Avery chuckled, hanging his head and relaxing his arms to plant his hands loosely at his hips. “Oh I know I am a dog. But I want only to be her dog. And I will be her dog. I will take any bone she throws. I have said this before.”
“What makes you so sure of your success?” Thane now sounded flat, disinterested, employing the manner in which he had been raised to behave, to be above such things as jealousy and desire. But he still asked his questions. He still needed to know.
“It is not due to any encouragement on her part.”
Again, I winced at my having thrown the man glances of interest only to follow them with turns of my shoulder.
The blacksmith went on. “I have never wanted someone or something this much. I cannot entertain defeat. My heart and my loins won’t allow for it.”
“And if she rejects you?”
“I have said, thrice now, that I am a dog. I will howl, lamenting the loss of her.” Avery began to laugh, his shoulders shaking. “Go home to your wife, my lord. Your appetite is greedy. You’ve already a fair, sweet woman in your bed. Leave her sister be. Let a free man have his chance with Robbie.”
Thane shifted and then said, “I don’t think she wants to wear a wedding ring.”
“Any ring of marriage or mine?”
“Any.”
“Say what you need to say, man.”
“Do you know what is said about her?”
A fear ran along my spine.
Avery snorted. “I know what service she provides to women in these parts. What else is there you want to tell me? That she is a witch? I don’t believe in witches. Witches are just women who read, according to your church.”
Thane shook his head. “It should not be taken lightly?—”
“I have heard things,” Avery said to cut him off. “It is done in Eccleston. And it is not a thing to be dithered over. It is a hard thing that needs doing sometimes. I know it is outlawed here, and I do not understand why. And I do not care. More so, in truth, I suppose I do care because Iadmireher for it.”
71
THEN: FIRE
We married less than a season after that alleyway confrontation. I never told Avery, but hearing his dauntless declarations, however lustful or crude, had captured my heart. And though I never confessed to my eavesdropping that night, I trusted my husband more with other things as winters passed. I no longer hesitated sharing the most inane or private things. The meandering thoughts I had while foraging were repeated to him at dinner. The secrets I had kept to myself were spoken aloud in the dark at night.
But I reasoned I would gain nothing from telling him of my first love. He had already sensed it when he was courting me, and I had watched him watch Thane on the rare occasions our household gathered with my sister’s. Avery’s face was wary when he looked at my brother-in-law. If he harbored any jealousy, he never expressed it. So I did not enlighten him on the subject of my teenage romance.
What I struggled with the most were the feelings I had about fire. I wanted to tell him of these feelings, but I could not find the words.
I had dreams in the box, as a child, of warm hands made of flame placed on the bottoms of my feet. I had always pondered overthe fact that Brother Tibolt had caved to his convictions while staring into his fireplace. I remembered Magda always looking to me and saying that there was something other than earth magic in me, she thought. And there was always the eruption of white and pale orange flames around her body, burning in the back of my mind. I buried these feelings so much so that I was only able to share them with Avery by way of an accident.
It happened in the most mundane of ways. I was making a stew. I had started our meal late because, as always, I was distracted by either a book or an errand. By the time he came into the house for his dinner, I was throwing ingredients in without measurement or thought. Realizing I had carrots that needed eating, which had sat on my worktable for days, I was hurriedly grating them over the cauldron.
I looked up, an apology on my tongue, when he came into the house, and—distracted—I scraped off the skin on the side of my thumb.
Before I could cry out from that pain, the fire on the hearth tripled in size, nearly eclipsing the cauldron with its opaque, pale heat and caught the edge of my skirts. Avery and I were both shouting, him beating at my skirts with the tunic he had torn off and me pulling off my thankfully shorter apron and trying to help him. The fire had no effect on the stone hearth, and nothing else outside of it was burnt except the lower half of my dress.
After beating most of the fire out with clothes, Avery took our water jug, only half full, from the worktable and threw it on my smoking skirts. We stood, panting and frightened, watching the blaze in the hearth. Only as it flickered could we make out Magda’s sizable iron cauldron. Avery went to the little well, brought up a bucket, and doused the entire hearth. When he peered into the cauldron, he jerked his head back and looked at me with consternation. “It’s completely burnt. All the vegetables. And there is no broth.”
“You tease me,” I breathed out.
He shook his head. “And the firewood is all ash. All of it. What magic is in those hands, my witch?”
I grimaced. “You know what that word means.”
Avery shook his head. “I know what they use it for. I mean it as a compliment and you know that, my wildfire.” His smile was slow, the kind he got when his prick was hardening. He returned to stand near me, shirtless and sweaty, soot on his arms and chest. “This should not surprise me,” he mused, placing his ash-covered hands on my waist. “You have always setmeaflame.”
