“Can’t you appeal to King Cullum if he’s gouging you?” Briar asked.
“And get our fields burned for our troubles?” Juliet shook her head. “Complaining only makes it worse.”
Briar ground her teeth, thinking suddenly of a wildflower wreath in a faraway smithy. It wasn’t fair that poorer people had no recourse when the country lords and their friends took advantage. She understood why Archer wanted to pay them back for the coins he’d stolen. She wished she had something to offer too.
“Have you ever met Lord Larke?” Archer asked.
“Years ago, when he toured the county with his eldest son,” Grampa said. “He’ll be just as bad as his father, by all accounts.”
“Tomas,” Archer said, his dark eyebrows lowering. “Lord Larke’s son is called Tomas, right?”
“Aye. Larke is still as hale as ever, though. I reckon it’ll be a while yet before we have to deal with his heir.”
“Mama, come outside!” someone called from the barn door. The little drummer girl appeared, clutching wooden drumsticks. “We’re going to play your favorite song.”
“I wouldn’t miss it, darling.” Juliet smiled at them. “Excuse me.”
Archer and Briar finished their meal and moved to help Grampa clean up the plates.
He waved them away. “Go on and enjoy yourselves for a bit, folks. I’ll pack up some leftovers for your journey.”
Archer tried to press his coin purse into the man’s hands. “For your troubles.”
Grampa frowned. “Unless this is full of brass, it’s too much.”
“Please take it,” Archer said. “Just don’t tell the taxman.”
“We don’t take charity, Mister Fletcher.”
“And I don’t give it,” Archer said, closing Grampa’s gnarled hands firmly around the purse. “I have to pay for our meal. I don’t know what meat costs in these parts.”
The older man studied Archer with narrowed eyes, something solemn and unspoken passing between them.
“For the grandkids,” Archer prompted.
At last Grampa nodded. “For the grandkids.”
Archer turned suddenly to Briar. “Fancy a dance, Rose?”
She was too surprised to object as he grabbed her hand and pulled her out into the barnyard. He seemed lighter on his feet, as if that purse had weighed on him more than the coins it contained, and his smile was wide and bright.
Juliet twirled with Abie in the middle of the threshing floor while her husband and daughter played the lively tune. Sweat dampened their collars, and pink stained their cheeks. The other farmers either clapped their hands or danced in an unruly circle around them, no longer paying attention to the two travelers.
“I think I know this one,” Archer said. Then he hooked his arm around Briar’s waist without warning and spun her into the fray.
She could barely follow the steps. Archer’s boots beat an uneven rhythm in the dirt, joyous as a summer rainstorm. His dancing was exuberant and wholly unskilled. Briar had never encountered anyone who danced so terribly with such confidence.
“I don’t think this is right,” she gasped, clinging to his arms to keep from flying right off her feet.
“When has that ever stopped me? Now spin!”
Briar spun, her hair flying around her face, half blinding her. She nearly careened into another couple, but Archer pulled her in close at the last second, catching her against his chest. He held her, his heartbeat thundering in time with hers, and she smelled the clean sweat on his shirt, a hint of wheat and honey. Then he spun her out again.
Soon, Briar was breathless from trying to keep up. By the time the song ended, she was laughing.
“Now there’s a sound I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear,” Archer said as they escaped to the side of the dance floor, chests heaving and faces flushed.
The farmers were already calling out requests for the next song.
“It’s your dancing,” she said, unable to suppress her giggles.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing, it’s just … vigorous.”
“That’s a nice way of saying bleedin’ awful.” Archer grinned. “I know my strengths and weaknesses, Rose.”
Briar’s smile faded. “What made you pick that name?”
“Sweetbriar roses used to grow in my mother’s garden, may she rest.” His mouth turned up in a half smile. “I still remember the smell, like sweet apples, even though the roses died soon after she did.”
“They were my mother’s favorite flower too,” Briar said.
“Yeah? What was she like?”
Archer looked down at her expectantly, as if they could just chat about their mothers like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. But Briar hadn’t had an ordinary mother.
When she didn’t speak, he reached out as if to touch her arm. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to—”
“She was intense.” Briar looked up and found his gaze steady on her face. There was something more than curiosity there, and her stomach fluttered. “Not the sort of woman you would expect to have a favorite flower, actually. We lived in the city, where we couldn’t grow them, but she would seek out the sweetbriar roses anytime we visited the countryside or a clien—a friend with a garden.”
The words came in a rush, and Briar found herself wanting to say more. She wanted to tell him exactly how intense her mother had been. She wanted to describe the roar of the sea a few streets from her childhood home. She wanted to talk about the cool spray on her face when she snuck to the beach, the way the sand mixed with her paints and muddied the colors, but she held back. Archer might be an outlaw, but he had a goodness about him, too, almost an innocence. He wouldn’t understand what Briar had been in that city by the sea.
Somewhere along the way, what Archer thought had started to matter to her. She’d insisted she only wanted to do the one job to make enough coin to start her new life, but something made her want to linger. Being with Archer was like being dropped from a great height and painting a powerful curse and rolling up in a warm blanket all at once.
She still didn’t know what had happened between him and Lady Mae—or what their relationship was—but she had to
