Alice was freezing, but nothing would stop her from standing out here in the cold with Hugh.
Since they’d been in Lyman’s house she had felt the pull to him stretch and tighten, like wool to a spinning spindle. He was right. Nothing had ever been idle between them, and with his comment she knew he felt the pull as well, though he denied it.
Yet there were still so many questions. Why had the King sent him here? Why hadn’t he said something about the Seal earlier? And, more troubling, why had he seemed so angry when she’d mentioned it?
The room at Lyman’s house had been dark; she had been able to gauge nothing from his expression, from his eyes.
Not like now.
The winter sky highlighted his every beautiful asset to her. His almost white-blond hair, tousled with curls and the wind. The cleft to his chin, his nose that crooked just a little to the left. His clear blue eyes.
‘You kissed me,’ she repeated. ‘You held me close when we were dancing. You’re looking at me...have been looking at me all this time...like—’
‘Don’t say it.’
His tone was full of censorship.
She wouldn’t stand for it. ‘Like you want me.’
He closed his eyes and she saw his body shudder. They were out in the open, and yet she wasn’t looking to see if someone watched or listened to them. She didn’t care. She had a monarch who threatened her. If now was the only time they had, she was going to take it.
She couldn’t get any more vulnerable with Hugh. When it came to this man her pride had been lost since she was six. As a woman, she would fight with her heart.
‘Maybe I did make a childish vow, but it was the truth. Maybe I did ask for kiss as a girl asks for a kiss, but I meant it then, too. Here’s another truth: I’m not a child nor a young girl now, and I still want that kiss. I still want that life with you.’
‘We have a traitor to catch. You’re not thinking.’
‘I’m thinking more clearly than you. The fact there’s a traitor in Swaffham, that the King has demanded I catch him, seems insignificant now. It will happen or not, but now there is the two of us and there’s a better chance we’ll be successful.’
‘I’m no hero,’ he said, with a curl to his lips.
‘I always thought you were.’ She said the words softly, teasingly, but they were the truth.
And Hugh looked stunned.
‘Because of the well?’ he said.
‘Long before and after that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the way you faced the town, your father, the way you always bettered yourself.’
He looked to the sky, as if there were answers there, then back to her. ‘Is that why you never helped me?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You never made me a project of yours. Never swooped in with baskets of food.’
‘You never needed them.’
‘I was starving.’
She had known that. But it was the way he’d stood, it was his pride. ‘You would never have accepted it.’
‘No, I would never have accepted your help.’
‘Because you didn’t need it.’
