she’d rammed his Adam’s apple and he coughed even as he kept his arms to his side.
Not that he didn’t want a beautiful woman hugging him, and not that he didn’t want to hug her in return, but he was suddenly quite off balance by the whole thing.
Wynter de Thorington wasn’t a child any longer.
She was… grown. Quite grown.
And quite beautiful.
“Forgive me,” Wynter said, quickly releasing him and stepping away. “I should not have done that, but Gage… we thought you were dead. You’re not dead!”
She was breathless and wide-eyed, shocked by his appearance, but Gage wasn’t quite over that embrace. He could still feel her against him, the warmth and softness of her body.
“Nay, I’m not dead,” he said. “I am here and I am quite alive.”
Her eyes seemed to light up. “You are finally coming home?”
Gage cleared his throat, averting his gaze for the first time and looking to Laurence, who was standing next to him and looking at Wynter with a great deal of interest. Wynter tore her gaze away from Gage long enough to look at Laurence. After a moment, she recognized him as well.
“Bull,” she said, delight overcoming her surprise. “You have returned, too? What a wonderful thing. Welcome home.”
Laurence was thinking the same thing Gage was – how much Lady Wynter had grown. God’s bones, how she’d grown. That slender young lass they’d been speaking of only earlier that day had grown into something quite magnificent.
“My lady,” he nodded his head in greeting. “It is quite agreeable to see you again. But what are you…?”
He was cut off when a cry suddenly came from the front window. Spring was standing there, her hands on the thigh-high windowsill, muddy and dejected and unhappy.
“Wynnie!” she virtually screamed.
Torn from visions of Gage and Bull, Wynter raced to the window, not realizing that Gage and Laurence were on her heels.
She reached out to help her sister back in through the window, but Gage and Laurence were stronger, with longer arms, and Wynter stood aside as they lifted Spring back into the tavern.
The first thing she did was glare at her sister.
“Why did you do that?” she demanded. “Look at what you caused! Everything is ruined!”
Wynter’s instinct was to fly at her sister angrily but, thankfully, she had some restraint. She could see Gage beyond Spring’s head and she didn’t want to cause a ruckus in front of him.
Even if her sister did deserve it.
“Spring, look who has returned,” she said, distracting her sister by indicating Gage and Laurence. “Do you not recognize Gage and Bull? They have finally come home.”
Startled, Spring whirled around to see more mature and certainly more handsome versions of the men she’d once known.
Her jaw dropped.
“Gage?” she gasped, looking between them. “And Bull? What on earth are you doing here?”
Gage wasn’t hard pressed to admit that he’d never seen anything more horrifying, or more humorous, in his life.
Spring was older than the last time he’d seen her and the plain, strange girl had grown into a plainer, and stranger, woman.
Her face had a layer of white paste on it, with abnormally orange cheeks and lips, and eyebrows of a thin, dark line.
But that bizarre look was marred by mud on the side of her face and in her hair that had splashed on to her when she’d sailed through the window.
It was difficult to keep a straight face.
“Traveling north, my lady,” he said. “I am sorry if you were injured. Do you need to sit down and rest?”
Spring nodded, never taking her eyes off Gage as he reached out and took her by the elbow as he directed her back to her table. Even as he planted her back in her chair, she was looking at him with wide eyes.
“But I do not understand,” she said. “You simply vanished those years ago and now you have returned? Where did you go?”
“Spring,” Wynter hissed. “Do not ask the man such personal questions. If he wants you to know, he will tell you without you asking.”
Instead of fighting back, as was usual, Spring appeared contrite. “Oh,” she said. “I am sorry. I simply meant that we have missed you since you have been away. Bull, too. Bull, did you go with him?”
Laurence nodded. “I could not let him go alone, my lady.”
Spring pointed eagerly to the only other chair at the table. “Please sit down,” she said. “I’ve not seen you in ever so long. Have you been on many great adventures since we last spoke?”
She was fixated on Laurence now, much to Gage’s relief.
Having no choice, Laurence politely sat while Gage eyed Wynter, who rolled her eyes at her sister’s demands.
The woman had been sweet on Laurence those years ago and, evidently, that hadn’t changed.
With a smirk on his lips, Gage motioned over to the table he and Laurence had shared.
