Chapter 5
Matrons leaned over loaves still warm from the oven, voices low as they pondered the new companion up at the castle, a southern girl with a quick step and wary eyes, wondering if she’d last the winter or if the earl’s brooding moods would send her fleeing back to softer climes.
For a long while, Verity did not move from the spot where the earl had placed his mouth on hers. He had tasted like snow and … metal?
The wind hissed through the naked birches overhead, setting the remaining leaves to a shivering, icy applause.
Her heart was refusing to steady, pounding like the hooves of a runaway team.
Her chest felt trussed, laced too tightly, every breath a battle between winter’s bite and the scalding heat that blazed on her lips.
She pressed her fingers to her lips, searching for some trace of him, of proof that it had happened. The touch yielded nothing except her own trembling and the memory, which scorched far more deeply than the chill.
A gentleman had kissed her. Not with the bruising entitlement she remembered too well from the squire’s son in Somerset, but with a tender hunger, and the trembling self-control of a man who had spent too long denying himself.
There was wildness in it. Something she had always feared, until now, when it seemed less like violence and more like liberation.
What did it mean? He had been distinctly contrite about kissing her.
Perhaps being caught nearly naked in the cold had unsettled his senses.
But why had he been returning from the woods in such a state?
Was there some northern custom among rural men that had never reached her ears in polite society?
A moment later, her own senses plunged into another storm, this one made of memory and guilt.
She could see her father’s face. Gentle, with the smile that always forgave her before she even confessed her small rebellions.
She could not imagine his reaction if he had seen her like this, acting foolish for a forbidden nobleman, desperate to pull him closer.
Oh, she had been warned about men. About the line between proper admiration and the letting down of virtue.
But no one had ever described the way desire could unravel reason, turning a woman into a quivering, greedy thing.
Verity knew how to place a knee in a man’s ballocks if he misbehaved.
She was no wilting flower, but it had not been her knee she had wanted to grind against … that area.
“I must be feverish,” she muttered.
There could be no future in such folly. She knew that as well as she knew herself.
Lord Blackfen would never marry a companion, no matter how fine her hands at pouring tea or soothing a fading countess.
Even if he were that sort of radical, even if he dared offend every rule of rank and blood, Verity still had her own chain of secrets to bear.
She would not add to them by becoming the subject of another scandal or, worse, a mistress, which would leave her a pariah in Blackfen and everywhere else. Father would turn in his grave if she even considered being the earl’s mistress.
And yet, beneath all that, a joy took root. She had been properly kissed for the first time. Not like the clumsy violence of Robert Fynn, who had left her with shame and a scar, but a true kiss from an attractive yet kind man with strength and honor. She would carry that with her always.
She took a breath, squared her shoulders and gathered up her dignity, then began the trudge toward the gamekeeper’s cottage.
There would be no repeats. She was a sensible woman, a survivor, and recognizing hopeless situations was what it took to survive.
But, oh, how she would savor this moment when she lay awake, safe in her bed, free to remember it as she pleased.
And when she thought of it, she would not think of violence or shame.
She would think of the way Lord Blackfen had touched her, so gently at first and then with a soft desperation that matched her own.
She would think of the groan he made before he pulled away, the rough, exasperated sound of a man tasting sunlight after a long exile in winter.
She would think of that and smile and know that for one instant, at least, she had been chosen to be the object of such unrestrained passion.
With this knowledge humming through her like a secret spring, she kept moving forward.
She soon discovered that Blackfen forest, which from the castle windows had seemed beautiful, could turn feral and strange the deeper you were in it.
Every branch became an arm, every bramble a snare, and the path to the gamekeeper’s cottage wound on so much longer than she expected that she wondered if she had strayed from the path.
Sunlight came in through gaps, once revealing a riot of animal tracks scribbled in the snow. Then the clearing arrived by surprise, the trees suddenly parting to reveal the Mr. Cutter’s cottage. One of the windows glowed with a faint orange light. Smoke curled from the chimney in a wavering thread.
