Page 67 of Desire's Ransom
“I can’t do this. ’Tisn’t—”
“O’ course not,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have—”
“’Tisn’t that it wasn’t pleasant and—”
“Nay, ye’re absolutely right.” She looked away and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I had no call to—”
“If I didn’t have a bride…”
She nodded rapidly, but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “’Twill not happen again.”
His heart sank at her words. But she was right. Nothing good could come of kissing Gray, no matter how pleasurable it was.
He picked up their discardedbatasand handed hers back to her. Neither of them wished to engage at the moment, not even in battle.
As it happened, they’d been wise to stop when they did. In the next moment, old Sorcha arrived at the camp, carrying a great basket of peas. She would have been livid, he was sure, to find Gray dallying with the man who was supposed to be her hostage.
Sorcha eyed thebatas. “Are ye still fightin’?” She shook her head. “I’d have thought ye’d made peace by now.” She looked around the clearing. “Have ye seen Mor?”
“She’s gone to bathe in thelough,” Ryland told her.
Sorcha raised a suspicious brow but made no comment. She set down the basket and dusted off her hands. “Well, then, here. Perhaps ye can put away your weapons and see if ye can stop brawlin’ long enough to make yourselves useful by shellin’ these peas for supper.”
Ryland was not in the habit of shelling peas. In the de Ware household, the servants did such things. But he supposed in an outlaw camp, everyone had to do their share in order to survive. Anyway, he could use the distraction.
It wasn’t difficult work, especially once he watched Gray do it a half dozen times. The only challenge was keeping his fingers from tangling with hers as they reached for peas. And keeping his eyes from straying to her rosy lips.
Their conversation was stilted and aloof. They chatted about the weather, the hounds, the fair, the forest. He learned that the weather was pleasant for summer. The hounds were good for hunting and protection, less good for jobs requiring stealth. The fair brought visitors from all the nearby towns. And the forest was full of birds, squirrels, rabbits, and an occasional wolf.
Gone was the flirtatious, charming sprite he’d sparred with all morn. In her place was a serious and dutiful maid who answered with as few words as possible and didn’t spare him a glance.
He couldn’t help but be disappointed. Even though it was his own fault. Even if he’d done the right thing.
Hell. He hoped his bride-to-be was half as attractive to him as Gray.
Part of him wished he’d never met the beautiful lady outlaw.
And part of him hoped he’d never be ransomed.
By the time they finished shelling the peas, the woodkerns began returning to camp. It looked like they were carrying enough treasure to live like lords for the next year.
But that wasn’t what they intended. As before, they deposited their goods on the cloth that Sorcha spread on the ground. She catalogued every coin, every jewel, every weapon, assessing its value and assigning it to one of the family names scrawled in her ledger.
Their generosity was inspiring. He’d never seen such charity before, not even from the priests where he lived. When it came to the accounting of alms, the church in England was lax. Ryland suspected the well-fed, well-read priests took a considerable portion for themselves. What they did donate, they gave with a great deal of that deadly sin of pride.
But the woodkerns seemed genuinely concerned with fairness and anonymity.
As Mor had explained earlier, what they stole from the rich was not the nobles’ hard-earned silver, but wages earned on the backs of the poor.
Ryland would have to look into this more when he was lord. There were kings and paupers in any society, but when the kings feasted while the paupers starved, something was amiss.
Gray delivered the bowl of shelled peas to the friar, who poured them into his cauldron of bubbling broth.
Ryland nodded toward the day’s take, asking Gray, “Do the families know from whence these gifts come?”
“You mean that they come from outlaws?” she asked. “Nay.”
“They might turn down the gifts if they knew,” the friar said, adding a pinch of pepper to the pot. “Some o’ them think we’re angels.” He laughed about that.
