AT THE INN
Genevieve rode beside Adair. She felt more than a little shaken, though she also felt hollowed out, drifting and drained. She glanced sideways to where Adair rode beside her. Pale and drawn, he clung to the reins.
What happened to him?
The question was in her mind and wouldn't be silenced. She wanted to know the truth, but knew that it would do no good to ask.
He would tell her when he was ready.
The road back to the inn was dark, though they encountered no more riders on it. Genevieve could not guess what time it was, though she imagined it was more morning than night. They rode on.
When they reached the inn, she was starting to feel more exhausted than in shock. She slipped heavily to the ground in the dismount, and waited for Adair to join her. Together, they led their horses to where the sleepy stable-hand could unsaddle them while they went into the inn.
Adair spoke to the only servant they could find, who went to rouse the innkeeper, and soon they were installed in a room each. Two chambers. Genevieve paused with Adair on the landing, not yet ready to say goodnight.
“Thank you,” she whispered hollowly, “for saving my life.”
Adair said nothing. He leaned against the window-ledge, his hair falling to touch his cheek. She looked at him, wishing she could reach up to stroke it back.
“I...I'm sorry,” he said, turning to face her. His face was soft with sadness, though there was a melting tenderness in his eyes.
She stared at him in amazement. “Why are you sorry, dearest?” she whispered. “You did a great thing. A brave thing. What is there to be sorry for?”
He shook his head. Bit his lip. She could see some strong emotion tormented him. She didn't want to ask him more – she knew he would tell her, one day, what it was.
“I...I always wished she would say that. That she would forgive me. That she would know it wasn't my fault.”
His voice was broken, but not silent. He wanted to talk. He turned to face her. He smiled.
“You must wonder what all this is about,” he said.
She shook her head, looking down at the windowsill. “I don't.”
He smiled. She felt his fingers shift, until they gently covered hers. She let out a shuddering breath. Here in the hallway, alone in the darkness, they could have been the only people in the entire world. His touch was so intimate here. She took a steadying breath.
“I want to tell you,” he said.
Genevieve swallowed. She smiled. No cajoling, no prompting. She would let him tell her in his own time. He swallowed.
“When I was a boy, we lived in a wooden fortress. An old hill-fort, built to hold some sort of border or other. I don't know,” he added, smiling as he shrugged. He looked neither sad nor happy, but simply wistful.
Genevieve swallowed, nodding. “Yes?”
“We lived there, with a few household soldiers and servants, and some kin. My mother, my father and I.” His smile turned sad again, his eyes looking into the past. Genevieve waited.
“When I was five,” he began, “I heard tales from my uncle. He told me about the armies who had fought here. He said that they walked the world sometimes, on certain nights. That if one was awake and went out at these times, then one would see them. I longed to see them.”
He shook his head. Genevieve waited. His smile was so sad that it ached in her heart. He was looking down into the dark yard below, but she guessed he looked to another place and time. His sorrow was an adult's sorrow, looking back at that small boy.
“I waited, one night, when my nurse had gone to sleep. I fancied I had heard soldiers the day before, when I had been walking on the wall, had seen the glint of sunshine on helms. So, I stayed awake that night.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “I slipped out of the house and crept through dark corridors to the side door. I left it open as I crept out. I was only gone ten minutes.” He shook his head.
Genevieve waited while he took a steadying breath. He slumped on his elbows, staring into the darkness. At length, he started up again.
“They must have been there, waiting. For some signal, I'll never know. When I came back from my wait, the first thing I heard was the screams. And then I smelled the burning. I didn't know what was happening at first. Thought I had called up the ghost, or strayed into a nightmare. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late to do anything.”
He was crying now, though the tears fell silently, running down his face. She said nothing.
“I...ran to where my mother slept,” he said. His voice cracked now, and Genevieve started to gather what had happened. She reached for his hand, but it had slipped off the sill. She stayed very quiet. “I wanted to wake her, to warn her. But I was too late.”
He closed his eyes, tears falling down his cheeks. Genevieve reached up and rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. He jumped a little, but did not flinch or stop her.
At length, he stopped crying, slow shudders passing through him. He turned to her, that small half-smile on his lips.
“I thought you were her,” he said softly. “That moment, in the mist.”
“I understand,” Genevieve said softly.
He turned to her fully, then, and reached up and took her hand from his shoulder. Held it and lifted it, tenderly, to his lips. She felt her heart melt.
“You know, you are very different than her,” he said with a small chuckle. “You...from the moment I saw you, something new entered my life. You're so...different, and funny, and brave. You shone in my darkness. You gave me something I would never have believed I would have: hope.”
Genevieve had to blink as tears sprang, suddenly and unstoppable, to her eyes. She looked out of the window, blinking rapidly. They stood there together in the silence and the gray darkness of morning.
Genevieve was stunned by the story. However, knowing it, her heart was not sad, but filled with light. He had, she suspected, never told this story fully before. It would be good for him to, finally, stop carrying this secret.
This was the secret, then, that she had sensed around him. He was no spy. He was no shadow. This love she felt for him, and he for her – this was the light.
She cleared her throat. “I...when I met you, I knew that I had met someone remarkable. I...I have to admit that, at first, I had no idea what that remarkable quality was. I was afraid of it, I admit. I thought...” She shook her head, not wanting to tell him that she had suspected him of being the one who sought to do her harm. “I thought that your silence made you dangerous. I could not have been more wrong. Can you forgive me?”
He squeezed her hand. “There is nothing to forgive.” His voice was raw. “There is nothing to forgive, not for either of us. Not anymore.”
