Chapter Three Mud on Her Hem #3
One of the laborers pointed toward the lower road.
“Checking the east end, ma’am.”
The east end lay beyond the section Ambrose had forbidden her to approach.
Mary Beth stood still for perhaps three seconds.
Then she walked toward it.
She did not cross his stakes.
At least, not at first.
The upper path curved away from the wall and dropped through a stand of alder. From there she could see the lower road, the braces, and the broken stone. Ambrose was farther east, alone, measuring a crack where the surviving wall met the natural bank.
He was beyond the point where Mary Beth could see clearly.
She descended another twenty yards.
The path ended at a fallen branch.
She stepped around it and found herself on the old cart terrace above the wall.
The ground felt firm, so Mary Beth moved closer.
“Do you enjoy proving me right?”
Ambrose’s voice came from below, and she stopped.
He climbed the bank toward her, his expression stripped of every trace of morning amusement.
“I have not crossed your stakes,” she said.
“There are no stakes here because I had not finished marking it.”
“Then your kingdom suffers from poor administration.”
He did not smile.
“Go back.”
“I came to see the east joint.”
“You can see it when I tell you it is stable.”
“You work for me.”
“Yes.”
“Then stop speaking as though I am one of your laborers.”
Ambrose reached the terrace and stopped several feet away.
“My laborers listen when I tell them ground may collapse.”
The insult was deliberate, and Mary Beth’s temper rose with it.
“Your laborers are paid to obey you.”
“I am paid to prevent this estate from putting someone under several tons of stone.”
“And you believe that gives you authority over me?”
“On unstable ground? Yes.”
“It does not.”
“Then dismiss me.”
The words landed between them.
Mary Beth had not expected them.
Ambrose came one step closer.
“If you want an engineer who will tell you the bank is safe because you own it, hire another man. If you want me, when I say a slope may go, you stay off it.”
“You are insufferable.”
“Possibly.”
“Arrogant.”
“Sometimes.”
“And entirely too pleased with being correct.”
“Often.”
That answer nearly made her laugh, which only angered her more.
“Do not manage me, Mr. Tavener.”
His amusement vanished.
“I am not trying to manage you.”
“You forbid, direct, order, and expect obedience. What would you call it?”
He closed the remaining distance between them.
“Keeping you alive long enough to continue arguing with me.”
Mary Beth’s breath caught.
Her anger shifted rather than eased.
Ambrose stood close enough that she could see the faint white scar beside his chin and the darker flecks in his eyes. Dirt marked one cuff. His hair had fallen forward from working in the wind.
She should have stepped back. The thought annoyed her enough that she stayed where she was.
“You take extraordinary liberties for a man who arrived yesterday,” she said.
“You take extraordinary risks for a woman who claims to understand her own land.”
“I do understand it.”
“Then respect what it can do.”
“I respect danger.”
His gaze moved over her face.
“No,” he said quietly. “I think you enjoy refusing to be frightened.”
The accuracy struck harder than the insult would have.
Mary Beth went still.
People called her shameless because she refused to perform shame. They called her reckless because caution offered by men so often arrived disguised as control. She had learned to push back before anyone could decide the shape of her life for her.
Ambrose had seen the habit in two days.
She disliked him for it.
At that moment, she wanted him more.
“And what do you enjoy?” she asked.
His eyes dropped to her mouth again.
This time there was no possibility of imagining it.
“At present?”
“At present.”
The space between them seemed suddenly indecent.
Mary Beth could hear men working somewhere beyond the alders. A hammer struck timber. Water moved through the ditch below. Wind lifted one loose strand of her hair across her cheek.
Ambrose raised his hand.
For one suspended second she thought he meant to touch her.
His fingers stopped before they reached her face.
He let the hand fall.
“At present,” he said, voice rougher than before, “I am trying very hard to remember that you are my client.”
Mary Beth’s pulse beat once, hard, at her throat.
“Is it difficult?”
“Increasingly.”
Neither moved until Ambrose stepped back.
He pointed toward the upper path.
“Now get off my unstable ground.”
Mary Beth held his gaze until the corner of his mouth betrayed him.
A laugh escaped her before she could prevent it.
Ambrose finally smiled.
It transformed him so completely that Mary Beth’s irritation became dangerous all over again.
She turned before he could see how much.
“Tomorrow,” she said over her shoulder, “your kingdom gets flags.”
“Tomorrow you stay behind them.”
“Do not become ambitious.”
Mary Beth climbed back toward Blackthorn Manor with dried mud tugging at the leather of one boot. She could still hear the roughness in Ambrose’s voice when he had said “Increasingly,” and she disliked how pleased the memory made her.