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“Why not?”
“You were the one most harmed in the fire.” She leaned back on the bench, her hand lifting away from Torrie’s. “Far too many people can never move past their own anguish to see the light of the day above them.” Her head angled to the side as she looked at Torrie. “But you have managed to do so.”
“It was not without much cajoling.”
“Robby?” Sienna smiled. “Yes, he always could be charming when he wanted to be.”
“He was more patient than charming.” Torrie looked to the brothers still in battle at the water’s edge. “Quietly giving me everything I never knew I needed.”
“Which was?”
“Someone like me. Someone on the outskirts. Someone that never fit into their place in life.”
Her gaze stayed trained on Roe, watching the muscles in his arm tense as he blocked a blow that angled dangerously close to his forehead. The strikes of steel were just as brutal as they had been at the start, neither one of the brothers slowing. “Roe made that fact of my life okay because he is the same as me. I wasn’t empty, wasn’t alone for the first time since the fire. Yes, I had been married and I had my cousins, but I was still alone that whole time. Drowning in it. He found that lonely place I existed in and moved himself into it.”
Roe shoved his brother away from him, his entire body exploding in power. A wicked smile crossed her face. “Not to mention he’s sinfully handsome. It was hard to ignore that.” She looked to Sienna. “As is the duke. How is it that the heavens managed to make both brothers look like Greek gods cracked free from Praxiteles’ marble?”
Sienna sipped her lemonade, hiding a grin. “You remind me of just how very handsome my husband is. One tends to forget these things when his is the face I see every day.”
Torrie chuckled. “Well then, I look forward to my chest not coiling up every time Roe walks into a room.”
Sienna laughed. “Oh, that still happens daily for me with Logan. I am lucky in that way.” She looked at Torrie, her eyes going serious. “Dare I say, Torrie, that you already believe in Roe more than you know? You must, in order for you to set aside the constant suspicions of what happened that day of the fire.”
“I know he didn’t start the fire. Of everything that has happened, that is the one thing I know.”
Sienna nodded. “Then you know him—aside from all these silly nuances like titles and estates and things he should have told you but didn’t. You believe in him. And you might just be exactly what he has always needed.”
“Which is?” The question left Torrie’s lips, breathless in curiosity. For all that she had learned of Roe, for all that she had felt between them, there were so many shades of him that were a mystery to her.
Sienna smiled at her. “He needs someone who loves him unconditionally. Is free to love him unconditionally. That is all he’s ever needed.”
{ Chapter 17 }
“This is the new curve I done on it.” The boy, maybe fifteen and lean as a whip, held the horseshoe up to Roe. “Mr. Garner show’d me the cross angle to hit, course, he got it in two strikes—it took me sixteen.”
Roe chuckled as he grabbed the black iron from the boy’s hand and studied it, turning it over in his hands. “Sixteen turns into fourteen turns into ten turns into seven turns into two. You’ll get there. And then you’ll have Garner’s bicep to prove it.”
Torrie stopped at the far edge of the stables, close enough to the blacksmith’s building to hear Roe and the boy talking, but behind Roe far enough to be out of sight.
“I hope so, sir. I want to bring my sister to the area when I get a shop.”
“She is at Rising Giles?”
The boy scratched the back of his head, his thumb running along the side of his soot-filled face, smearing the darkness. “She is—learnin’ with Madam Hatfield. She’s hopin’ t’be a governess, but I’d rather she come live with me.”
Roe nodded. “You miss her?”
“Awfully, so, sir.”
“I can imagine. How old is she?”
“Twelve.”
Roe handed the horseshoe back to the boy. “For as hard as Mr. Garner says you’ve been working, I’m sure she will be back with you soon. Have they identified where would be a good place to set up shop?”
The boy shrugged. “The smithy died at Washbourne last year, but Garner said the village of Hatfield is much prettier and they need a smithy in the area what with the new factory in place there.”
“You don’t care which one?”