“Will you sit for a moment?” he asked politely. “I would like to hear how you have been since we last spoke.”
Wynter didn’t have to be asked twice. She followed him over to the table while, around them, the inn was slowly getting back to normal.
The innkeeper and a pair of wenches raced out from the kitchens with buckets of water and rags to clean up the blood from the brief battle as Wynter sat down next to Gage, but she didn’t notice. She only had eyes for Gage.
“I do not even know where to start,” she said. “You left on the eve of my sixteenth birthday. Do you remember?”
He paused in thought before nodding. “I do,” he said. “I seem to recall we were supposed to go to your celebration.”
Wynter nodded, realizing as she looked at him that the Gage de Reyne she had known all those years had vanished.
A man that sounded like Gage and smiled like Gage was sitting before her, but that’s where the similarities seemed to end.
He was absolutely enormous in breadth and his biceps were as big in circumference as her waist. She could see some kind of discoloration on his neck, peeking out from beneath his hauberk, and she had no idea what it was.
She even thought it might be a skin condition, but whatever it was, she didn’t recognize it. Or him.
She proceeded with some caution.
“On the day of the party, Boothe came to tell us… things,” she said, abruptly realizing that she probably shouldn’t tell him what Boothe had said.
Not that she had ever believed it, but she had to remind herself that Gage had been gone for several years.
He’d clearly left for a reason. “He said you’d gone and that you were not returning.
That is why I am so surprised to see you. We thought you were gone forever.”
Gage watched her expression as she spoke, sensing her reluctance to speak about his unexpected departure those years ago.
It was something he hadn’t thought of for years until his return to England this time around and, now, he found himself having to deal with it.
He supposed that, at some point in his life, he knew that he would face this moment – speaking to someone who had known him before his brother banished him – but he had never expected that someone to be a young lady he’d been chummy with at one time.
As he looked at her, he still felt that chummy warmth.
And perhaps something more that terrified him.
“Did he tell you why I had gone, my lady?” he asked quietly.
Wynter looked at him with a flicker of fear in her eyes. “Aye,” she said. “But I did not believe him, Gage. I never believed what he said.”
“What did he say?”
She tensed up, biting her lip, before letting out a harsh sigh.
“We have only just seen each other again,” she said.
“Do you truly wish to hear such things? I did not believe him, no matter what he said. Your brother has become something of a pariah in Northumberland. He keeps to himself. He does not see friends or allies. In fact, I do not know if he has any allies at all. He is simply a ghost, someone we never see, but I do know he has been causing problems to an ally of my father’s. ”
Gage’s brow twitched. “What problems?”
Wynter seemed to be glad that they were off the subject of what Boothe’s tale of Gage’s behavior had been, so she answered his questions freely.
“Do you remember Brian de Luci, Lord Tynedale?” she asked, watching Gage nod. “It seems that your brother has been harassing him.”
“De Luci,” Gage said thoughtfully. “I know Brian. We grew up together. He was Lord Tynedale even back then.”
“He was very young when his father passed away.”
“I recall.”
Wynter cocked her head thoughtfully. “I remember hearing my father say that a heavy mantle had been passed on to a young boy,” she said.
“But he has worn it well over the years. The problem started when Brian began mining coal on land that borders Stagshaw properties. Your brother seems to have decided he wants that land for himself, so Brian has been forced to hire men to help him defend it.”
In those few words, Gage could see exactly where Varro’s army was going. There was no doubt in his mind. He almost didn’t need to hear anymore.
“An army?” he said.
Wynter nodded. “Aye,” she said, oblivious to any inflection in his tone.
“Brian had to hire mercenaries. He would not ask his allies to help him, my father included, because he did not want to pit them against the House of de Reyne in general. He does not want your cousin at Throston Castle to become an enemy of anyone who helps him, so he thought it best to hire men who were neutral.”
Gage found the entire conversation incredibly ironic. “I see,” he said. “It sounds as if my brother may have brought himself a great deal of trouble.”
Wynter nodded, her amber eyes fixed on him. “He is not making any friends with his behavior and that is a fact,” she said. “Brian de Luci is a nice man and he has many close allies. If those men did not shun your brother before, they will certainly shun him now.”