‘So, what you get up to on the island this time?’
Aleksey chuckled and rose to return to the house. ‘Ben.’
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
Ben was setting off to pick Molly and Miles up from school, so Aleksey had the house to himself for a while.
It was extremely pleasant being home, not least for the comfort of sitting in a beautifully upholstered sofa whilst he texted Peyton Daniel Kennedy’s name and gave him his new tasking.
When that was done, he checked his watch and reckoned as he’d been abandoned and forgotten in favour of the baby tyrant, he’d better amuse himself. He changed, clicked his fingers for the dogs and headed for the stables. He was surprised but pleased to find Emilia mounted and about to head out too. Bronislav had been polished to a shine and was pawing the sawdust on the stable floor impatiently.
He was awed for a moment by the striking pair, one the product of a royal bloodline carefully selected and nurtured over years, the other thrown into his life by the gods of chaos and chance, but now integral to it. She waited patiently for him to saddle up and mount, and then they walked their horses slowly towards the moors, Radulf and PB lurking, intent on their own concerns in the shrubbery.
For once, Emilia’s hair was loose, just the last few inches bound in a braided leather fastener, so that the vast heft and weight of the autumnal auburn locks were on full display. Compared to his deeply tanned face she was pale, the porcelain-fair skin only enhanced by the burnished fire of her hair.
‘Guess what I’m doing next month.’
They were approaching the gap in the dry stone wall they’d made to exit to the moors when they were mounted, and he let her take the lead. ‘First woman on the moon?’
She laughed. ‘Nope. Nice try though.’
‘Running for Prime Minister?’
‘Better thanthat. Sheesh.’
‘Hmm. Saving the Rain Forest?’
‘You’re hopeless! Cambridge? Remember? I’m starting my degree. I’ve decided.’
‘I thought you were taking a year off.’
‘You gave me the idea, and it was so brilliant, I just did it. You said it was all pointless and that I could do what I liked. And that got me thinking—it all seemed such a waste of time because I didn’t like the courses I wassupposedto do. So I followed my heart and picked the one I really wanted, the one that might seem the most…pointless.’
They’d come to the base of a tor and once more had to go single file, so Aleksey waited until they were out from the rocks to say, ‘Impress me.’
She grinned with pure joy, and that expression would have made whatever followed entirely acceptable in his book. When she gleefully exclaimed, ‘Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic,’ he actually swore in amusement in Russian, then realised she was almost fluent in this language (but possibly not in the words he’d just used).
‘And you want to do this highly useful degree because…?’
Once more she smiled so broadly he couldn’t help laughing back. ‘Exactly! Just because. Oh, it’s so brilliant. I can’t wait. It’s all our history and our languages, our culture. I can concentrate on any aspect I like—Scandinavian or Celtic. And I’m going to do a module of archaeology as well.’
‘Equally useful then.’
‘I know, isn’t it superbly…pointless?’
‘And yet…’
‘At the heart of everything.’
‘How old are you?’
She continued to laugh as she replied, ‘I told you: I’m the oldest person in the world.’
She seemed to forget this claim when they crested a slope and came to a small car park. There were a few visitors, people admiring the view, and also an inevitable ice cream van. She flicked her reins at him. ‘Pleeease? Pretty please?’
‘Did you bring any money?’
