Mercy. He had no patience for crying females.
He stepped into the room, sending a puff of flour over his boot. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘First, she let the stew burn. Now, she’s spilled half our flour!’ Beggy’s voice danced on the edge of a scream. ‘Get her out of here.’
He took Stella’s arm, but she looked back at Beggy. ‘I should help you clean …’
‘No! Don’t help,’ the girl said. ‘Or there’ll be nothing left to eat.’
He pulled Stella out of the kitchen and into the courtyard. ‘Did you plan to starve us all?’
‘I do not cook at home.’
He stared. All women cooked. Didn’t they? ‘You were the one who complained of the food!’ Criticising the lack of foolish luxuries, of no importance to anyone except to her. ‘And you don’t even cook?’
‘I didn’t think it would be so hard.’
‘For most women, it isn’t.’
‘Then why don’t you marry a woman who can cook?’
Her words hit as hard as horse’s hooves on rock. ‘And why don’t you marry a husband who’ll keep you from roaming the Borders alone?’
She licked her lips, crossed her arms, lifted her chin, all as if to fill the space where there should have been words. But flour still clung to her sleeves and her apron and her shoes and he couldn’t help but think she looked ridiculous instead of haughty.
‘I will,’ she said, finally. ‘Soon. Someone worthy. Special.’
Special. She said the word as if to insult him. ‘Who is special enough for you?’ The words curdled on his tongue. Why even ask? He didn’t care. Not really.
‘No one you would know. No one the least bit like you.’ She turned away, as if she could choose to end the conversation. ‘And no one who would interest you.’
Suddenly he wanted to know who would possess this infuriating woman. ‘He interests me if he will ride to rescue you. Or if he won’t ride as long as I keep you.’
She looked back at him, eyes wide, as if both ideas were new to her. He was not skilled with women, but this one was hiding something.
‘Then you will have to wonder at it, won’t you?’
And he did wonder. She was more than of an age to marry and more than passable to look on. Why was she not yet wed?
And as he looked at her, trailing white dust from her apron, he was also wondering why he had ever thought taking Stella Storwick was a good idea.
Stella kept her fists tight and her chin high, but her smile stiffened.
He would have to wonder because there was no one. Not yet.
There would be. Some day. It was hard to find the person good enough to join with a child saved by God.
‘Well,’ he said, a touch of pride in his voice, ‘the woman who marries a head man must be special, too.’
Relieved at the shift from her imaginary husband to his imaginary wife, she rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘The woman who marries you will have to have very special patience.’
‘The man who marries you will have to be a saint.’
A saint. Yes. That’s exactly the kind of man her parents were looking for.
Her stomach growled, loud enough that Rob looked down. ‘Next time, eat what’s put before you.’
‘Next time, put something before me I can eat.’ And dinner would be worse, now that she had singed the stew.
‘Brunsons don’t whine about food.’ He took her arm and pushed her ahead of him. ‘I should not have let you out at all.’
She looked towards the gate. He must not lock her in the tower again.
‘There ought to be salmon now,’ she said, dragging her feet. Liddel Water was just beyond the gate. Air without walls, a chance to explore, even to escape …
He had retreated to silence and did not glance at her.
She tried again. ‘Are you not a fishing man, then?’
Now he looked insulted.
‘Ah, I can see that you are not. Because you are such a fighting man.’ Maybe she could goad him into it. ‘Well, the man who leads the Storwicks provides for their bellies as well as for their protection.’
‘We have cattle and sheep to fill our bellies.’
She raised her brows. Her belly, certainly, had not been filled. ‘Do you not like fish?’
He paused, as if he were trying to remember the taste. ‘I like it well enough.’
‘Then why don’t you serve it?’
‘Not enough salmon to fish.’
‘I ate a plateful, only last week. There’s plenty of salmon.’
‘Plenty for Storwicks because your kind has blocked the cursed stream and the salmon can’t get up this far.’
The thought gave her pause. She had known, of course, that her family had built traps that allowed them to feast on fish, but she had never thought about what that would mean for the families who lived upstream.
‘Well, we’ll have to catch the few there are, won’t we?’
‘Do ye know any more of fishing than of cooking?’
What she knew about fishing wouldn’t fill a leather thimble. But it could not be so hard. Neither was cooking. If the Tait girl had not made her nervous, if there had been unburnt salt … ‘I know enough.’
He leaned away so he could meet her eyes. ‘Do you, now? Do you know how to build a garth?’
‘A what?’
‘A garth. A weir, I think you call it.’
‘Ah, yes.’ She knew the word. It was some kind of construction of sticks that the fish could swim into, but not out of. And she had never touched one in her life.
‘Or perhaps the Storwicks spear the fish by torchlight and slaughter them for sport. That would suit your style.’
Had they? Perhaps. They did not tell her all. ‘What we don’t eat isn’t wasted. There’s plenty who will pay for good fish.’
‘Is that how you pay for those clothes, then?’
She looked down. ‘Clothes?’ She looked down at her dress, now covered with flour outside the apron’s reach. She might have brushed away the flour dust, but now the mist was turning it into white mud.
‘You’ve got sleeves big enough to drag across the table and you’re wearing a gold cross fine enough for some king’s spawn.’
Without thinking, she touched the cross at her neck. The women of Brunson Tower wore coarse wool, laced vests and tight sleeves, as did most of the women in her home. But her parents had always made sure she had something better. ‘A gift. From my parents.’
‘Stolen, no doubt.’
‘You say that because that’s what fills your house.’
They faced each other with stubborn frowns, but there was no answer either could give. Reivers on both sides of the border lived that way.
‘There’s no disgrace in that,’ he said, finally. ‘The disgrace is in what else some men do.’
She knew the man he meant. Cousin Willie had been a disgrace to them all. Her father had even disowned him, but somehow the man had become a symbol, a