‘You were the only one to think so.’
‘Why keep bringing up the past? I don’t care about your past.’
‘It’s not the past you have to worry about,’ he bit out, then cursed and spun away.
She waited for him to say more. Waited while she watched his broad shoulders lift and fall with a heavy breath, saw his body held rigid with some anger she knew nothing about.
‘If it’s not the past, then what is it?’
His back to her still, he answered, ‘Can’t you accept there can be no “us”?’
‘No.’ With all the certainty in her heart, no. He’d already alluded to it despite his denials. ‘Maybe this is the wrong time, but this is all the time we have. All the time we’ve ever been given. If it isn’t the past, then it must be something now...or in the future.’
He looked over his shoulder. There was no storm in his eyes now, but she sensed it was there, just under the surface. And she wanted to rage and batter at it. She wanted to break it.
‘There is no future.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘This storm will never let up,’ Esther grumbled.
It had hit with the fierceness of all it had promised. Walking down the stairs, Alice shivered at the wind swirling through her home, despite the servants draping tapestries along the walls and fur along every crack.
Fires blazed, and sputtered against the wind battering against the tiny flues. They made the entire house bright with flame and dark with smoke. It stung her eyes, but she’d take that if it meant warmth.
‘At least this time we knew it was coming.’
Every day since the Boar’s Head Feast the weather had worsened. After Wren Day it had become unbearable.
‘But it’s Holy Innocents’ Day and we can’t eat, and we can’t take our mind off our hunger with work.’
‘Any work done today will fail, and any new project will end badly. The storm is merely reminding us of our duties.’
‘The storm is making Bertrice think her ankle is divine.’
‘Her ankle is simply healing.’
Esther shoved straw around the fireplace. ‘She says it aches with the storm. I’ll never hear the end of it.’
Alice smiled, though she knew she wouldn’t hear the end of it either. ‘At least she’s no longer a burden on you.’
Esther let out huff as she walked to the door leading to the long hallway to the outside kitchens. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.’
Alice’s smile faded. If onlysheknew what she was up to. After weeks of searching for the Seal, she was no closer to the truth.
No, she was closer—because she was beginning to question everything.
Alice pulled her shawl around her and sat in a chair by the fire. There were shouts from the servants who continued to tighten the shutters. Her father was bemoaning the chill more than his empty stomach. She wouldn’t be left alone for long, and would need to help soon.
Hugh had said he’d help her, and it appeared as if he was. And yet, they’d found nothing during Wren Day nor during their riding of horses the day after.
Nothing.
And amongst her fears of not finding the Seal were questions about why she hadn’t. Of course whoever had the Seal wouldn’t be careless, but there didn’t seem to be a trace of it. She’d received no messages from the King on how to proceed either.
There was a part of her that felt she’d been sent here to look for nothing. And yet why would the monarch engage in games that meant nothing?
She still reeled at the fact that there were spies, that subterfuge and intrigue occurred here. Swaffham was a bustling town, but it wasn’t London, and yet she believed a traitor was here simply because one man, one king, had told her there was.
