“It isn’t black,” Elizabeth said unthinkingly. Both sets of eyes turned to her, and she could feel the heat staining her cheeks. “It’s almost black, but when the sun is shining on it, you can see that it’s more a dark sable brown...”
Izzie’s brows shot up in perfect tandem; Joanna’s smile was so wide she’d best have care not to swallow a bug.
Feeling their scrutiny, she blurted, “Randolph is dark haired as well.Andexceedingly handsome.”
“Is that so?” Izzie said thoughtfully.
Elizabeth nodded. It was definitely dark—although she’d be hard-pressed to say the shade.
“And his eyes?” Izzie asked curiously. “Are they dark or light?”
Elizabeth tried to picture him, but the image wasn’t very sharp. Realizing Izzie was trying to make some kind of point, she scowled at her. “Light.”
“Blue like your smithy’s son’s?”
Elizabeth gritted her teeth, refusing to be baited. He wasn’t hers, blast it. And what did it matter what color eyes Randolph had? Or that she’d never noticed. “Yes,” she said, hoping she was right.
“Hmm.”
Apparently her cousin was taking “hmm” lessons from her sister-in-law.
Ignoring them both, Elizabeth rode in miffed silence for the remainder of the morning, mostly talking to Helen MacKay, who was having difficulty with her fidgety young son and fortunately hadn’t heard the earlier conversation. Elizabeth didn’t know why she was so annoyed, only that she was. By the time they stopped to water the horses, however, her good humor had returned. She was laughing with Izzie about Uilleam’s latest antics—apparently, he’d decided that food tasted betterafterit was dropped on the floor—when she heard Joanna exclaim, “Oh no. I thought something was wrong. Look at that”—she pointed to his left rear hoof—“my horse is losing a shoe.”
Joanna could see the faintest edge of metal sliding out from under the horse’s hoof.
She turned to Elizabeth. “Be a darling and see if you can find Thommy. He may have a hammer.”
“Have you ever seen Thommy shoe a horse?” It wasn’t a pretty sight. “I’m sure one of Jamie’s men—”
Joanna waved her off—seeminglyuncaringly. “Izzie can go if you are too tired.”
“I’d be happy to...” Izzie started.
“I’ll do it,” Elizabeth said over her. The sly fox.
So she went to ask Thom if he could help. Knowing how much he despised shoeing, he agreed with a surprising lack of hesitation. Of course, itwasfor Jo.
After he’d fixed the shoe—with Elizabeth unconsciously taking her position as horse distracter as she’d done when they were young so he wouldn’t get kicked—Joanna insisted he share some of the sugared biscuits the cook had given her, which were accompanied by more reminiscing, until Jamie came upon the cheerful scene and promptly sent Thom away to scout ahead of them.
The first time might have been by chance, the second by coincidence, but when they finally made camp for the night, and Joanna insisted over Jamie’s objection that Thom dine with them “after all his help,” her brother wasn’t the only one who realized what was going on. But Joanna was impervious to his dark glares and Elizabeth’s chastising frowns.
As she’d noted, subtlety wasn’t one of her sister-in-law’s strengths.
But Elizabeth couldn’t pretend that she minded Joanna’s efforts to throw them together. It was nice to be around Thom again—even if it wasn’t quite as easy and uncomplicated as it used to be. At least for her. She was far too aware of what had happened between them. Every time she looked at him, she remembered how his mouth had felt on hers, how he’d tasted, the heat of his tongue sliding in her mouth, the feel of his hands on her body—and then the more wicked memories hit her. The feel of his hardness between her legs, the weight of his body pressed against hers, the intimate stroking, the burgeoning pleasure, and the shattering euphoria that had followed. How did one act normally with a man when they had shared something like that?
She didn’t know.
But when the time to fetch him came, Joanna didn’t need to ask her, Elizabeth volunteered.
She found him down by the riverbank fishing and took a seat on a rock beside him as if it were yesterday rather than eight years ago that she’d done the same. “Catch anything?”
He shot her a sidelong look. Of course he’d caught something. He was one of the best fishermen in the village. Goodness, how it used to drive Jamie crazy.
“How many?”
He shrugged and nodded to the bucket a few feet away that she hadn’t seen before. “A half-dozen or so.” He paused. “Is it time?”
“Soon. We’ll just have time to drop those fish off with the cook before Jamie sees them.”
