“As your husband, it would be my pleasure.”
Toby thought she might faint. In fact, she had to swallow very hard and take a very deep breath. “Good Lord,” she breathed. “Do you mean to say that you plan to…?”
“I have for quite some time.”
“But…!” There were tears in her eyes. “But… what about everything you said about my horrid manners? You told me it was an appalling trait. Moreover, you are above my station. You are… my God, you are…youcannotmarry me.”
He was laughing; she could feel it as he continued to nuzzle her cheek and ear. “I can marry whomever I wish,” he murmured. “I think we are a good match, you and I. Do you disagree?”
She closed her eyes at the realization of it and tears coursed down her cheeks. He felt the moisture and looked at her, concerned.
“What is the matter, sweetheart?” he asked gently.
She was trying not to weep from sheer joy. “What about my terrible disposition?”
His soft laughter returned. “Forgive me; I spoke before coming to know you. I know now that you are simply a woman who speaks her mind and I respect that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure enough that I am delighted with the prospect of spending the rest of my life with you.”
The most amazing expression filled her face as the tears began to magically vanish. “I simply cannot believe it. I would never dare to hope.”
He was smiling sweetly at her. A big hand brushed hair from her face as he studied her very closely. “And I would never dare to hope to find a woman like you. You are a remarkable lady, Mistress Elizabetha. I think that I shall enjoy this marriage very much. At least, I hope so.”
She returned his smile, timidly. “I do not know what to say to all of this.”
“It is simple. Say that you will marry me.”
Her smile faded as her eyes grew intense. “If you want me, then I most certainly will.”
His hand tightened on her face and he brought her to his lips for another gentle kiss. Toby was breathing unsteadily as he moved from her mouth to her nose to her forehead. It was the sweetest gesture she had ever experienced and a magic moment in the making. After several long seconds of touching, of tasting, Tate finally let go of her face and gently took her hand.
“Come along now,” he said. “I have wounded men that I would like to see.”
Toby followed him into the hall and made his rounds with him, but her focus wasn’t on the injured men. It was on a mountain of a man named Tate de Lara she suddenly found herself betrothed to.
*
Tate had triedto make Toby go to bed as midnight approached, but she repeatedly refused his requests to the point of walking the other way when he would look at her. There were double the wounded in the hall now that the injured in the bailey had been brought in and, consequently, double the work. Toby would not shirk her duties and worked deep into the night with Stephen, Wallace and Althel to ease the men’s suffering. Eventually, Tate gave up trying to force her to rest and went about his duties with Kenneth. But it didn’t stop him from keeping an eye on Toby, making sure he knew where she was every second. Now, things were different and he felt very possessive and very protective of her. Already, she very much belonged to him.
Just after midnight, Tate and Kenneth huddled in the solar to make plans for morning repairs. Toby was in the great hall tending to a very young man who had a sucking chest wound. He was, in truth, no more than sixteen years of age and her heart hurt for him as he struggled to be brave against the pain. While the other wounded seemed to be in various stages ofsleep, the young man was wide awake because of his difficulty in breathing. Stephen had already used a great deal of skill to stitch up the initial wound but the lad didn’t seem to be much better.
So Toby sat with him, speaking to him quietly to keep his mind off his pain. As she sat with him, thoughts of Ailsa began to creep back into her mind but she fought them, knowing that she still had a job to do before she could tend to her sister’s burial. In truth, she had been so swept up in the battle that she’d not given any thought to her baby sister, now dead for more than a day. She knew that if she gave over to those thoughts that she would be useless, so she tried to bank them. These men were alive and needed her help. She wanted to do what she could.
The boy with the chest wound seemed to be increasingly uncomfortable. Toby found herself trying to distract him with tales of the cats that used to hang around their stables.
“There was a white one, an orange one and a black one,” she said as she held his hand. “The black cat ran from everyone while the orange one was always begging for food. And the white one would attack your feet as you walked by. We had several dogs, too, that were our protectors. Not one of them had a name; we simply called the lot of them ‘the dogs’.”
The boy grinned weakly, trying to focus on something other than his increasing inability to breathe. “I had a dog when I was small,” he said. “It would eat at the table with us. My father would become angry but my mother would feed it.”
Toby smiled, patting him on the hand. “Are your parents still alive?”
“Still. My father is a farmer.”
“So was mine.”
Before the boy could reply, Stephen suddenly appeared and kneeled beside him. Toby looked up at the man; he was unshaven and clearly exhausted, but the cornflower blue eyeswere still bright. When he saw that Toby was looking at him, he smiled faintly.
