think how horrified her stepmother would be to know he was doing his own shopping. Now…if she could find a young man like that…
Alas, thus far, she hadn’t met any young man of any station that she would have been willing to consider with warmer feelings than mere friendship. She wanted intelligence, and she required that a young man be willing to accept her as his partner, not regard her as his possession, his inferior, his toy, his casual companion or his convenience. So she was very likely to end up a spinster. Certainly Genevieve was not going to put forth any effort to get her married, not when she had two of her own girls to get properly “placed.”
Deep in thought, she was startled to find herself at the city wall, where guards oversaw everyone coming in and out. She knew most of them on sight, and waved to Ragnar as she approached.
“Bella Beauchamps!” Ragnar saluted her. “Going out to visit Granny?”
“Well, it is certainly too cold to gather mushrooms, even if one could find them under the snow!” she said, laughing. “Ragnar, you look half-starved. Isn’t that wife of yours feeding you properly?”
He looked sheepish. She laughed and tossed him a honey pastry.
Ragnar’s appetite was legendary, and twenty wives probably couldn’t have kept him fed.
“You be back before dark, Bella,” Ragnar warned, as he held back a donkey cart to let her pass through the narrow gate. “The winter’s bound to bring out hungry beasts.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised, and pulled the red hood of the riding cloak up over her head.
Before long she was very glad of her sheepskin boots, no matter how unfashionable they were, for the snow was well above her ankles. A few tracks in the path showed that she was not the only visitor to trudge out to Granny’s Cottage, though it was a curious thing that in all the time she had been visiting the old woman, she had never met anyone either coming or going. Strange.
Bella had first met Granny when one of Genevieve’s former doctors, laboring under the delusion that Genevieve actually was ill, had sent her for “some of Granny’s nerve tonic.” Needless to say, that doctor had not lasted in Genevieve’s employment long, but Bella had continued to go out to Granny’s Cottage.
The woods were lovely — but undeniably hard to get through with this much snow on the path. Anyone who came out to the cottage in weather like this was someone who definitely needed Granny and no one else.
The path followed an easy course between two low hills or ridges, which blocked the wind. It was extremely quiet; nothing more than the occasional call of a starling or caw of a crow somewhere above the snow-frosted, bare branches of trees. Bella found it rather restful actually, a great relief from the chattering of servants and the twins.
“Hold there, woman!” barked an imperious voice from up the ridge, startling her so much that she nearly dropped the basket.
Down off the ridge stalked possibly the last person she would ever care to meet out here — the Gamekeeper, Eric.
So far, she had managed to avoid the fellow, except for seeing him at a distance or across a market square, but Granny was full of stories about him, none of them flattering, and nothing Bella had seen was inclined to make her doubt them. He was full of his own importance, unremittingly cruel in enforcing the laws against poaching, arrogant and clearly convinced he was the most desirable man in the city or out of it.
He granted her a long, leisurely view of his magnificence as he made his way down the ridge, and it was true that if it had not been for the faint sneer on his lips and the arrogance of his carriage, he could be thought of as handsome. Without his mask, the chiseled features, the fine head of sable hair and the muscular body displayed to advantage by his closely laced leather tunic and trousers probably caused susceptible hearts to flutter. But Bella did not in the least like the set of his chin, nor the speculation and anticipation in his cold blue eyes. Another girl would have been intimidated. Bella knew she had the protection of her rank — but even if she hadn’t, she was not going to back down to this bully.
“Poaching, eh?” he said as he drew within a few paces of her.
“Scarcely,” she snapped back. “Not everyone out in the woods is a poacher, and if I were, I would not be so stupid as to trudge about openly on the path to Granny’s Cottage.”
She startled him; obviously he was not expecting a mere woman to stand up to him. His eyes narrowed, and his lips compressed into a thin line. “Well, we’ll just see about that,” he snarled. “Turn out that basket!”
“And just who are you to order me about?” she retorted, holding the basket close to her body when he made a grab for it. She had begun angry; now she was furious, and that fury drove out any vestige of fear.
“Woodsman Eric von Teller!” he barked. “Now turn out that basket!”
Anger did strange things to her. It made her think more clearly, and her thoughts moved faster than usual.
He was trying to intimidate and humiliate her. Very well, she would give him a taste of his own arrogance right back.
“Oh.” She sniffed derisively, looking down her nose at him. “The Gamekeeper.” He reddened as she opened the lid of the basket and turned back the cloth so he could see that there was nothing more sinister in there than ham and beef. “There. No snares, not so much as a pheasant feather nor a tuft of rabbit fur.” He made to grab for it, anyway, and she pulled it away.
He smiled nastily; whatever thoughts were going through that head of his, he still hadn’t realized that he wasn’t dealing with a peasant or some little servant girl. “So, woman, playing the coy with me? Do you want me to come take that basket from you?” He made a grab for her arm, but she evaded him. She thought about kicking him, but decided against it. She didn’t want to goad him into retaliating physically.
He swore as he stumbled over a rock in the snow, and whirled to face her. “Little vixen! I think you need a touch of taming down, and I am just the man to do it!”
Her cheeks flamed, but with rage, not with embarrassment. She straightened her back. “I generally find that a man who bullies women is one who is a coward before men,” she said cuttingly. “By all the saints, Gamekeeper, you should be tied to the tail of my horse and whipped for your insolence!”
He started again, suddenly realizing that she was not what she seemed. She glared at him. “I am Master
