Chapter Eleven
Alys didn’t know what she found more delicious—the succulent pork, or the sight of the recently-shorn Piers, sitting a quarter of the way around the fire from her.
The light played over the lean planes and hollows of his face, sparked the gold in his bristly short hair, shadowed his long, dark lashes against his skin.
The look of him, clean shaven, relaxed, eating good food, had triggered a hunger in Alys’s stomach that could not be sated by the meal they shared.
He was gorgeous. Gorgeous and brusque and damaged.
And Alys felt drawn to him as surely as rainwater must flow down to deep, dark valleys.
She wanted to touch him again, not only his warm scalp and the skin of his neck, but every part of him beyond, to satisfy her curiosity of his whole body.
And she wanted to learn of him, his hard past, his desperate mission, his dreams and hopes for Gillwick Manor.
She wanted to know the truth about the ring in his bag, beyond her suspicions.
Alys realized she was craving intimacy of any kind, every kind, with him.
She must have been staring at him for quite some time, because at last he flicked his eyes to her and frowned.
“What?” he said around a mouthful of food.
“Promise me you’ll never wear a beard again.” She remembered the piece of food still grasped in her grease-slicked fingers and took a bite of it.
He swallowed. “Beard keeps me warm in the winter. I’ll grow it back out.”
“Then why shave at all?”
He seemed to think for a moment, as if testing his answer in his own mind first. Then he shrugged. “It was unkempt. I had no mirror to trim it into a proper shape. Reckoned I’d do better to simply start anew.”
She popped the last piece of onion into her mouth—it was soft and caramelized and sweet—and then shook her head while she sucked her fingers clean. After she had swallowed, she simply said, “Don’t.”
He was finished eating as well, and so he picked up a long stick and began tweaking the fire. Sparks flew up in the air in a dancing, crackling spiral, and the burst of light across Piers’s face caused Alys’s stomach to clench. She was mesmerized by the very sight of him.
“I doubt you’d hold that opinion were it you who must venture out before dawn in the dead of winter.”
Alys shrugged. “But when you return to Gillwick, you’ll not have to perform menial chores yourself, will you?”
He looked at her warily.
Alys raised her eyebrows as if challenging him to deny it. “The ring in your bag—it was your father’s.”
He was quiet for a long time before nodding “It was. Although he never wore it, to my knowledge.”
“Did you steal it?” she asked simply.
“No. He gave it to me the night he died.”
Interesting. “So you have his blessing.”
“I’d not call what I must do a blessing.”
Alys reached behind her for her bag and dragged it to her side, between her and Piers.
She leaned her upper body on it, toward him, and propped her chin on her palm.
She felt sated, relaxed, in the glow of the fire and with her belly full.
Layla crouched in the curve of her hip and thigh, searching methodically for abandoned morsels in the folds of Alys’s skirt.
“Speaking to the king to claim your birthright is not a blessing?”
Piers shook his head. “It’s more of a dangerous riddle, actually.”
“Why?”
“You are better off not knowing.”
Alys hummed noncommittally. He would tell her eventually. “Does solving this dangerous riddle require facial hair?”
He looked askance at her. “No.”
“Then continue to shave. You’re too handsome by far to cover your face in prickly bristles. I rather enjoy looking at you, Piers.”
He stilled and looked into her eyes. “‘Tis a bold and dangerous game you play at yourself, young Alys.”
“Bold, yes. Dangerous?” She shrugged. “Mayhap. But ‘tis no game. I am most sincere.”
“I am a grown man. You are—”
“A grown woman,” she interrupted.
“A young woman, with no experience outside of her sheltered and pampering home,” he continued.
“Does my youth make me undesirable?” she challenged. “Or my wealth? Most men are attracted to me for both.”
He frowned and turned his gaze quickly back to the fire. His poking stick had become engulfed in flame and he whisked it sharply through the air with a surprised curse that made Alys smile.
“If you had so many suitors, why is it that you are now being forced to marry the likes of Clement Cobb?” he goaded, avoiding the subject she’d raised.
“That is a fair question, I suppose. I didn’t even like—much less love—any of the men who offered for me,” she said honestly. “I certainly am not in love with Clement Cobb. Sybilla is only impatient to be rid of me.”
“Why?” He turned his face back to her.
Alys frowned. “I suppose because she doesn’t like me very much. Sybilla and I—we are very different from each other.”
