Elodie blushed as red as a poinsettia flower at Christmas, although with significantly less festive cheer. “Uh, hello there,” she said, waving awkwardly.
The family made no reply, but she could see trespass notices and rifle barrels in the man’s eyes. Clearly, immediate reassurance was needed.
“We’re from the British government,” she told them with a smile.
Crash. The bowl of peas shattered as it fell to the floor.
Gabriel winced. “Perhaps not the best thing to say after barging into a Welshman’s home,” he murmured.
Indeed, said Welshman clenched his hands as if more than a bowl was about to be shattered.
“What should we do now?” Elodie asked Gabriel out of the corner of her smile. But before he might respond, the man took an abrupt step forward, clay shards crunching beneath his boots.
“What are you doing here? Apart from canoodling, that is.”
Canoodling!Elodie’s sensibilities bristled at having her romantic moment with Gabriel described thus.
Gabriel, however, was untroubled. “Good afternoon, sir,” he said with such dignity that everyone in the room stood a little straighter. “I’m Dr. Tarrant, a geographer from Oxford University. And this is Dr. Tarrant. Er, also.”
“We’re married,” Elodie contributed, holding up her hand to display its wedding ring.
“Mama,” said the little boy in the kind of sweetly innocent voice that sends a shiver of fear up the spines of adults everywhere, “why were the funny people hugging with their faces?”
Elodie’s blush grew so hot she was in some danger of setting the house alight. “Well, you see,” she said, “when two consenting adults—”
“We apologize for intruding so precipitously,” Gabriel interrupted. “The squall forced us to seek urgent shelter.”
“Pfft.”The man sneered. “You’re scared of a little rain?Saeson!”
Sensing that the time for dignity had not only come and gone but was now catching a ship for foreign parts with no intention of ever returning, Elodie stepped forward, broadening her smile and replicating the doe-eyed look that had got her out of trouble as agrown-up university professor just last weekchild.
“We areso terriblysorry for not knocking,” she said. “We will of course pay to have the bowl replaced. In fact, we’ll buy you a bigger bowl. A much prettier one. And please, allow me to clean up those peas for you before they stain your rug even worse…”
—
Plodding across thefield some ten minutes later, Elodie tried to puzzle out how things had gone so wrong. At least the thaumaturgic emanations had subsided, which meant that eviction from the farmhouse at the tip of a red-hot poker didn’t result in being killed by ferocious magical tornadoes. And hiking through waterlogged fields back to Dôlylleuad was going to provide healthful excellent exercise. Furthermore, the breeze now sweeping across the land wasn’tentirelyfreezing, offering some hope that she wouldn’t perish from hypothermia in her sodden clothes. Really, when one considered the whole picture, it could not be called such a bad morning at all. Elodie did like to think positively.
Beside her, Gabriel kept his gaze fixed ahead as he squelched through the muddy grass. Everything about him communicatedbad, bad, bloody terrible morning.His expression was like a rock that had been encased in ice then set in a wintry tundra at midnight (and even that description veered a little warmer than was accurate). His silence roared in saturnine tones. Elodie felt fairly certain “positive thoughts” had dipped one toe into his brain and been instantly destroyed by frostbite.
Biting her lip, she glanced at him through a wet tangle of hair. Although his gaze did not shift, he clearly sensed her attention, for the temperature surrounding them dropped another degree. Elodie noted rather resentfully that, although he was as soaked through as she, it only served to make his hair smoother and his skin gleaming.
“I’m sorry,” she ventured.
Gabriel did not respond. The man was a sod. Fabulous kisser, but still an utter, arrogant sod.
“However,”she added heatedly (although alas, not literally) “it’s not my fault they were so inhospitable.”
After all, she could not be blamed for offending the farmers with her comment about the bowl. And the rug. And the quaintness of their decor, which had beenmeantas a compliment. Exhaustion had knocked her senses askew, therefore absolving her of responsibility.
And she couldn’t be blamed for slipping on the spilled peas. That was an accident, as was her consequent stumbling against the food-laden table.
Therefore, according to logic, shealsowasn’t responsible for a jug of milk tipping over when the table jolted.
Although maybe, just maybe, it was her fault that, upon removing her cardigan with all the haste of mortification and using it to blot up the milk, she dripped muddy water on the food.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, rather more contritely this time. A blush tried to stir, but without success, for she’d been forced to leave her cardigan in the middle of the table due to their hasty departure, and her cotton shirtwaist felt like an icy shroud clinging to her skin.
Gabriel’s eyelashes flickered.