Genevieve looked out the window. Out there, the darkness had given way to the soft gray of morning. The sun was rising. And there was a new future for both of them. One in which they were free to make their own way, without the shadows of the past. Together.
* * *
They leaned close together, and Genevieve held his hand in hers. Their lips met. She closed her eyes as the hunger in her body melted into something new, and fresh, and intense.
She wrapped her arms tight around him and knew, for the first time, who it was she held. This was the man who had faced blame, shame, and sorrow beyond imagining. He had been keeping secrets, but none of them threatened anyone save him.
His lips parted hers and she felt her body melting in his arms. The tenderness was replaced with a surging urgency that she now knew was longing. She tensed and stepped back, even as he did.
He pressed his forehead to hers and looked into her eyes. “We should say goodnight.”
She whispered it to him. His lips lifted in a smile, though it was a smile tinged with regret. “I know,” he whispered. “It is for the best.”
They looked at each other. Neither of them moved.
“Goodnight,” Adair whispered.
“Goodnight.”
Passing her hand from his was hard – one of the hardest things Genevieve could remember doing of late. She made herself walk and turn away. At the door, she paused and looked back. He was looking back too.
She smiled, a grin of pure joy crossing her face. Then she turned away, went in and shut the door behind her. She sat down on the bed, exhausted.
She had ridden through the night. She had been attacked, and she had fought her assailant. She had faced fear and cold and danger. And she had found love. She looked up at the dark ceiling. She grinned.
She couldn't remember such happiness.
The first sounds she awoke to were the sound of pots, crashing to the floor in the kitchen, and ensuing shouting. She sat up quickly and noticed that the sun was already high in the sky. She slipped out of bed, still in her clothes, and pulled on her boots, surprised she had managed to take them off before she managed to fall asleep.
She was smiling as she looked through the wide open curtains, down onto the bright hillside below.
She would be seeing Adair soon.
In the dining room, most of the guests had already left, leaving the place sparser than she had ever seen it. Genevieve looked about, and caught sight of Adair sitting at the table by the window, the sun lighting him from behind. She stared.
He was smiling at her, and it seemed the shadows had gone from his face. She stared. He looked as free as anyone she had ever seen. And even more stunning for it.
“Good morning,” the innkeeper's wife greeted her, bustling past with an armload of plates. She gave Genevieve a strange glance, as if striving to remember her face from somewhere. However, she said nothing and Genevieve simply smiled, the sweet knot of pleasure in her tummy filling her and making her want to giggle.
She went to the table where he sat. He raised a brow and smiled at her and the warmth in her body spread out, spiraling down to her toes. She sat down opposite him and turned to him, grinning openly. “Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning.”
They looked at each other. His hand lay on the table, just across from hers. Her hand slid across the tabletop and rested beside his. He folded his fingers over hers, and they just sat like that, grinning, as if there whole world had faded, and it was just the two of them, alone together, with the soft morning sunlight.
“A pint of milk and a plate of eggs.”
Adair smiled evenly at the innkeeper's wife as she laid a plate and jug on the table between them. Genevieve jumped, and tried to move her hand. He held her fingers and she blushed, smiling. He was right. Let the world think what it would. They loved each other. Nothing else mattered as much as that did.
Genevieve breathed in, smelling the delicious scent of fresh bread, and her stomach clenched painfully. She reached out and took a vast slice of bread off the platter already there, reaching for a slice of cheese a second later.
“First we eat,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Then we make plans.”
He laughed. “You have irresistible logic.”
“I have irresistible hunger.”
They both laughed at that. He nodded. “Well, I can second that.”
They both looked at each other, and it was clear that they both understood what they meant. The hunger they referred to.
He blushed and looked down at his plate.
They ate in silence.
“When we get back,” Genevieve said, wiping her mouth, “we should try to find out who was following us.”
“Yes.” Adair nodded.
His eyes, on hers, were still intense with longing, and she felt a similar sensation tighten her own throat. She fought to ignore it. “We need to ask Arabella to have a watch set,” she continued, ignoring the rising longing that was threatening to swamp her reasoning. “This has to be solved.”
“Yes.” He nodded.
Genevieve was utterly free of suspicion of him now. She knew that, had it been he who had been paying the fellow who followed them, he would never have attacked him so violently, so viciously. And if it was a ruse, the counterattack would never have been so bitter.
No, it was not him. Francine was right. I saw what I thought to see, not the shadow that existed. Nor the light.
She knew better and now that she knew the truth, they had to find the real threat.
Before it is too late.
Genevieve glanced up at Adair. His jaw was tight and he looked grim-faced. She could see that he was as worried as she. “We should go soon.”
“Yes,” he nodded.
They stood and headed to the desk where the innkeeper was sitting, half-asleep, it seemed, waiting for customers to enter.
“We should...”
“I can...”
They looked at each other. Genevieve looked down, smiling. “I suppose I should let you pay,” she said, grinning up at him.
“I suppose.”
Oddly, they both seemed shy in that moment. Genevieve looked away, realizing that this was the first time that they had really done something together, in a public way. Grinning, she headed up the stairs to her bedchamber.
There was nothing to pack up – she had come with no luggage beyond the drawstring purse she carried – and she sat down on the bed, hands clasped, considering the remarkable things that had brought her to this moment. She was in love. She knew that now and, knowing it, she found she could not keep the grin off her face. At the core of her, she knew that from now on, a road of happiness lay ahead. There might be clouds, but in the end there was only light. She was in love.