HEARTS AFLAME

by Nancy Morse

  “I’m not, but I do confront a problem head-on.”

  Rowan’s temper flared. “And once the problem has been confronted and solved, do you keep revisiting it or do you move forward?”

  David frowned as Rowan turned away to tend Faxon.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was vanity that made Fia wear the gold tunic to dinner. She’d met Rowan’s sisters and grandmother, all turned out for the day in fine wool with delicate embroidery at the neck and cuffs. Matching veils floated like vapor around their heads and tasteful gold rings gleamed on their fingers.

  If that weren’t intimidation enough, Marian the younger was just as Rowan had described. Tall and forceful, strong-jawed and beautiful in a way wholly different from straightforward Rochelle or the more traditionally attractive daughter, Patrice. Marian was also inexplicably pregnant. Her height nearly camouflaged the tidy mound of her belly, but there it was, for all the world to see, and with no mention of a husband.

  The hall shone with the light of a forest of oil lamps that illuminated a long rectangular table groaning with assorted fresh breads, early spring greens, and ewers filled to the brim with water, cider, and wine. Rowan strode into the glow just as a maid struggled into the room with a platter piled high with roasted meat. He walked directly to Mam, led her to a seat, and gave her all his solicitous attention as he shared a bench with her and Stella at the table.

  Mam did her best to turn his notice toward Fia but he skillfully resisted. David betrayed some interest in the bumbling attempts, and when Fia glanced around, looking at anything but Rowan’s pointed avoidance of her, she noticed Lady Rochelle’s penetrating gaze on her more often than not.

  Calm yourself, she thought, laying down the eating dagger Rowan had given her at the abbey. She forced herself to look directly into the lady’s green eyes.

  “Thank you for the delicious meal and for offering such comfortable lodgings,” she said. In truth, the beds in the women’s guest quarters exceeded the luxury of anything she’d ever slept in or ever would again. She suspected the mattresses might be stuffed with feathers instead of hay.

  The emerald warmed a bit as Rochelle replied, “It is a pleasure to finally meet the family that David and Rowan speak so highly of. I’m only sorry it is under difficult circumstances.” She turned her attention to Stella. “I lost my own father when I was perhaps your age. A great deal of growing up had to be done in a few short years.”

  She then sent David a look of warm remembrance there was no mistaking. When he lowered his chin slightly to acknowledge his wife’s message, a bond beautiful and fragile as gold filigree, yet strong as iron chain, shimmered between them, at least in Fia’s imagination. The intensity of David’s face once again looked so like Rowan’s that her breath caught. Flustered, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing across the table. Rowan was thankfully offering Abril more wine, saving her the embarrassment of being caught staring at him like a lovesick fool.

  Fia reached for her own goblet, wondering if the band of small red stones under her fingers were real garnets. With the rim almost at her lips, she said, “It has been nearly ten months, my lady. If I’ve learned anything from losses I’ve suffered in the past, it is that there comes a time to let them go.”

  She pretended to sip as she felt Rowan’s curious glance.

  And also Lady Rochelle’s, apparently. “Indeed,” she agreed. “We can hold them in our hearts without allowing them to be…obstacles to life.”

  Marian the elder began dabbing at her eyes with a cloth while Marian the younger rubbed a hand over the swell of her stomach.

  “Perhaps we should change the topic?” Patrice suggested mildly. “Half the table is about to burst into tears.”

  Rochelle gifted Fia with a slight smile. “Learning to walk the lines between loss, love, and living is all part of growing up.”

  After finishing dinner with a delicious apple tart, Rowan invited Julius to walk with him to see the forge. Fia couldn’t imagine her brother wanted to tread another step after their days of walking from Metz, but he eagerly followed, the top of his unruly black crown just reaching the height of Rowan’s shoulder as they passed through the door into darkness.

  “That was kind of him,” Abril said to Rochelle. “He is starved for a man’s company.”

  “It is no bother. Rowan spends most of his time at the forge, no matter what,” Rochelle said, not sounding entirely happy about it.

  After half an hour or so of pleasant conversation around the hearth, Mam turned to Fia. “Perhaps you should go fetch your brother. We don’t want him to make a nuisance of himself, and he’ll need his rest to continue our journey tomorrow.”

  Rochelle sat forward as if she would protest the plan, then subsided.

  Fia thought she saw David wink at his wife before he said, “Alda is generally quite safe, but I’ll walk as far as the corner of the wall to see you make it out of harm’s way.”

  And so she found herself wrapped in her cloak, hands clutched together as she approached the dimly lit building. She heard the deep rumble of Rowan’s voice comfortably answered by Julius’s higher tones.

  “Hello?” she called before she crossed into the weak path of light spilling from the front.

  Rowan’s broad form cast the shadow of a colossus down the slope. He said nothing. She could only assume he watched her approach as he stood, unmoving.

  She kept walking until she was within arm’s reach, the slight climb stealing her breath more than it should.

  “Forgive my intrusion. Mam thinks Julius should return to the house. We will be leaving early.”

  Julius made an inarticulate sound of disgusted protest from somewhere behind Rowan.

