I looked at Darcy. She was laughing too, her head tipped back slightly, the last tension of the afternoon leaving her face, and something in my chest eased at the sight.
I loved her.
The truth no longer arrived as a shock. It simply lived in me now, as steady as breath.
“What?”
“You did well.”
Her smile softened. “So did you.”
For a moment neither of us spoke, though much seemed to pass between us all the same.
There were too many people nearby, too much work waiting, and too many things we had not yet dared put into words, butfor the first time since the Normans landed I allowed myself to imagine something beyond the next danger.
Tomorrow.
A roof repaired and a field planted. Darcy arguing with someone over onions. The image was so ordinary that it frightened me more than battle ever had.
One of the children tugged at her skirts and with a smile she went to see what was needed as I watched her go.
Later, Wystan came running, a tear at the knee in his hose.
“My lord!”
I turned, and the sight of the boy’s expression made me expect another escaped chicken, injured goat, or minor disaster of the sort that seemed to follow him through life.
Instead, he held out a mud-covered object.
“Found it near the stream,” he said. “Thought it might be silver.”
I took it from him. The thing was round and heavy in my palm, caked thickly enough with mud that I could make out little at first except the shape and the glint of dark red stones beneath the dirt.
I rubbed my thumb slowly across the surface, wiping the mud away. Bright silver gleamed beneath it, untouched by age.
Seventeen
DARCY
Wulfric came lookingfor me after dark with the expression of a man who had either solved a difficult problem or was about to create one.
I was sitting on a low stool near the stores shelter, my cloak wrapped tightly around me while I scraped the last of the evening pottage from a wooden bowl. The stuff had started out months ago as a grayish insult involving barley, onions, and something Gilda claimed was pork, though the evidence had been inconclusive. Now, either the cooks had improved or my standards had collapsed so thoroughly they were lying facedown in the mud.
Around us, the settlement was settling for the night. Rain whispered through the trees, light enough to cling to the branches without driving everyone indoors, while smoke from the cooking fires drifted low beneath the damp leaves. Somewhere beyond the shelters, a baby protested bedtime with remarkable stamina, two men argued over a missing axe, and the goat was attempting to eat a boot.
“I have something for you,” Wulfric said.
I lowered my spoon, staring as Wulfric folded his arms across his chest, which only made the dark wool of his tunic pull more tightly over his shoulders and biceps.
“Something good, like a present, or another task?”
He smiled and held out his hand. “Walk with me.”
I set the bowl aside. “That is considerably more ominous.”
“You have spent too long amongst suspicious men.”
“I arrived in your century surrounded by spears.”
