He was learning her. Without the boy to protect, she had returned to protecting herself.
‘I could read a few words.’
‘The same two your mother knows?’ Just looking at her raised his temper. ‘You don’t cook, you don’t wash, you can’t fish …’ He waved his hands, fighting the temptation to put them on her shoulders and shake her. ‘What are you good for, lass?’
Pink embarrassment crept from her cheeks to the roots of her hair. He had upset her, which was no less than he had intended, but he had not expected to feel guilty for it.
But before she could answer, Wat ran out of the bushes, trailing sticks. He stopped in front of Rob and thrust the pile of twigs and sticks into his arms. ‘Here!’
Then he stepped back and looked from one to the other, his face transformed by a proud, happy smile.
Stella crouched before him. ‘That’s good, Wat. You did a good job. Can you get us some more?’
He nodded and ran off again.
‘Children,’ she said, gazing up at Rob with a soft smile. ‘I’m good with the children.’
Stella watched Rob’s scowl turn to frustration. He flung Wat’s precious twigs to the ground.
‘Then go marry someone special and have some.’
She rose, resisting a sharp answer, and tilted her head to study him. No man—indeed, no one at all—had ever treated her this way. Everyone at home spoke to her carefully, as if afraid to upset or anger her.
As if afraid to evoke any emotion from her at all.
But his words were like a spear in her empty womb.
‘When you let me go home, I will,’ she said, wishing that words could make it so.
Rob’s strong, stubborn gaze turned tender. Aye. Somewhere behind the black brow and the angry words, there lurked a touch of softness. Maybe some day, he’d find a woman who could release it.
‘Truce, then.’ Two words, but in those, she heard the lilt of a song.
She smiled and nodded towards the water. ‘Truce, while we see if between the two of us, we can figure out how to catch some fish.’
They waded into the water and Rob selected a place in the stream to build the dam. She explained to Wat what they needed and he ran back and forth, tireless, heaping twigs upon twigs.
Determined to prove her worth for something, she gritted her teeth, as silent as Rob, and bent to the tedious trial and error of lacing and stacking the sticks so they would not be washed away. At the end of the afternoon, wet, tired, and bedraggled, they had a makeshift weir, ready to trap a passing salmon or two or three.
Wading out of the stream, she sank down on the bank, heedless of the grass and mud beneath her. Rob did the same. Wat, quick to copy, sat between them, looking from one to the other.
‘You did well, boy,’ Rob said, ruffling the boy’s hair.
Wat smiled, bright as the sun.
Then, with a satisfied sigh, Rob stripped off his shirt.
She tried not to stare, but drops of water ran down the curve of his shoulders and traced the muscles of his arms and she remembered the feel of him, holding her to the earth, of that one moment she had no choice but surrender …
She cleared her throat and turned her eyes to Wat. ‘Yes, you did.’
‘So did you.’ The rumble of Rob’s voice cascaded through her.
‘Can I tell my mother?’ Wat said. ‘Can I tell her what I did?’
Stella looked to Rob. ‘Aye. Go on.’
‘She’ll be pleased,’ Stella called out, hoping it was true. ‘I worry about him,’ she said, after the boy was out of earshot. ‘His mother doesn’t seem to have any time for him and it would be so easy for …’
For something to happen.
Rob looked at her, silent.
She lifted her chin. ‘Someone should watch him.’ She did not want to ask permission. Did not want to say please.
‘What? Why?’
So he does not fall into the well.
‘Is he not a child of God who deserves to be cared for?’
‘He’s a halfwit who will never survive without help.’
‘Then you admit he needs help!’
A hint of disgust edged his eyes. ‘The boy must learn to survive on his own. I did.’
No. This man would not have sympathy for the weak. Strong, bold. He would not understand what it was to doubt.
‘But what if he can’t?’
‘Then he will be better off. If he can’t survive childhood, he’ll not survive a life on the Borders.’
Maybe he was right. Maybe this child would be better off dead.
Maybe she should have died in that well, too.
‘Besides,’ Rob continued, ‘no one has time to follow a child around all day.’
‘I do.’
He studied her face, his still as black as his name, and she thought he would deny her.
‘Go,’ he said, finally. ‘Ask his mother, then. I care not.’
Something, a pull of gratitude, rushed through her, threatening tears. Afraid to look at him, she stared at the sun-dappled water splashing over the little dam of sticks they had created, wishing, violently, that just once, the man would see the world without certainty. ‘Together,’ she whispered. ‘We did that together.’
In just a few hours of peace, Storwick and Brunson had built a weir. What could they build in a year of truce?
She closed her eyes, then opened them and forced herself to look at Rob again, careful to keep her eyes on his face. ‘Now all we need is some fish,’ she said.
‘Oh, soon enough, we’ll have fish aplenty,’ Rob answered. ‘I did not spend the day getting wet and tired to catch a passing carp.’
She studied his face. Sharp cheekbones slanted towards an angled nose, overshadowed with brooding brows and a high forehead. Did he ever smile? ‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because by then, the Storwicks’ garth is going to be nothing more than sticks floating on Liddel Water.’
Words harsh as a slap jolted her to remember. Black Rob Brunson was no ally, no helpmate. Even a moment of peace was an illusion. Between their two families, there could be no truce.
Not
