The Rose Garden

The lightness of his tone relaxed me slightly. ‘I hope she was pretty.’

‘She danced like an ox, but I reasoned a gown that was bought for the price of a dance could not help but have happiness in it.’ He’d finished. ‘There,’ he said, and turned me round to face inspection.

I kept my gaze hard on his shirt lacings. ‘You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, you know. Once I go back to my own time it’s as good as lost, just like your wife’s clothes. I can’t seem to find a way to bring them back.’

He gave a shrug. ‘And that is why I bought you this one.’

‘So I wouldn’t lose any more of hers?’ I said it wryly, but he didn’t take it as a joke.

‘I bought the gown,’ he told me very carefully, ‘so that you could be done with borrowed things.’ His hand still rested on my waist. ‘I thought it time that you had something you could know was yours alone.’

My chin came up at that, and as my gaze met his I knew he wasn’t talking any more about the gown itself. The constable had told me once that Daniel only let me wear Ann’s clothes to bring her ghost to life, and even though I’d known Creed’s words were poison there’d been part of me since then that couldn’t help but wonder just who Daniel really saw when he was looking at me.

Looking at the darkness of his eyes now I saw nothing but my own reflection there, and felt those doubts begin to fade.

His eyes asked a brief question, asked it and searched mine to read the reply before his one hand slid slowly under my hair to the back of my neck and he lowered his head.

The kiss began simply enough.

Just a brush of his lips on my cheek, reassuring and warm. But then one of us – I think it might have been me – moved a fraction, a turn of the head and our mouths met in earnest, but he remained a gentleman, not rushing things, not taking it for granted that I had any experience.

Until I kissed him back.

The rules changed, then.

Another minute more and he was holding me with both arms, which was just as well because I would have had a lot of trouble standing upright on my own. God knows I lost all track of time and Daniel must have done as well, because Fergal had to cough twice and swear once before either of us paid him any attention.

And even then all Daniel did was draw back with his forehead still resting on mine as he angled his head to the doorway.

‘Yes?’

Fergal folded his arms. ‘Were you coming downstairs, then? Or would you rather wait till Jack gets back so we can all sit down and talk this through together?’

Half-amazed I had a voice, I asked them both, ‘Talk what through?’

Fergal said, ‘He has to take the Sally out tonight, by order of His Grace the Duke of Ormonde.’

Daniel exhaled, patient. ‘By request, not by his order. I am asked to do a favour for my kinsman, and no more than that.’

‘Without a proper crew …’

‘I will have men enough.’

‘And not a one of them who’s fit to raise a sword to guard your back should things go wrong.’

‘You are more needed here,’ said Daniel.

This, I thought, was where I had come in – the two men arguing.

As Daniel straightened from me I drew one long breath to calm my pulse because it was still racing from the kiss. I tried to think. And looking up at him I said, ‘You won’t let Fergal come with you because you want him to stay here at Trelowarth and look after me.’

Daniel half-smiled, not dropping his hands from my waist. ‘I will only be gone a short while. And I’ll be in no danger.’

‘Then take me along.’

He had not seen that coming. ‘What?’

‘Take me along,’ I repeated. ‘Then Fergal can come, too. You can tell your crew I’m there to do the cooking, or whatever, and I’ll keep out of the way, and with both you and Fergal there I’m sure that nothing will—’

He interrupted. ‘No. It is impossible. On any other voyage I’d consider it, but not on this.’

‘Why not?’ I stood my ground. ‘You said yourself there’d be no danger.’

Trapped by his own words, he looked at Fergal who was standing in the doorway fairly daring him to answer.

He was caught, and the three of us knew it. If he admitted the dangers involved in this ‘favour’ he’d been asked to do, then Fergal wouldn’t rest until he’d found a way to go along. And if Daniel stuck to his story that there was no danger at all, then he’d have no good reason to leave me and Fergal behind.

And frankly, the idea of being left behind with Fergal in the foul mood that I knew he’d be in if he didn’t get to go with Daniel wasn’t that appealing to me.

Fergal, from his doorway, said, ‘It seems a fair idea, Danny, taking her along. And you can tell the crew I’m there to guard her virtue.’

Daniel exhaled harder this time, giving in. ‘The crew will hardly need an explanation why you’re with us, I’ll not need to tell them tales.’

‘And who says you’d be telling tales?’ He sent a pointed glance towards the pair of us, Daniel’s hands still resting on my waist, and with a final dry look turned away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The evening brought a soft wind and a softer light that settled on the woods, where all the lilting voices of the birds and hidden creatures had been soothed to drowsy silence. Fergal, for all the heaviness of his boots, made little sound himself as he walked on ahead of me, moving in his dark clothes like a shadow through the trees. I tried to copy his stealth, but the hem of my long green gown brushed with a rustling sound over grasses and twigs and small shrubs, at one point flushing out a rabbit who leapt suddenly across my path, a startled streak of brown.