Alex stared at him, the tremors subsiding only slightly.
“I’ll never be back, Weaver,” he said in a low voice. “Not to who I was, and not to who Trace was.”
“Just consider it.”
Consider it. Did he think that Alex hadn’t considered it from every angle when he’d refused Cap before?
“Maybe when I stop feeling straps of braided rope with bits of metal in it slashing across my chest and back, I’ll consider it,” Alex said slowly, lifting his chin as a chilling calm settled on him. “Maybe when I can close my eyes without anticipating a glowing fire iron searing the soles of my feet, I’ll consider it.”
Fritz blinked unsteadily, and Alex heard Gabe shift behind him, though neither said a word.
“Maybe,” Alex went on, his voice rising, “just maybe, when waking up with my arms above my head doesn’t terrify me with the thought of someone trying to carve out a rib or two, I’ll consider it.”
With a brisk nod, Alex brushed past Fritz and moved to the garden remnants, long destroyed by the intruders of the house and the neglect of years. He could hack away at any of the dying plants with a spade or an axe and feel himself more to rights without having to converse with a single soul. Well, provided Gabe and Fritz took the hint from his tirade and left him to himself.
The crack of a twig brought Alex’s head up, but he looked ahead instead of behind him. His heart sank when he saw Poppy standing there, a basket on her arm, her eyes wide as she stared at him. He cursed under his breath. Clearly, she had heard his outburst, and if anyone else had been wandering by the grounds, they’d have heard him, too.
Perfect.
“Well?” he demanded as he glared at her. “Do you have something else to add? Some other area in which I lack now but once excelled in? Would you like to voice a complaint about my current state and choices in the hopes that it might motivate me to become something else?”
He saw Poppy’s throat move in a swift swallow, and she took two steps forward. “Stanton said you were working on Parkerton, and I assumed that the kitchens were in no state to provide anything. So, I brought some things.”
Oh.
Alex swallowed and tried to glower less aggressively, but it appeared he had reached his limit.
“Did you make them or did someone capable?”
“Mrs. Brown did, thank you very much,” Poppy responded, her forehead knitted in irritation, “and if you are going to be such a troll about it, I’ll take it back home and enjoy it myself. Lord knows, it’s been some time since I’ve enjoyed a meal I did not have to prepare.”
“I’d say it’s been a long time since you’ve enjoyed a meal at all, since you prepare them.”
She huffed loudly and set the basket down, folding her arms.
“Did you toss your manners out of the window with all this mess, or are you just feeling especially cantankerous because now you have to put in some effort to get what you want?”
Alex opened his mouth to respond when Poppy looked behind him and beamed a delighted smile.
“Good day, Fritz. Good day, Gabe.”
They responded in kind, but Alex couldn’t spare them a look.
How could she look at him that way, speak to him that way, and have such joy for the others? Why was he to blame for everything? What did it matter anyway?
“I’ve left some food from Mrs. Brown for you gentlemen,” Poppy told the others, refusing to look at Alex. “I’m not sure what she did, but it smells wonderful.”
“Don’t bother with charity,” Alex snarled, gripping a bush nearby just for the sake of having something to clench. “We don’t need it.”
Poppy slid her suddenly cold eyes to him, her mouth tightening.
“Charity requires that I feel something generous within me,” she informed him in a low voice. “That isn’t what this is.”
“Then what is it?”
“Pity. Pathetic, condescending, pride-offending pity, and may you choke on it, Alex Sommerville.” She turned on her heel and marched away, her coppery curls dancing in agitation as she moved.
Alex watched her go, hating himself to a new depth for spurning her kindness, for provoking her, for sending her retreating in such a way. Once he was better than that.
Now…
“Damn, Alex,” Gabe hissed suddenly close to him.
Alex exhaled irritably. “I know, but if you understood what went on between us…”
“Not that,” Gabe interrupted sharply. “You’re a damned fool, and we can berate you later for that. Let go of the thorns before you bleed to death.”
That made Alex scowl with an accompanying growl as he looked over his shoulder. “Metaphors, cousin?”
“No, although that would be a good one.” Gabe’s wide eyes gave Alex pause. “I mean you need to actually let go of the thorny bush you are clenching in your right hand before your physical body bleeds to death.”
“What?” Alex looked down at his hand, where, sure enough, he was clutching a bush of thorns, and ruby red blood was pouring from him. “Oh…”
“How did you not know?” Gabe murmured, staring at Alex’s hand, just as Alex was.
There were no answers for that. Nothing to say. Nothing he could explain.
Slowly, one finger at a time, Alex forced his hand open, looking at the fresh wounds as though they could give him answers.
“Perhaps I’m immune to pain now,” Alex murmured, “or I’m accustomed to it.”
But there was something quite chilling about the way he could watch drops of his blood fall from his hand to the ground beneath them, all without feeling any pain from the injuries themselves.
“I can’t go back, Gabe,” Alex rasped, transfixed by his blood. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t go back,” Gabe replied, removing his cravat and wrapping it around Alex’s hand swiftly, applying a sharp pressure that Alex did feel.
His cousin met his eyes, and Alex found a steadying influence within them.
