***
By morning, a wet mist clung to the grounds, shrouding the trees at the edge of the garden. Aoife waited until the householdstirred before slipping down the servant’s stair and out the side door. No one stopped her. No one seemed to notice her at all.
She reached the boundary where the formal gardens surrendered to the wild. Her heart beat faster as she approached the thicket where the barrel was hidden. Brambles dripped with rain. The earth was soft beneath her feet. She could see, when she was still several paces away, that the barrel was gone.
Cormac must have taken it; no one else knew it was there. What if the soldiers had discovered it? She looked around, half expecting soldiers to appear amongst the trees, but there was no one there.
Aoife couldn’t imagine how he’d managed it with his shoulder the way it was, but they’d succeeded. After all these weeks, she’d finally found a way to get food to her people.
Halverton would be in his study at this hour.
Aoife waited, heart loud in her ears, for a moment to slip in and adjust the ledgers again.
Halverton stepped out; she slipped down the corridor and eased open the study door.
The room was dim, curtains drawn against the fog. On the desk, the ledger lay open, neat columns of numbers marching across the page. Its twin was closed underneath it.
She crossed the rug quickly and slipped behind the desk, scanning the page, looking for numbers that would indicate whether this was the ledger he kept for the empire or for himself.
“Looking for something?”
Her breath caught.
Halverton stood in the doorway.
He hadn’t raised his voice, but the quiet was worse. She forced herself to look up. “I wondered what you were reading, but this is all nonsense to me.”
He crossed the room without hurry, closing the door behind him. His gaze flickered to the ledger, then he smiled and shook his head. “Business of the county and estate. It is complicated.”
His tone suggested he had bought her lie. She slipped out from behind the desk to face him. “I came to speak with you.” The lie came easily, but now she’d said it she couldn’t think what on earth she might have come to speak to him about.
“Hmm.”
She met his gaze. “I wanted to ask about my family,” she said, blurting out the first thing that came to mind.
His expression softened. “Your family.”
“I was hoping I might see them.”
Halverton’s expression shifted, becoming warmer, almost fond. Light flickered through the gold in his eyes.
“And so you shall,” he said. “In time.”
Aoife kept her breath steady. “May I ask when?”
He stepped closer. A man entirely sure of his authority.
“Aoife,” he said gently, “you are becoming someone new. Someone better suited to her future. I am not sure it is a good time. It might disrupt all of our progress.”
Her stomach tightened.
His gaze drifted over her, her hair, her dress, the necklace he had given her lying against her throat. “You have made remarkable progress. Truly.” His voice dropped to an intimate murmur. “I would hate to waste it.”
Aoife could see he was thinking, and forced herself to wait patiently for what he would say.
“Perhaps it would be wise. It could be… instructive.”
“Instructive?”
