I heard her footsteps before I saw her, dainty little patters in the underbrush. She peered in the open hole where the door belonged with a wary brow.
“There’s no spiders—demonic or the usual variety. I already checked.”
Something about my statement confused her because she stared at me, head cocked to the side for an eternity before she replied, “Thank you,” and stepped in. “Why are you sitting all the way over there?”
I opened my mouth as she clambered overtop me, prepared to give my speech about appropriateness, propriety, and all the like, and it just… wouldn’t come. How could it when her eyes were so soft and warm and every strand of her dark hair was rebelling against the remaining pins? Such a speech was impossible in the face of skin that looked softer than the finest velvet, just barely flushed in the morning fog. No man could be expected to maintain distance from such a perfectly heart-shaped mouth.
And so I brushed my knee against hers and said, “Just stretching my legs.”
The lie seemed to satisfy her and she straightened hers out as well, our bodies forming a perfect V in the carriage.
“Are you hungry?”
“Not enough to send you foraging,” she said with a smile.
I kept the corner of my lip sternly tucked down. I may not be able to disappoint her, but I ought not encourage her. “It wouldn’t be a long forage.” I held up an apple.
“Oh, then yes, please.”
I tossed it to her unthinkingly as I dug for the others, then winced the second I recognized what I had done. Instead of the distressingthunkof fruit meeting skin, I heard thesmackof a catch.
My gaze flicked up just as she took a delicate bite. Were there etiquette books on the subject? How to catch and eat apples to entice the reluctant solicitor one had abducted.
I shook the thought away and called out the door when I found the final apples that had slipped to the bottom of my portmanteau. “Oi, Alfie, Rory, are you hungry?”
“Oi?” Davina questioned between bites.
“If you wanted proper English, you should have selected a proper carriage.”
“Are you planning to let that subject drop any time soon?”
“Perhaps when I’m dead and buried.”
Shehumphed, before taking another bite of her apple, this time maintaining a challenging glare. It reminded me of the disgruntled barn cat of Lizzie and Sidney’s, five pounds of righteous fury in an adorable body.
“What’ve ye got?” Alfie asked, appearing in the open-door hole and leaning against it.
“Apple.”
“Na, thank ye though.”
“Alfie,” I heard Rory call from somewhere near the front of the carriage. “Eat the apple. It’s good for ye.”
“Ye’re not my mam,” he called back.
“And I thank God for that every day. Eat the damn apple.”
“If I remember my Bible right n’ proper, it’s not God who said that.”
“Alfie, if ye get scurvy I swear I’ll take ye over my knee,” she retorted, appearing behind him in the doorway.
“I’m a man grown. You can’t do that.”
“Grown men eat their damn apples wi’out complaint.”
“It’s true,” I replied, holding it out to him. The boy merely glared before snatching the apple from my outstretched hand. He took a massive, performative bite, before chewing very, very slowly.
“Good lad,” Rory replied, then took the last one from me.
