“There is only one. But better than eating with our hands.”
She hunched inside her cloak, breathing into her palms for warmth, as he poured oats into a pot of melting snow and stirred his concoction over the tiny blaze. When it was cooked, he came and presented her the pot, filled with beige mush, and the single spoon. “For the lady.”
He sat down opposite her. She dug the spoon into the porridge and took a bite. She tried not to wince. It was very hot and very bland.
“Delicious,” she said, trying to force the flavorless mush down her throat.
Henry chuckled at the look on her face. “Normally I make it with milk and a bit of salt.”
“No wonder you decline spiced buns and kippers, with tasty fare like this at the ready.”
She forced down another bite, then pushed the pot across the floor to him. “All yours. Thank you.”
He took a bite and winced. “Not my finest, effort I’ll admit.”
“Better than starvation,” she allowed. “But only slightly.”
He ate a few more bites, then pushed the pot away and looked into her eyes.
“Alice, I’m sorry for last night.”
Ah, so he was going to acknowledge it.
She shook her head. “There is nothing to apologize for.”
“Oh, I think there is,” he sighed. “You are … That is, around you, I feel… ,” he looked at her, then down at his hands. “Quite a bit too much for my own good, it seems.”
The yearning in his eyes made her want to cry. Made her want to take him in her arms.
But he was not professing the kind of sentiment that invited more affection. He spoke in a tone that made clear his desire for her was an unwanted temptation to which he had succumbed.
She understood. She did not wish to want him either. The chasm that ran between their ways of thinking was too deep to ever be breached in any satisfying way. She wanted a man who wanted her affection and her lust. Not a lover whose judgment—of her or of himself—she had to fear when morning came.
Still, she wanted him to know he had not been alone. She was not remotely innocent. Every word she’d said to him in the dark had been deliberate. Every intake of his breath, every tremor of his body, she had felt like it was hers.
“Henry, if I spoke too boldly to you last night, then I’m sorry, too. I was caught up in the moment, and perhaps I imagined … You see, you make me feel quite a bit as well.”
She hoped he understood, in his modest way, that what she really meant was: I wanted you. My body does not reveal its want as unmistakably as yours does but if it did, you would understand that even now, I am alive with it.
She sensed he did understand, for his mouth opened, and then shut. A fierce red flushed at the center of each cheek, and he looked down at his lap. “It was not your fault, given my excitement. I’ve been … wrestling with things, desires, and I …” He lowered his voice. “I am flattered that you felt the same.”
I know all about it, Henry, she wanted to say. How it feels to burn. The only difference between them was that she no longer believed in the merits of burning. Life was short and often brutal. To suffer willfully—to deprive oneself of easy, harmless pleasures—struck her as a waste of breath.
She reached across the table and took his uninjured hand. “No shame in it, Henry Evesham, to be alive. To want things.”
“Thank you,” he said softly. “If things were different … well, you are lovely, Alice.”
Oh, she would miss him. She would miss him so much that the sadness of it almost left her breathless.
Get accustomed to it. There are many things you long for you will have to live without.
She stood up quickly. “I’ll gather my things so we can go. “
She set about picking up the gowns she’d slept on and rolling them up, so she didn’t have to look at him. When she turned around he had retrieved her satchel and held it open for her to stuff the gowns back into it.
“One minute,” she said, trying to jam them into a smaller ball so that they’d fit.
His eyes shifted down inside the bag, and his expression changed. She followed his gaze, and realized what he was looking at.
A book bound in brown leather.
Her heart dropped to her toes. The only thing she could think to do was to pretend she hadn’t noticed what he’d seen, and hope he’d assume he was mistaken. But he reached inside her bag and grabbed the book.
“Henry,” she said quickly, but he had opened the book to confirm his suspicions and was now staring at his own writing.
He looked up at her, stricken. “Alice, what—” He shook his head, like he was searching for words.
She had no earthly idea of what to say. How could she possibly explain? “I didn’t,” she sputtered. “You see—I—that is—”
“You have my journal,” he stated, like he was trying to make himself understand that this was true. “You have my journal.”
“I picked it up by mistake,” she said feebly. “I didn’t even know it was yours. I only realized yesterday.”
“Have you read this?” he asked, holding it up with his good hand, which was shaking.
“No!” she said. But that was not true.
“Yes,” she admitted, more softly.
He regarded her like she was a snake.
“I was going to give it back. I was just trying to think how to explain why I came to have it, and—”
“You should have returned it the instant you found it, unread,” he shouted. “This is private. This is personal. Aren’t your people the ones always going on about trust? Discretion?”
She didn’t know what to say. He was exactly right. She should have done so. But it would have made them both uncomfortable and made her look like a thief or a blackmailer, and she had not wanted to fall in his esteem. She’d decided returning the book to Elena’s would be the most elegant way around the whole mess.
He looked up at her, his cheeks on fire. “Is this why you offered to touch me last night? Because you know about my—”
“No!” she cried. “I wanted you before I read it.”
He froze. She realized she’d just said directly the thing they’d talked around with such tortured vagueness. She decided to tell the truth.
“When I realized it was yours, it just made me want you more.”
He put the book in his own satchel, looking disgusted. “Come,” he said tersely. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 23
Henry drove slowly but determinedly down the road, occasionally stopping to remove tree branches that had fallen in the storm, ignoring Alice’s protests about his hand.
He invited the pain. He welcomed anything that might distract him from his thoughts.
From her presence beside him.
From the drive, which should have taken less than an hour, but took two.
During those two hours, he did not say a single word to Alice. The closer they got to Fleetwend, the more miserable he felt. The sharpness of his anger had settled into something more like a weight around his heart.
It hurt him, that she’d done this. It hurt.
They passed a sign noting her village was two miles away. Oddly, the snowstorm had not reached this far inland. There was no ice on the ground at all.