“Don’t go back,” Gabe said again. “Go forward.”
Forward. The word struck Alex and reverberated in his mind long after Gabe tied off the cravat and went back to work.
He could go forward.
But where would forward go?
Chapter Seventeen
There wasn’t anything more maddening than a matter left unsettled, and when the matter was one of the heart, it was infinitely more maddening. For the last few days, Poppy had been teetering on the very edge of such madness. It wasn’t her fault she was going mad, and she refused to pretend that it was.
The blame could lie fairly and squarely on the broadening shoulders of Alex Sommerville. Somehow, his brooding and his surliness had increased with his departure from her cottage, which was surely the exact opposite of what he had intended, and after their most recent interaction, she seemed to be the recipient of a particularly bitter aspect of his darkness.
Why, she could not say. What had she done but treat his injuries with all her energy and give him the space and peace he needed after his ordeal and try to bring him back to the light? How dare she do such a thing?
She hadn’t dared venture to Parkerton after he’d snapped at her, having no desire to see him like that, if she could help it. What he’d said hadn’t bothered her as much as the tone he had said it in. They had mocked her cooking ability time and time again, but always with a hint of mischief. There had been no mischief in that last exchange. There had been nothing light or warm or friendly in it, and nothing she could have smiled about. Somehow, it had almost seemed as though he had been intentionally trying to wound her.
That wasn’t her Alex, and it would never be her Alex. He would never have hurt her, or anyone, with intention, nor spoken with the sort of spite that she had heard.
Therein lay the crux of her madness.
Was the Alex she had known and loved gone forever? Had the brief interlude they had shared since his return been something imagined and fleeting? What had been real and what had bee
n imagined?
While Alex had lived under her roof, her sleep had been disturbed because of his nightmares. After he’d gone, her sleep had grown disturbed because of her own thoughts and dreams. She wasn’t sure there were words for her dreams. Nightmares would have been too harsh a title, and yet there was something haunting and lingering about them. Something that kept her awake for most of the night, sent her to examine the night sky, whether star filled, or cloud covered, and occupied her thoughts for days on end.
Memories filled those dreams, moments she had shared with Alex in her past and treasured, only now those memories were altered. There was a strange light in Alex’s eyes now, and a darker tint to everything. Something suspicious and twisted that brought with it doubts that assailed her in her waking hours. Doubts, questions, uncertainty, all rose within her at regular intervals, and suddenly nothing she had known seemed real anymore. Nothing any of them had told her seemed real.
Unfortunately, this meant she couldn’t face any of them for fear of saying something she would regret, asking questions she ought not, and raising old fears that would be better left in the past.
Even Stanton had avoided her of late, though he was still working the farm and harvest just as he always had. But their conversations were strictly related to farm matters and without any additional warmth or extraneous topics.
He left her alone. They all did.
Especially Alex.
Against all her natural proclivities, Poppy had decided that the only way she could work out her emotions and aggression was to make bread, which she had never done successfully. But as she kneaded the dough now, she felt aggression and anger building.
“After all this time,” she ground out as she pummeled the dough. “All this time, and now you decide to give me reason to hate you? Now you become the villain they all said you were?”
She grunted as she reached for more flour, her fingers covered in the clingy, sticky mass. She sprinkled the flour on the table, picked up the dough, and set it down on the floured surface, muttering to herself.
“Do I have anything to add?” she grunted under her breath. “Do I have anything to add, Alex? Oh, where do I begin? Which year should I start with, hmm? I have several things to add, if you truly wish to start with that.”
She worked the dough hard, pushing and grinding her knuckles into it, snarling under her breath.
“He doesn’t need charity?” She laughed once to herself. “He needs absolutely everything. A house, funds, an occupation… Manners… Not to mention health and strength, which is still sadly lacking, as anyone with eyes can see.”
The dough made a faint sputtering noise as she pressed into it again, and she stared at it in disgust.
“Don’t need charity from me?” she snapped, reaching for more flour. “And then to insult my cooking? I’d like to see him do better. The kitchens at Parkerton would be perfectly empty after this long, so what, pray tell, is he eating? Is he so high and mighty that he cannot accept something from a neighbor, though it was not prepared by his own chef?”
There was no sound from the dough, but her knuckles pounding against the wood of the table seemed to emphasize things nicely.
“As if I have had nothing better to do with the last five years than wait for him to show up and justify my state.” She huffed loudly as her fingers worked in the mixture, still not finding the traction she needed to make this bread dough actually resemble such. “And now he’s got me making bread to work out my agitation. Bread, of all things. Not a walk, not beating something, as he would undoubtedly do, and not even hard labor on my own farm. No, I am making bread.”
“Yes, and you seem to be struggling with that.”
Poppy whirled with a gasp, fingers taking far too many remnants of the dough with them.
Gabe stood in the doorway, looking rather polite and apologetic, smiling a little at her. “Do you mind, Poppy? The door wasn’t latched.”
Poppy swallowed as she stared at the man, his dark, curly hair not fitting with his usually irritable persona, though his shockingly pale eyes more than made up for it. She was tempted to tell him to leave off, to go back to Parkerton and his infuriating cousin, and to take his secrets with him.