  Fia saw a flash of teeth as Rowan smiled over his shoulder at the boy. “Don’t vex your mother,” he said, and he rubbed his hand vigorously over the slumped head as Julius stomped past.

  “The Lord of Alda is waiting for you down by the wall,” she told him.

  “What about you?” Julius demanded.

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” When he stiffened in resistance, she pushed his shoulder to turn him toward the road. “Go. Please,” she whispered.

  He set off amidst a storm of muttering and kicking of stones.

  When she faced Rowan, his arms were already crossed over his chest, all the better to keep her out.

  She sidled past him into the space she assumed he found the most comfortable place to be of anywhere in the empire. “I want to see where you work. To have a memory of it so I can picture you here.”

  He leaned on a post as she toured a familiar setting, with his tools just so, and several blades in progress lined up on a worktable. She reached out to touch the closest one.

  “The Lord of Metz accepted your reworking of his blade. Thank you for that.”

  “I assumed he had,” he said, full of indifferent arrogance. “Did he pay Abril the full commission?”

  “Yes, though I think in his mind a portion of it was charity for the poor widow.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Not that we aren’t grateful. His fee saw us through the winter and helped with this journey.”

  She stuck her head through a doorway to a storage room where a rough cot and a table with a battered water pitcher were squeezed into one corner. His living quarters, if his mother’s assertions were to be believed.

  She turned back to him, to an expression as cold and unwelcoming as the charred wood in his firebox, the gaze partially hooded as he watched her for a moment before stepping away from the stone pillar at his back.

  “You’ve seen all there is to see. Shall I walk you back?”

  “I want to talk to you for a moment. We’re leaving in the morning, and I don’t know when I’ll see you again.” She hoped her smile looked friendly, not desperate. Her palms were sweating despite the precipitous drop in temperature and his chilly attitude.

  “I would guess never,” he said cruel
ly.

  “Is that what you want?”

  His lips pressed together in a thin line. “I told you the last time we spoke of the likelihood of most men getting what they want.”

  This was not going at all as she’d hoped, but she was done equivocating, done running from the force of him. “Long before that, I told you I could not imagine another man, after Victor.”

  His lip curled.

  “They were foolish, hasty words,” she said.

  “They were anything but hasty.”

  “Yes. Well. I no longer believe them.”

  “Are you hoping for a blessing from me, for that Metz tradesman?”

  “No, I —”

  “You have it. If he is what you want then take your cart and go back to him.”

  “Listen to me, please! I turned down his proposal months ago.”

  “Poor man.”

  “I never encouraged him beyond what you saw.”

  This tidbit was greeted with the familiar, silent disapproval he could don like a mask.

  Fia’s shoulders slumped. While she had been dreaming of him, he had been hardening himself to her. Again.

  “I didn’t come here to talk about him, or Victor. I…I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. I told you I needed time to think, and that is what I’ve been doing since things…changed between us.”

  He pressed a hand to his chest. “Dare I hope I have been upgraded from brother?”

  She approached to tentatively touch his arm. “I deserve your anger, but could you try to hear what I am saying instead of lashing out at every word? This isn’t like you.”

  “Yes, of course. Calm, steady Rowan.” He eased his arm away. “You can rail against him and kiss him and spurn him and shove other men under his nose, and he’ll always return for more.”

  “I have resisted you because I feared any softening toward you was an absolute betrayal of Victor,” she cried. After a pause, she continued more calmly. “At least, that is what I told myself. Do you remember when I said I was afraid of you? I know now I always have been, in a way. You are big and rich and handsome, and while I was tramping around Metz on my bare feet, jumping in haystacks, you were as solid and confident as an ancient oak. It’s as if my childish self knew that if I came too close, the reach of your branches would consume me.”

  His mouth opened, then he turned from her, her lovely acorn quickly becoming a rock in her stomach.

  “The time with you after Paris reminded me of the wonderful boy you were, how I could always talk with you and be cheered by your subtle sense of humor, and how interesting you have always been. You showed me the man you’ve become and challenged me to become the person I should be instead of clinging to the past. I want to thank you for that.”

  She flattened her hand on his broad back, right in the center, and felt the valley along his spine, the wool of his tunic damp under her hand as if the conversation was an exertion for him. Yes, she was sweating too, on her palms and now under her arms as well. “I won’t apologize for what I did years ago, for the choices I made. But I don’t think the past should put us at odds any more.”

  He turned, and she let her hand slide over the bicep and onto his chest.

  His voice was deep and gruff. “Tell me what you want from me. Exactly.”

  Her eyes filled with tears at his wary hardness, yet she could not withhold her final declaration. “I want to at least be able to think of you as a friend again, but I love you in a much different way than that, Rowan. That is most important. I want you to know that. Reject me if you must, but at least know it.”

  He answered immediately. “That is a fair distance from despising me.”

  She gulped at her disappointment. He stood, cold and detached despite the declaration she’d made, and she knew this might be the only chance she’d ever have to make him at least hear her, even if he didn’t accept what she said. “When I saw you in Paris, when you first arrived at the shed, do you know there was only one other person I’d have rather seen at that moment?”