“That is no reason for her to be desperate to be rid of you,” Piers argued. “It’s not as if you are an infant that demands her constant care, or Fallstowe Castle some lowly hut where the two of you are forced to sit in each other’s laps.”
“True. If I’m very, very lucky, days pass when Sybilla and I don’t catch sight of each other.”
“Then there must be some other reason,” Piers insisted. “You have another sister, also older than you?”
“Cecily claims that she will take vows. She has no desire to marry.”
“Then why do you not do the same?”
Alys laughed. “Think you a convent would have me? Any matter, it’s not as though I don’t want a husband and children. And I have a husband now, so we must work straight away on a family.”
Piers gave her a warning frown. “Alys.”
She smiled in reply. “You never answered me: do you find me unattractive, Piers?”
“I’m not having this conversation.”
“Why? Are you worried that I might assault your person in a fit of passion?”
“Yes.”
Alys dropped her flushed face to her bag for a moment and laughed, and to her surprise, Piers chuckled. She raised her head, still smiling, and her desire was out of her mouth before she had time to consider the repercussions of it. “Will you kiss me, Piers?”
He stared at her, the smile falling away from his mouth slowly, his eyes drawn to her lips. She licked them, encouraging him without words.
“I shouldn’t,” he said quietly.
“But will you?” She sat up again, leaning toward him, her eyes searching his face. “I want you to, very much.”
“Why?” he asked, as if the question pained him.
She leaned farther, slowly, as if trying not to frighten him away. “Because you are handsome. And courageous. And witty. And I think”—she licked her lips again, as the warmth of his face reached her—“I think I’m falling in love with you, husband.”
His head was still turned toward her, her mouth a finger’s width from his. She could smell the scent of him, his maleness perfumed with woodsmoke and autumn air.
“Alys,” he whispered. “Don’t.”
“Why?” She let the question sigh from her lips and then closed her eyes.
A rude gust of cold air was all that kissed her mouth. Her eyes snapped open and she saw Piers already walking away from the fire.
“Where are you going?” she called, sitting up quickly.
“To get more wood.” Then he disappeared into the dark as the sound of tumbling rocks announced his hasty descent down the ravine.
Layla scrambled up onto Alys’s shoulder and began to pick through her hair. Alys dropped her chin onto her fist with a deep frown and let the monkey have her way.
“Dammit,” she said softly. Her eyes searched the dark beyond the fire.
But he had let her get closer, still. She was making progress, and that was encouraging.
She knew he’d wanted to kiss her, she just hadn’t been quick enough.
And they still had a handful of days until they reached London.
Perhaps three more nights, if she was lucky.
It wasn’t a lot of time, but it was all she had.
She let her mind settle on the problem, much like Layla continued to worry and pick through her tresses.
By the time Piers returned, announcing his arrival by tossing a small bundle of dead wood near the fire, she had failed to work out a plan.
It frustrated her, as she couldn’t help but feel that the answer she sought should be painfully obvious.
She smiled up at him, hoping that kindness would gain her some ground. “Welcome back.”
He stood there staring at her for several moments, his brows drawn down in his signature scowl, his long arms at his sides. The fire lit half of his face to golden, flickering brilliance, but even in that glow, Alys thought he looked paler than when he’d left.
“Don’t do that again, Alys.”
Her eyes went wide as she tried to feign innocence, difficult with a monkey huffing little breaths into her ear. “Do what?”
“You know what.” He crouched down by the fire and turned his attention to arranging the wood fuel. He was clearly in no mood at the moment for sport.
“Oh! You mean try to kiss you?”
He threw her a glare from the corner of his eye.
“Why is it so wrong for a woman to be forthright in her desires?” Alys demanded. “The Foxe Ring decreed that we are man and wife, and if you are attracted to me, then I see no reason—”
“Alys, we are not married.”
“That is debatable.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Since we are debating it even now, I would say that it is, in fact, debatable. You are unlike anyone I have ever met, Piers.”
He threw the last chunk of wood into the fire, causing an explosion of sparks. “You’ve never met anyone like me because you don’t spend your social time with the servants!”
“Actually, I do. Quite a lot, really. Drives Sybilla mad.”
He was very obviously unimpressed by her candor.
“Here is why I will not kiss you, Alys, and why we will most certainly never—” He broke off and waved one hand between the two of them.
“Your entire life, you have gotten everything you want. Me? I get nothing that I want. We are two different animals.”
“I don’t agree with that at all.”