The whole tableau might look inviting, if she was foolish enough to convince herself that approaching such a crude man alone at his home was a good idea. After all, Mr. Cutter did frighten her a bit, with his rough, almost rude, manner and his intimidating physicality.
But she needed her trunk, and she had come this far already. She was not about to turn around and walk home empty-handed. Even if she was frozen to the bone because she had elected to come out with no coat. Or gloves.
She felt for the hard shape of her house key to Aunt Martha’s back door tucked into her pocket, the sharp edge a small comfort. If Mr. Cutter tried any mischief, he would quickly find she was not one of those maidens who shrank at the sight of a raised hand.
Approaching the cottage, she thought of all the fairy stories she had been told as a child.
There was the one about the little girl with a basket who ventured foolishly into the woods and was eaten alive by a wolf.
The one about the hapless siblings lured into a cottage by a woman who meant to fatten and roast them.
It was to be hoped she had chosen the right path.
Fanciful gibberish, Verity thought to herself. Stuff and nonsense.
She mounted the stoop and paused once to listen. She heard nothing except her own breath and the soft, distant rustle of the wind, but that only made her more nervous.
She knocked on the door.
Nothing.
She rapped again, louder, using her full strength.
There was a growl from within and the sound of footsteps. Heavy. Dragging. Like a man who had been dozing in his chair and resented every moment stolen from his sleep.
The door jerked open, and there stood Ephraim Cutter. He was larger than she remembered, the dominating heat behind him turning his beard to a black mass and giving his face the glow of hot embers. He looked at her as a hound might look at a trespassing cat.
“What is it?” He barked. “Has somethin’ happened?”
“No,” she replied, lifting her chin as far as it would go. “I have come for my trunk. You were to deliver it.”
“Ye came this far into the woods for that?” His brow knotted, irritation mingling with his inspection of her. “And on yer own? Are ye daft, lass? What if I’d laid out the traps? Or what if somethin’ else caught ye alone?”
She did not flinch, though his glare was potent enough to shrivel lesser flowers. “I was not about to wait around, sir. You did not leave it at the castle, and I require my things.”
He scowled, then looked past her for a second. “A dangerous place for chits to go out alone, ye ask me. Ye don’t know these woods, the wild creatures draggin’ off the unwary.”
Verity eyed him with fresh exasperation. “If wild creatures were my concern, I would not have walked straight to your door, Mr. Cutter.”
He blinked, as if making sense of the barb. Then understanding arrived and his lips quivered briefly in amusement.
She pressed on. “Do you have my trunk, or have I risked life and limb, or so you claim, for naught?”
The gamekeeper grunted, his gaze flickering with annoyance. “Not here. Left it on the wagon. Should be at the stable, unless the cold’s sprouted legs on it.”
She suppressed a groan. “Is there a reason you failed to mention this sooner?”
“Just forgot,” he replied with blunt honesty.
They regarded each other across the threshold. Verity could see the inside of the cottage. It was cluttered, dimly lit, covered with hunting gear and drying herbs. There was a table with two chairs, and a large battered armchair facing the fire.
There was a moment, a brief and dangerous one, in which she wondered whether she should be grateful that he had not tried to invite her in. Stories in which the girl accepted the invitation often did not end happily.
“Perhaps,” she said, forcing the words through clenched teeth, “keep your word or else do not utter them at all.”
The gamekeeper grinned, showing a row of teeth so unruly they startled her. “Ye’re a bold one. Watch yerself up here. Boldness is a temptin’ thing, and not all things in Blackfen are as tame as ye might wish.”
She turned on her heel before he could say anything further. As she re-entered the dim light beneath the trees, the wind rose and rattled the birches again, as if the whole forest was whispering its disapproval.
Verity did not care. She had survived worse than grumpy, hairy men. She had survived the hell of Somerset. She would claim her trunk. Trudging back with renewed vigor, she found the sharp cold now preferable to the boiling frustration Ephraim Cutter evoked in her.
Eventually, she approached the stable door. A man’s voice sang softly from within. An old ballad, tuneless but not unpleasant. Again, she hesitated, listening for a moment, then she stepped across the threshold.