“Without damage, of course,” she interrupted.
“Because they live here.”
“Yes.” She widened her smile on her new dear friend. “If they learn to rest and play here as well as work, they will love it here more.” She turned to Nicholas, who was watching and listening, and smiling with them. “And if they love it here, they will give it their best care.”
“She is wise, my lord.” Old Walter put his arm around her shoulders and turned to Nicholas.
“Aye, Walter. She is many things.”
When they were outside and alone, she took his hand as they walked. He looked down at their entwined fingers after a moment. “Did you want me to follow you?” When she shook her head, he looked at their hands again.
“I just want to hold your hand while we walk, Nicholas.”
“I have seen some people do it,” he admitted.
She laughed and swung their hands back and forth between them.
He pulled her closer as they reached the horses and coiled his arm around her neck. “You are changing things,” he said.
He was right. She hadn’t even thought of it that way. What was she doing? She wasn’t Norma Rae, starting unions for better rights for workers. This was the middle ages! Things were supposed to be this way!
But…couldn’t she just help make things a little better for people if she could? “Yeah, I’ll let up on that a little.”
“I will put you in charge of grievances.” He smiled and helped her up into her saddle. “Temporarily, I mean.”
She lowered her gaze to his lightning streaked eyes, his quirked lips. She made him happy again. He didn’t have to say it. She could see the difference from when he first arrived all over his face. He tempted her to toss every hope of getting back to the future right out the window. “Nicholas,” she said softly, meaningfully. “If the brooch is gone, so is my past.” She swiped a tear away for her father. “I don’t trust anything else to get me back home—unless there are a pair of ruby slippers around that I can click three times and go home, I’m staying.”
He looked a little confused, probably about the slippers but looked off into the distance and nodded. What else could he do? Jump up and down with happiness that she would never see the people she loved again?
She watched him leap up into his saddle and turn to her. “What about these magical slippers? Where did you hear of them?”
Her smile returned. “They aren’t real. They’re from a book I read when I was a child.”
“Tell me of it. I like listening to you.”
Kes thought that was the nicest thing anyone ever said to her. She happily obliged and began telling him the story, and then broke out into song.
She was enjoying herself so much that she didn’t realize Nicholas had stopped his horse and was watching her, grinning from ear to ear at her singing or the song. She didn’t know which.
She told him the rest of the story and how she was sure some of the characters scared the crap out of little kids.
They took their time riding back. He seemed very interested and taken with the story. That was probably why he noticed the change in her mood at one point.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Just another song,” she told him and looked forward at the road.
He rode a little closer. “What is it about this song that makes you sad?”
“Nothing, I—”
“Sing it for me,” he requested.
She cut her gaze to him and doubted she could refuse him anything. She began to sing it and when she was finished, tears were streaming down her face.
He remained quiet while she wiped her eyes. She didn’t mean cry over it. It was just a song about a rainbow but the yearning in the melody revealed Dorothy’s desire to go home.
Kes knew what he thought. “Nicholas, please understand—”
“Kestrel,” he said in a low voice, staying close by her. “I understand. Do not fret over what I may or may not be thinking. If you do not find a way home, you will have lost much. I understand the pain of that. Though I was only seven summers when my family was murdered, I had lost everything, too. Even after Edward took me in and treated me like his own son, I mourned.”
Her tears started up again and flowed more freely.
After a moment of him shifting uneasily in his saddle, he pulled her into it with him. “I should have known you would do anything to get back into my lap. Look at you.” His deep, luxuriant voice enveloped her and she smiled in spite of what she felt. He pretended to hold a phone and snap a photo of her. She posed on instinct alone.
“Should I have screamed for help to prove to you that I can resist your oafish charm?”
He laughed, looking stunned at her insult, and then he grew more serious, more sensual. “You cannot resist it. Oafish or not.”
She leaned into his chest and closed her eyes. “It’s you who can’t resist me,” she countered with playful sigh. “It was you who insisted I sing a song that was obviously making me sad. You knew it would make me cry and then you could have me where you wanted me.”
“Woman, I can toss you back into your saddle as quickly as I dragged you out of it.”
“No, you can’t,” she challenged. “I’m not moving.” She swung her leg over the saddle and sat sideways on him. She turned her body and wrapped her arms around his waist and chest. He was as hard as armor, but there was only flesh beneath his léine. She pressed her face close to his chest and held on.
Instead of acting out
