“They aren’t all like her, Daniel.”
“Bah,” he growled, sounding exactly like Mr Grampy Tom.
“You have a sister, do you not?”
“The best. She darns my stockings and cooks crowdy like no other. But ain’t the same.”
Ernest’s hand clamped to the lad’s shoulder. “Of course it is. There are men both good and bad, just as there are girls good and bad… Just have to find the one for you, ’tis all. Hopefully one day soon, you’ll find someone to love. Someone who loves you back whole-heartedly.”
Hebe twisted away into the herb garden, tears seeking escape, hands hunting the rough lemon verbena and smooth laurel.
A footstep at her side. She had no need to glance up.
“Well, I wish you a swift and safe journey, Hebe.”
“Thank you, Ernest.” And she paused by the mint, plucked a sprig. “I…” She could think of nothing to say. No words came to her, instead a leaden gloom invaded her soul, suffocating the joy she’d felt whilst here. With Ernest. “Goodbye then,” she blurted.
His lips tilted to a sensual grin and he seized her hand, brought it to his lips, the velvet brush skipping her pulse.
“Au revoir, my beloved Hebe Locke.”
And then he just strode away.
“YA HERE TO SAY GOODBYE,are ya not?”
Beatrice startled at the voice, and although she’d been waiting nigh half an hour in nervous anticipation, she turned with a slow nonchalance from perusing Redmond’s collection of horseshoes tacked to the wall of his room above the stables.
His shoulder was propped against the doorframe, thumbs hooked in the band of his breeches – a casual pose but for the gritted teeth and wary eyes.
“Yes, Redmond. For I cannot abandon my niece.” She shifted foot to foot. “But I will return.”
His coal-black gaze darted to his feet. “Of course ya will.”
Beatrice felt his fear to her very boots, remembrance of another time – when they’d been forced apart.
Yet by hook or by crook, shewouldreturn. She’d crossed empty deserts and turbulent oceans, galloped over plains and stomped through jungle.
Never again would she be too weak or sheltered to follow her own path – to return – to her dearest love.
Once, she’d feared her father and brother yet in the end found herself to have more valour than either of those ignorant kin who’d believed a woman was only good for bartering in marriage, that her worth lay merely in her maidenhood.
She had forty odd years to her name, and by heavens, she was going to enjoy the next forty with Redmond by her side.
So she marched forward.
Yanked him into the room by his waistcoat.
Slammed the door behind him.
Then stroked his muscled arms with seeking hands, thrilled to note him lick his lips and gulp, and when a mere sliver of a gap existed between them, she slid her fingers up the back of his cotton waistcoat and into the short hair at his nape.
Then Beatrice tugged him down and kissed her beloved – pouring all her passion and care into him.
Not a goodbye.
But a promise.
To obliterate the last twenty years of time lost, a promise to endure for however long they may be now parted.
