She was staring out across the fields, brooding, when she saw two figures walking toward her in the distance.
She had forgotten all about John and Thomas Heywood coming to harvest her fields. Dismay bowed her shoulders as she remembered that she usually provided their supper. How would she keep them out of the cottage?
She put on a fixed smile as the two of them reached the low rock wall surrounding her courtyard, but when she went over to greet them, her smile became as genuine as theirs. They were such good men—good to her and to their family. They would never dream of treating a woman the way Thornton had treated her.
Thomas, only eighteen, blushed and nodded his head to her, while his brother John gave her a good-natured grin. He opened the gate and came toward her, and she let him kiss her cheek. For a moment she remembered Thornton’s heated black eyes raking her body, then she was ashamed of thinking of any man but John.
He smiled. “Good afternoon, Roselyn. It is a good day for the harvest.”
She could only agree as the two men took her by the arms and led her out into the fields.
~oOo~
As the afternoon hours passed and Roselyn did not return, Spencer lay flat on his back and battled frustration. He had practiced walking—hopping—for as long as he could, and he was drenched with sweat. He should be thinking about strategies to hurry his recovery, and what he would say to the queen when he arrived in London.
But he couldn’t stop thinking of Roselyn, a woman who swam in the ocean when she was troubled. Two years before, he had known nothing about her, and even now she was an enigma—but she had saved his life.
He hadn’t helped matters between them by wounding her with sharp words.
He tensed when he heard voices outside. Was she angry enough to turn him over to the authorities? She was already suspicious of his presence on Wight.
Slowly he sat up, cursing his weakness as he got up on one knee. Roselyn had earlier opened the glass in the window, and Spencer leaned out just enough to see the distant fields and the orchard.
Two young men scythed in the wheat fields, and Roselyn followed behind them, gathering the stalks of grain. Across the rolling fields her laugh carried: deep, throaty, painfully intimate to hear. Something uncertain tightened inside him in reaction. He didn’t think of her as a happy person, but stoic. Maybe that was only with him, though.
Was even a menial life better than marriage to him?
The two men must be the Heywood brothers, part of this paragon of family perfection she so defended and adored.
He watched uneasily as the men lowered their scythes when Roselyn came up to talk to them. She waved as she left them, and they continued to watch her as she walked away. Were these the next lovers she was trying to ensnare?
By the time she entered the cottage, Spencer was sitting on the pallet with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out before him.
She didn’t even glance his way as she pinned an apron to her dress and began to prepare supper. The silence stretched out, taut, until he couldn’t contain himself.
“Who are those men?” he asked in a bored voice.
Though she didn’t stop what she was doing, she said, “John and Thomas Heywood.”
“They help harvest your crops, and in return you give them…what?”
Roselyn set her wooden spoon down hard, and Spencer told himself it made him feel better to provoke some kind of reaction from her.
“What are you implying?” she demanded. “They are good men, raised as closely with me as my own brother.”
“But they’re not your brothers, especially the older one. Surely it is getting too difficult to live alone. A woman like you needs a man—any man.”
Keeping her head lowered, she put the last meat pie on a tray, then lifted her face to look at him. It was devoid of all emotion; even her eyes were ice gray, hiding her thoughts.
“But there you’re wrong,” she said softly. “If I needed justanyman, I could have had you, and the luxury that went with our respective titles. I can see now that I made the best decision.”
Carrying the tray, she swept past him, leaving Spencer close to gaping. He was used to having the last word, making outrageous statements sure to immortalize him in everyone’s memory.
But this foolish girl implied that poverty and disreputability were preferable to him.
And hadn’t that been exactly what he feared, when he tried to convince his parents that he didn’t need to marry?
Two years before, he’d consoled himself with the notion that Roselyn was young and stupid and headstrong when she’d convinced herself she was in love with a stable groom.
