She inhaled slowly. “I … I don’t know. Both, I suppose. Does it matter?”
“Maybe not.” He studied the grit under his fingernails.
“Please, Rhys.” The wind whipped a strand of hair into her mouth, and she drew it back with one hand. “Either way, it’s going to take you just as long to build a cottage. But if you’ll allow me, I think I can persuade the local men”—and Gideon too, if she played it just right—“to give you a chance.”
“You really think they’ll take work with me?”
“If I approach them about it? Yes. This village is more than those dozen brutes who camp out in the tavern each night. There are several cottagers in the area scraping out a living from the moor, supporting families, many of whom have been here since your father’s day. They’d jump at an offer of work, if it’s presented favorably.”
He released a deep sigh. “Very well, then. You have me convinced. We’re partners.”
“Business partners.”
He didn’t reply—just gave her a knowing half-smile and stuck his big, powerful hand into the gap between them.
Meredith did the same, and they shook hands in a brisk, very businesslike manner. And then, for an extended moment, neither one of them let go.
“Walk with me,” she heard herself say, in an embarrassingly wistful tone. When his chin ducked in surprise, she released his hand and continued, “I mean … I’ll see about assembling a workforce tomorrow. For today, why don’t you rest? Walk back down to the village with me. We’ll take the long way, along the stream. It’s a fine day for a walk, and it will give us a chance to talk.” She added swiftly, “About the construction.”
“What of the ponies?”
“I’ll send Darryl for them later. They’ll be fine.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he wiped his hands on his breeches and picked up his coat where it lay nearby. Slinging it over his arm, he said, “All right, then. Lead the way.”
She set an unhurried pace across the ridge, and he followed.
“Mind the path,” she told him, guiding him around the edge of the bog. He’d been away so long, she worried he might forget where to step. On the surface, it merely looked like a patch of damp land, dotted with scrubby patches of heather. However, beneath the unthreatening wreath of loam lay a spring—the source of the stream that flowed down these slopes and straight through the heart of Buckleigh-in-the-Moor. Peat and muck covered the spring two yards deep, and this bog was the sad end of many an unsuspecting creature with the bad fortune to misstep and become mired.
As they turned down the slope, the waters gathered and funneled into a steady trickle, draining the layers of surrounding peat. The ground was firm and safer now, and they walked two abreast as they followed the winding, ever-widening stream.
From his easy gait, Meredith could sense that much of the angry tension in his body had dissipated. Good. Back at the cottage site, he’d been so tightly wound and obviously hurting, she’d been afraid for him. Or afraid for the rocks.
“It’s been years since I walked this way,” she said. “But it looks the same as it ever did. Has it changed any, in your view?”
“The landscape? No.” He gave her a playful look. “But my companion’s a damn sight lovelier than before.”
Her cheeks blazed with a blush so fierce not even the cool breeze off the stream could soothe it. To say her adolescence was awkward rather understated the matter, but still … it burned her pride to know he remembered. “I know, I know. Back then, I was all freckles and bone.”
He laughed. “You were, but that’s not what I meant. Even freckles and bone, I’m certain you were lovelier than my horse.”
“Oh! Different companion. Yes, I see.” To disguise her embarrassment, she forced a laugh. “But that was a beautiful horse. My father still reminisces about that gelding. Finest beast he ever kept, he says.”
Rhys lapsed into silence.
Meredith breathed with relief. It seemed her secret was safe, then. She’d followed him along this route many times as a girl, always taking great pains to remain hidden from view. It hadn’t been too difficult—she’d been a reedy little thing with wild hair, always dressed in faded homespun. She’d likely blended right into the moor like a clump of gorse.
Even as they followed the path, she measured the distance by the old landmarks that had been her hiding places. The boulder standing sentinel atop a crest, the bowl-shaped depression where the river took a sharp curve, the twisted hawthorn tree surrounded by heather in its full violet bloom.
Skylarks spiraled in the sky above them. The further they walked, the closer they drew to a destination familiar to them both: the waterfall that tumbled into a steep gorge, gathering in a secluded pool beneath. That pool had been Rhys’s escape in his youth, during his breaks from school. Meredith’s escape, too, though little he knew it. She’d followed him many a summer afternoon, watching in secret while he stripped bare and plunged into the cool, clear water. At the time, the pull had been youthful infatuation and simple curiosity. But she’d grown into a woman since those days. As they drew nearer to that hidden pool, true desire swirled and eddied in her blood.
“Enough about me,” he said. “Tell me more about you.”
This was a new development, too. Logically, a vigorous young man on the brink of seventeen had taken no interest in a spindly, underdeveloped pest of a girl. But Rhys noticed her now. As they walked, he asked her questions about her father, the inn, her life over the past fourteen years. Meredith wasn’t used to talking about herself. While tending bar, she was always the one listening. She would have thought there little to tell, but nerves loosened her tongue, and somehow she found plenty to rattle on about. Rhys walked beside her, silent and attentive, taking care of her in small ways. Steering her around a rock, helping her over the crossing when the first bank grew too steep to navigate.