  He physically braced to hear Victor’s name.

  “My father. Because I’d just watched him die. I’d been thinking about how the men I care about always leave. And then you were there, and I knew you would keep me safe and get me home.”

  The muscles of his throat rippled as he swallowed. “I don’t want to be your savior any more.”

  “But you are. You have been my savior and my friend while I’ve brought you little but heartache. No more. Perhaps I’ve waited too long, but I want you to know I’m ready to become more for you. I will stop running and be a friend again, at least, and more, if you wish it.”

  His expression returned to dismissive disbelief.

  When she realized he either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak again, Fia walked toward the path that led to the house. She looked back at him, her voice tortured but strong.

  “If those are the last words ever spoken between us, at least I know they are the truth from my heart, unafraid and honest at last.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rowan stood still as the damned great oak Fia thought he was, holding a rapidly cooling length of metal in one hand and a hammer in the other, unable to settle himself to his work even though the sun now stood high. He’d dismissed her last night, as he’d known he must, to save his heart from being ripped from his chest once and for all. He’d let her walk alone in the dark, unaware of him creeping at a distance behind her, edging along the walls to the gate until he saw her safely enter the house. And he told himself that was the end of his interest in Fia.

  Yet their conversation wouldn’t leave him in peace. She’d said the words he’d longed to hear for so long, but he thought it must be too late.

  For his own protection, he must simply make it be too late.

  The rattle of footsteps on the path shook him from his troubled musings. Father approached with a flagon of ale in one hand and a plate piled with bread and meat in the other.

  “You skipped breakfast. Your mother wasn’t very happy about it.”

  Rowan shoved the metal back in the fire. He took a deep drink of ale, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Have our visitors gone?” He knew very well they hadn’t. He’d listened for the passing cart on the road since dawn.

  “No. We convinced them to rest for one more day. And your presence is required at dinner. Understand?”

  Rowan’s head dropped between his shoulders.

  “Fire and smoke, when are you going to end your and that girl’s misery?” Father asked pointedly.

  “Perhaps it’s misery I’m avoiding.”

  “From the looks of it, you’re both sick about each other,” Father observed, one side of his mouth lifting in a wry smile. “It’s been decades since I’ve seen a young woman wearing such a brave facade. What on earth did you say to her last night to make her face as pale as chalk?”

  “What did I say to her? I’ve been rebuffed at least twice. In fact, she hated me until it became convenient for her to change her mind.”

  “Hmm. That is funny.” Father chuckled.

  “I’m pleased that I can amuse you, even if it requires a woman’s disgust of me to accomplish it.”

  Father’s brows arched. “If disgust is what she’s feeling, you can send me into battle wearing your grandmother’s tunic and jewelry. What I meant was it sounds very much like my courtship of your mother, if you can call it a courtship. She rebuffed me, plotted against me, hired a man to best me, and publicly humiliated me, all in the course of a few desperate, painful months. Have I ever regretted believing her plea for forgiveness or doubted her love for me since the day she finally spoke the words? Never.” He smiled ruefully. “Well, maybe I doubted her once the very next day but Theo sorted me out on that score.”

  Of course, they’d all heard bits and pieces of the story over the years, but Rowan had never thought of how it must have felt to be his father,
in the middle of their challenges, not knowing Rochelle would eventually accept his love and return it in full measure.

  “How did you know she wouldn’t…humiliate you again?”

  “I suppose I didn’t. But I also knew I didn’t want to go forward alone, without her. I’d never felt like I belonged, or even felt entirely complete, until I came to Alda and rode the fields with her.”

  “Rode the fields?” Rowan said skeptically.

  “We were very proper, and mind the direction of your thoughts about your elders,” Father said sternly, though he tempered the rebuke with a smile. “Please, son, consider carefully before you set her aside. You’ve been unhappy since Paris. Don’t give me that look — it’s true. It has taken your mother and I quite awhile to determine the root of your trouble, but we think we’ve unearthed it.”

  Rowan rubbed his face with a dirty hand, smudging his nose with soot.

  “I’m not asking for your secrets,” his father added. “We trust your judgment and certainly don’t know Fia well enough to advise you except to say, be sure of your decision. That’s all. And come to dinner.”

  He gave his son a stinging whack on the shoulder before he left.

  Rowan pulled the rod from the fire and gave up on work. He sat outside the forge, leaning on the wall that faced the stone of his family’s home, knowing she was there. Knowing, longing, fearing the freshly-stoked temptation that crept back over him with the goose bumps of a chilly fog over a marsh, or the warmth of a crackling fire on a cold night.

  Why would he even consider standing up for more punishment from her? Fia the Defiant. She was the lively spark, the perfect dance, the woman who felt emotions so powerfully that she cowered from them, kept her feelings deep inside where few could see. But with him there to hold her together when she threatened to explode from grief, or dare he hope, love and happiness, she would be a worthy partner.

  That potential was what he’d recognized in his gut, what had left him with scars, yet tempted him still.