He smirked as if he’d expected as much. Outside, they hiked to the left of the cottage, where he’d already tilled several long rows beneath the crab apple tree. The morning sun was high, the warmth rippling on the back of her neck as she knelt in the dirt beside him.
They planted seeds together.
She with the bag, dumping them into his palm.
He digging into the soil, dropping seeds into holes, covering them up with dirt-ringed fingernails. Their shoulders brushed. Fingers touched. She smelled him along with earthy moisture as the back of her dress dampened with sweat.
Lady Walpoole would have a conniption when she saw Meg’s stained knees. Perhaps Lord Cunningham too.
She didn’t care.
She should.
“What’s bothering ye, lass?” They’d spoken back and forth—little things about the weather, the vegetable seeds, the garden. How Joanie was helping Mrs. Musgrave with new hats. How the cottage windows still needed curtains.
This question ripped through her, dragging down the barrier always between them. The one she had built. The one she scrambled to resurrect.
“Nothing, I assure you.”
“Ye’re a liar.”
“And you are insolent.” She grabbed a fistful of dirt and daubed it on his arm, smearing it down his sleeve, lips quirking with a smile.
“Ye’re a sure sailor for one with nae sea legs.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“That ye should take care.” He glanced at his sleeve, then back to her face, eyes daring, alive, willful. “I’m a wee bit stronger and faster than ye.”
“Am I supposed to be afraid?”
“If ye had sense.”
“Which you are implying I do not.”
Shaking his head, he went back to work with his hands, then moved to another row. She thought she heard him mumble something under his breath.
Rubbing soil from her dress, she followed him. They fell back into the same rhythm, the silence filled with distant bird songs, her lip between her teeth.
So he was not going to ask again.
That rankled her.
Which was nonsense, because she hadn’t wanted to tell him in the first place.
“Yesterday, I had a visitor.”
Sun pinkened the back of his neck, highlighted the red in his hair, as he remained fixed on his task.
“When the butler showed me into the drawing room, he was gone. No one saw him leave, and no one knew his name.”
“Ye think he was there to do ye harm.”
“No. This was different.” Anxiety pin-pricked her chest. “But I thought … well, I thought he might have …”
“Might have what?”
“I do not know. It is ridiculous.Iam ridiculous.” She exhaled and pushed to her feet, dropping the bag of seeds, turning—