“And Maddox?” he asked.
“What of him?”
He kicked a small stone out of their path. “How did that happen?”
“How did I come to marry him, you mean?”
He nodded.
“After the …” She paused, then decided there was no use talking around it. “After the fire, my father’s convalescence was prolonged. For several years, the Ashworth estate paid him a pension. I took care of Father, and we lived well enough on the annual amount. But then the money stopped coming, around the same time the vicar’s living dried up. I was eighteen and frantic. I didn’t know what to do, but I needed to find some way of bringing in food, or we’d starve.”
Meredith didn’t like remembering those desperate times. A lump formed in her throat, like congealed porridge—which was what they’d eaten, sometimes twice a day. In her distraction, she neglected to choose her steps carefully. Her foot landed awkwardly on the path, and she stumbled.
Rhys’s hand shot out to grip her elbow.
“I’m all right,” she told him, steadying herself. “Thank you.”
He didn’t release her arm, however. Rather, he slid his hand down to capture hers. When she gave him an inquiring look, he merely said, “Go on.”
So they walked on hand-in-hand, wading through a bank of ferns. The whole moor greened up around the stream, and the banks were saturated with rich color, slick with moss. The fertile aroma of wet earth clung heavy here, too strong for even the wind to scrub away.
“I went to Maddox,” she said, “to offer my services as a groom in the stables. I knew how to do a stablehand’s work, of course. You know I practically grew up in the Nethermoor stables, and Father taught me everything. To show Maddox I could do a man’s work, I went dressed in men’s clothing—breeches, boots.”
Rhys chuckled. “And how did that work?”
“Not as I’d hoped.” She smiled to herself, remembering the way Maddox had searched her appearance with those rheumy blue eyes of his. As though he were mentally sifting through decades’ worth of life as a male, trying to recall the perspective of a virile man in his prime.
“He wouldn’t take me on as a stablehand,” she continued, “but he offered me a post as a barmaid. Thought my pretty face would help sell pints.” Perhaps she should have been offended, but she hadn’t been. For the first time, she’d tasted the power inherent in womanhood. She recalled it had felt oddly gratifying, to find some use for the slight breasts and hips she’d been growing.
“And …?”
“And I told him I’d rather not be a barmaid, but I’d marry him if he liked.”
Rhys coughed. “You proposed to him?”
“Yes,” she answered, matter-of-factly. “Father and I needed more security than a barmaid’s wages would provide. And I’ve never regretted it. Maddox was kind to me, and I was a help to him.”
“And when he died, he left you the inn.”
“He did. And in the six years since, I’ve made the inn my own. In the end, it worked out well for everyone.”
They heard the falls before the ridge came into view. Meredith felt it as much as she heard it: the low, dramatic rush of sound. This was not the trickling melody of the stream, but rather its ominous percussion. The sound of water forced to a crisis, hurtling into the unknown.
Rhys made a contemplative noise. “I suppose that’s fate for you.”
“Fate?” Meredith laughed. “You sound like the old moorfolk, so superstitious. How can you believe in that nonsense?”
“How can I not? Do you think it’s all just random, then? No rhyme or reason to the world?”
“No. I believe in hard work and hard choices. I believe people reap what they sow.”
They came to a halt as they neared the falls. The drop was so steep and unexpected. From their vantage upstream, it looked as though the stream simply hit a wall of glass. Still holding hands, they advanced onto the rocky outcropping that bordered the falls.
“Looks much as I remember it,” he said, peering down over the edge.
Edging forward until her toes met the lip of stone, Meredith followed his gaze. The water plummeted straight down, pounding into a circular pool some ten feet below. A lush oasis of greenery encircled the water—trees, shrubs, ferns. Leafy branches hung over the pool, shading all but the center, where a round column of sunlight pierced the darkness.
Even in full daylight … even to a woman nearing thirty, with a dozen menial tasks awaiting her at home and precious little energy for fancies … it looked enchanted. This pool was like a sparkling, precious gem, sewn into the seam of the earth’s foundation garments. From her girlhood, the sight had never failed to stir Meredith’s imagination and emotions. Her heart began to beat a little faster.
Rhys seemed affected by the beauty, too. His voice became husky. “You say you believe people reap what they sow?”
She nodded.
“Well, look at this place,” he said, gesturing down at the secluded pool. He turned to her, raising his free hand to cradle her cheek. “Look at you.”
Before she could protest the utter impossibility of his directive, he dropped a light kiss on her lips. Then another.
When he spoke again, his voice came from somewhere deep. Well hidden. “This very moment has to be the work of fate. Because I swear to you, there’s nothing I’ve done in my life to deserve it.”
He kissed her again, and she clung to him, dizzied by the height of the drop, and the pounding of the falls, and the soft, delicious heat of his lips on hers. How did he do this to her? She’d been mad for him as a girl, but she’d chalked that up to youthful infatuation. She’d tracked the events of his life religiously for a decade, but she’d told herself that was idle curiosity. And now … now she desired him so much she could scarcely stand, but surely that was only lust. Wasn’t it?