Page 59 of Bonetide

I’m suddenly very cold, in the place between my shoulder blades that was warm against him a minute ago. The me that was proud of herself for getting fingered in the forest at long last is suddenly at odds with the part of me who just heard a police inspector’s car drive past her on its way to her lover’s house.

Lover.

The reality of what has just happened between us comes crashing down. I push it away, to deal with later tonight with a vat of wine.

“He’s probably come for you.”

“Aye, probably,” he agrees, running a hand through his thick hair.

“You can’t go, then.”

He gives me a sharp look. “I’m going, Iris. It’s my home.”

But is it, though?

“Alasdair…”

“He’s not coming to arrest me. If he were, he wouldn’t have come alone. He’s come to ask me things, to follow up on what he talked to you about. He’ll ask, and I’ll say what I say.”

“And what will you say?”

“What I have to.”

And what the fuck does that mean?

He searches my face, perhaps seeing the question there. “Go home, Iris.”

“Don’t tell me to⁠—”

“Please.”

The please is what does it. I have a feeling it’s a word he rarely dispenses.

“Go home,” he urges, gentler now as he takes my hand and gives it a squeeze that’s harder than it is comforting. “Walk a different way back to the road if you can. Stay off the access road. Stay out of his sight. He doesn’t know about you.”

“Of course he does. He just came to see me.”

“He knows you’re a woman in a cottage who lied to him about a man. He doesn’t know about us. Go.”

I want to protest again because I think he’s making a huge mistake, but he puts his hand to my face and cups my jaw the way he cupped my face at the door of the castle three days ago. He holds me there. His thumb moves once across my cheekbone.

“Iris.”

“Yes,” I whisper, feeling all gooey at his touch again.

“I’ll come and find you tonight. After he’s gone. Sunset. I won’t come into the cottage. I’ll be on the rocks. If you want to know what was said, you can come down.”

“Okay?”

“Go now.”

So I go.

I take a faint deer track through the woods that runs roughly parallel to the access road, the way he showed me with his eyes when he said go a different way. The track is rough and uneven and my hips will hate me tomorrow, maybe even tonight.

As for if I will hate myself, well, that remains to be seen. I don’t know whether I just made the best decision of my life, or set into motion a thing I won’t be able to take back.

Chapter