But she couldn’t.
“I don’t mind,” Poppy muttered, her fingers absently moving, sticking together with the dough upon them, “I suppose.”
Gabe had begun to nod, and then stopped at her added words. One corner of his mouth drew up. “We deserve that, but thank you.”
Well, as long as he could admit it…
Poppy nodded once and turned back to her bread. “What can I do for you, Gabe?”
“At the moment, I’m more concerned about your bread than my task here,” he said, sounding almost pained as he neared her.
She slapped her hands on the wood and glared at him.
“I’ve already received enough criticism of my efforts for a lifetime, in case you didn’t hear them for yourself.”
Gabe winced and came closer still.
“I don’t mean to insult you, my dear. Only… you are beating that poor bread so that it may become an inedible slab rather than rise appropriately.” He smiled weakly with a small shrug. “And you seem to be wearing more of it than you are working. You could butter your fingers or use more flour on the surface.”
Poppy returned her attention to the dough in front of her, grinding her teeth.
“You are a bread expert now, Gabe? Not just a spy?”
“I spent months working at a bakery on one of my assignments,” he replied with an easy chuckle, a surprising amount of warmth in the sound for one who was supposed to be so cantankerous. “I’m no expert by any stretch, but I do know my way around a loaf.”
“Of course, you do,” she muttered, peeling the dough from her fingers and tossing it back with the rest. “Perfect.”
“Hardly perfect, Poppy,” Gabe teased, coming to stand beside her. “I can teach you, though, if you wish.”
“Go right ahead.” She gestured faintly to the bread, making a face.
He reached across her for more flour, dusting it over the surface of the bread before pressing his hands into it almost gently, seeming to caress the dough over and over, turning the now smooth round over in his hands and on the table. He lengthened it as he did so, making it longer and thinner in size.
“Aren’t you supposed to make it a loaf?” Poppy asked, not bothering to remove the bite from her tone.
“Usually, yes,” Gabe replied with a nod, still smiling crookedly, “but with what you’ve put this poor matter through, an alternative method must be employed.”
Poppy watched as his hands worked the dough expertly, despite his claiming he was otherwise. It seemed odd to her, almost bewildering, that hands so prone to fighting and hard labor should be equally attentive to something as soft and pliable as baking bread.
Curious, indeed, for a spy.
And a lord, if she had her facts correct.
“You seemed to be rather intent on beating this dough rather than kneading it,” Gabe said in an almost offhand way as he now pressed the dough nearly to its extremes. “Care to share? It might not be as cathartic or satisfying as beating something, which I am usually in favor of myself, but it may save your hands and your dinner.”
Poppy folded her arms across her chest, a disgruntled hum escaping. “We’re having stew for dinner, if you can’t smell it.”
“Can’t smell it.” Gabe shook his head once as he peeled the edges of the dough from the table along one long stretch. “You must not be using enough spices, but bread and stew are the perfect combination, so you will want this to accompany it.”
She scowled as she moved to the pot of stew she’d only just put on and reached for pepper and salt as well as some herbs, tossing them all blindly in. Perhaps he would be able to smell it now, and perhaps Stanton wouldn’t complain about his meal if she added more into it.
Perhaps.
“Now, what are you doing with t
he bread?” she asked, turning back to Gabe, who still worked the dough carefully into a long roll.
“You’ll see,” he told her as he rolled the dough completely. Then, he buttered his hands and pressed the side of one hand directly into the middle, splitting the roll in two, pinching the edges and separating them. “Work the ends of the roll until they are completely tucked under and no trace of the layers can be seen. Nice and smooth, like this. You see?” He showed her the end of his that he’d worked into a smooth, round edge.
Poppy nodded, buttering her hands and trying to mimic his actions with her inexperience, failing almost at once.
He pretended not to notice as he finished his other side, then set his created loaf, seam side down, into the pan. “Seam side down so that it doesn’t open but will spread. You do the same with yours, and you’ll have two perfect loaves ready to bake in an hour or two.”
Poppy placed her sloppy loaf into a pan, frowning slightly at the sight of it.
“That’s not ever how I’ve done it.”
“Well, it’s only one way to do it,” Gabe laughed, shrugging a shoulder, “but I promise it will do the trick admirably.”
“You underestimate my inabilities,” she assured him as she dropped herself into a chair, wiping her hands on her apron. “I could still burn them until they resemble bacon.”
He picked up a towel and wiped his hands, grinning at her. “If your bread turns to bacon, you had best run, for your house is on fire.”
Poppy snorted and covered her face with her hands, groaning softly. She heard the chair beside her scrape against the floor, then groan when it became occupied. Sighing, she dropped her hands into her lap, looking over at the man beside her without any emotion but resignation.
“Why are you here, Gabe? What can I help you with?”
“What can you help me with?” He cocked his head, a slight furrow appearing between his brows. “I rather thought it was I who could help you, for once.”
“With my bread?” Poppy smirked in amusement. “Consider it done.”
Gabe shook his head. “Not with the bread, though it was nice to work dough again. It’s been some time.”
Fall from Trace Page 21
