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“No, I am not saying that at all,” Wally sighed in exasperation.
“So? What are you saying? That I am so desperate to snare myself a
husband that I would be prepared to dally with the first man who does nothing more than escorts me to my friend’s house when it is dark so that I am safe, and my brothers can continue to prop up the bar?”
As she spoke, her voice rose in volume to the point that she was nearly shouting by the time she lapsed into affronted silence. She folded her arms defensively and watched her brother’s mouth open and close several times.
He glanced furtively around the empty road, as though he rather wished that he was propping up the bar.
“We are here,” he grumbled in an attempt to avoid having to answer her. He nodded to the house that was still several feet away, but made no attempt to escort her the rest of the way.
Hetty made a point of looking at the ground they were standing on to the front door of her friend’s house, and sighed – loudly.
“I will see you later,” Wally urged when she made no attempt to move.
“Yes, I shall make my own way home – alone – in the dark, shall I?” she snapped pointedly when Wally turned around and slunk off.
Wally froze, and sighed deeply before he reluctantly turned back to face her. “What time do you want to go home?”
Hetty knew that her brothers were quite prepared to spend the evening supping ale until they were in their cups and barely able to stagger home. However, she was more than a little put out at her brother’s high handed ways, and his poor timing which had interrupted what was the most startling moment of her life.
She wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily.
“About an hour should do it,” she declared spitefully.
She knew that the evening was still relatively early, and Wally would hate having to leave so soon.
She saw the instinctive objection on his face, and lifted her brow defiantly when he opened his mouth to argue with her. Her chin lifted when he sighed deeply and he ran a hand through his hair in frustration. She knew he was trying to think of some argument, but she refused to back down.
“I will come back for you in an hour,” he replied gruffly, with what she was sure was a muffled curse.
“You could always send Charlie,” Hetty called after him. “After all, he does seem to be more of a gentleman than you and Simon put together.”
When Wally stopped but didn’t bother to turn around, she knew that she has pushed him as far as she dare, and turned her back on him with a disgusted huff.
By the time she reached her friend’s front door and lifted her hand to knock, the silence of the main street was broken by the rather fierce slam of the tavern door.
CHAPTER THREE
The following morning, Hetty slammed a saucepan onto the kitchen table and threw a dark glare at Wally. He looked sheepishly at her before he returned to polishing the tack with more force than was necessary, but studiously didn’t say a word.
The atmosphere within the kitchen was so thick that it could have been cut with a knife, but Hetty wasn’t about to soften toward him. Not after the debacle of last night.
While he had come back for her as he had said he would, he had been two hours later than planned. She would have forgiven him for his oversight, if it wasn’t for the fact that when he had appeared on her friend’s doorstep he had been such protective help that she had practically ended up carrying him all the way home. Her disgust had been increased only by the fact that there had been no sign of Charlie whom, she had been assured, was still deep in conversation with Simon, who had remained at the tavern to enjoy another ale.
She couldn’t help but wonder what it was with the male of the species who seemed so addicted to the innkeeper’s watered down brew. Whatever it was that he actually served certainly had all of the men in its thrall because they seemed addicted to it.
It was beyond comprehension because the last time she had tasted it she had wondered if he had gotten the keg mixed up with the mop bucket.
Not for the first time that morning, her thoughts turned to Charlie. She wondered where he was and what he was doing. The mere thought of the tavern wenches finding him attractive made her so annoyed with, well, practically everything, that she slammed a plate onto the table beside the saucepan with so much force that it broke into two pieces.
She stared down at the two halves in disgust, and glared once more at Wally before she turned to fetch another one.
It worried her to think about what she had shared with Charlie last night. She knew so little about him that she just wanted to sit down quietly somewhere so she could ask him lots of questions. Unfortunately, with her brother behaving like a bulldog chewing a wasp, it was highly unlikely that was ever going to happen and that seemed to increase her already bad temper.
“I will go and get him up,” Wally grumbled, when Hetty slapped breakfast onto the table with a sniff.
She ignored him and sat down at the table to eat.
