Heart of the Cotswolds: England

by M. L. Buchman

  “I live here now.”

  Debbie, of course, had completely glossed over the failure of Jane’s business. It wasn’t about her, so Debbie probably hadn’t even heard.

  “I’m buying a cottage.” Jane instantly wished she could grab the words back out of the air but it was too late.

  “Well, isn’t that cozy.” Debbie tone was deeply insinuating as she made a show of looking down at Jane’s robe and then over to the earl and back.

  Jane could hear the implied Jane, you ignorant slut! phrase even if Debbie didn’t give it voice.

  “Wait,” her sister’s eyes narrowed. “Here in Fosse? Well, all the better that we’re shaking off the dust of this dreary place. Geoffrey bought us the nicest little penthouse condo in central Milan, just five bedrooms, but the living room and view are to die for.”

  “Good for you.” Jane really didn’t want to get into any of this now. Or ever again.

  “A cottage here, you say?” Debbie never forgot anything she could use as a weapon. Experience had taught her that Debbie saw everything as a threat or an opportunity to ruin Jane’s life, but she couldn’t think of any way to unsay the words.

  “Geoffrey,” the earl’s tone was suddenly both imperial and dismissive, “will be easier to control in Milan. There are more…diversions.” His tone managed to imply mistresses and that Debbie was little more than a bought-and-paid-for one of those. How he did that without varying his tone, Jane was unsure, but Debbie’s face flushed red hot.

  She sniffed, made a point of giving Jane the finger out of the earl’s line of vision, and strutted back out of the room with her hips in full sway.

  The office echoed with the slam of the door. They sat unmoving until the click of Debbie’s boots had disappeared across the marble hallway and everything was once again quiet.

  “I believe,” the Earl of Evenston picked up his teacup, dunked his biscuit, and offered her a friendly smile that would have been unimaginable seconds before. “We were discussing Aaron’s newfound reticence.”

  Jane wanted to start crying again in thanks for the kind and understanding man. “Thank you, your lordship.”

  “Conrad, at least.”

  “Conrad,” she finally assented. “You are the best of men.”

  “I might pursue that, despite our age difference, if you weren’t so in love with Aaron Mason.”

  “I might not mind, if you weren’t right.” The words were out before she could stop them. In love? With Aaron? He was stubborn, close-mouthed, scaring the shit out of her and… and…

  And she was totally and completely in love with him.

  “But…” was all she managed.

  “Obvious the moment you walked into the wedding on his arm, I must say. Quite the most charming couple I’ve seen in a long time.”

  “He was being my White Knight, protecting me from…” Jane didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  “And you were his Queen,” Conrad agreed complacently as if the ground wasn’t shifting under her feet.

  “That’s what he said.” Jane did her best to manage a single breath but inside it felt more like another sob. “At least I was, before everything changed.”

  “What the hell happened to you, boy?”

  Aaron glared at Trent but didn’t speak.

  “Look at it. Really look.”

  Aaron turned his glare on the arch. “It’s just a goddamn stone arch. Why does it have to be so fucking perfect?”

  “Perfect?” Trent practically shouted at him. “My granddaughter could make a better one with her building blocks.”

  Aaron had spent five days working on it while Trent was off visiting his kid and grandkid. He’d forced the thing into form and position. He’d…

  “Do I have to show you?”

  If Trent showed him what was wrong with the arch, Aaron wouldn’t be accountable for his own actions.

  It was just fine! If he ignored the curvature. And the leaning toward the footpath. So tipsy that the rain might take it down. And the shoddy base layer that wasn’t going to stand any better than a half-crippled man in a firefight.

  Dodger had lost his leg, so he’d get to stand tall again.

  Whereas Aaron was merely a sad gimp who—

  He grabbed the keystone and yanked.

  It was stuck hard.

  He yanked it again. His hands, slick with mud, slid off the stone. He grabbed it harder.

  “No! Don’t—” Trent shouted, but Aaron got it free. The suddenly free keystone slammed into his chest, knocking him away and flat onto his back in the trampled grass and soggy mud. It was probably the only thing that saved him.

  The whole upper curve of the arch gave way in a single, flowing wave of limestone. He couldn’t crawl away fast enough and it piled down on him. Rocks battered into him. Gut. Hip. Leg.

  When a particularly large stone caught his bad knee, all he could do was scream. Whether it was pain or rage he didn’t know.

  Jane yelped when her cell phone rang.

  The maid holding her clothes still warm from the dryer looked at her strangely.

  Conrad nodded that it was okay and she answered the unknown number.

  “Where are you?”

  “Trent?”

  “I’m at the cottage. You’d best get here fast.”

  Chapter 14

  The first thing Aaron noticed was the smell. Hard, biting, antiseptic.

  Crisp sheets.

  A feeling he was undressed…except for the small pressure of an all-too-familiar knot at the nape of his neck. Hospital gown. He was in a goddamn hospital. Again!

  That’s when it registered that everything hurt. His chest, his hip, his—

  Falling stone!

  Aaron jolted up. “My leg! Do I still have my leg?” Two lumps under the sheet, thank god, not one. One was fatter than the other but at least there were two of them. He tried flexing his feet. One moved the sheet, the other met resistance and he could barely wiggle his toes. The familiar, choking embrace of a leg cast. Everything from his knee down began to itch all at once but that feeling too was an old acquaintance, perhaps even a friend. At least his leg was still there.

  A face moved into his line of vision and took his hand for half an instant, then let go.

  Jane. She always looked so put together in her slacks so neat they looked freshly pressed and a blouse that flowed softly over her.

  Then he remembered the arch. Clawing at it like a madman. So angry that it boiled out of him until…until it had collapsed on him. He was damned lucky to be alive.

  He flopped back on the pillow and wished he hadn’t. He closed his eyes as the world swirled viciously and the major bump on the back of his head throbbed from the impact with the pillow.

  “How bad?”

  “They called it a non-displaced fracture. You cracked your shin bone badly, but nothing shifted.”

  “No worse a cripple than I was before?”

  “No worse,” her voice was barely a whisper.

  “Goddamn it,” but he couldn’t find the heat of fury that had burned so deep in him for so long. Was it gone too? Abandoning him as fast as Jane would if she had any sense of self-preservation. Or had the Black Demon merely been knocked out cold by the falling rock, as he had, and would attack again all too soon?

  “You want it to be worse?” Her voice was a shocked whisper. She hadn’t run yet.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” And he really didn’t. But he could do without that damned heart monitor beeping away the last seconds she’d ever tolerate being near him.

  “Why would you want to be injured?” She moved a step away and he missed her. It would kill him if she actually went—he knew that, yet could do nothing to stop her as his final seconds beeped by.

  Aaron still didn’t know if he’d be happier without his bad leg. Hadn’t been able to think of anything else since the captain’s offer to return as a wounded trainer.

  “Aaron!” Jane’s voice was sharp, sharper than he’d ever heard
it.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Your eyes are red.”

  “Duh!”

  Okay, perhaps not his smartest opener. She’d been weeping and it had been his fault, which sucked.

  “What happened last Friday? Who was that man and what the bloody hell did he say to you?” It wasn’t like her to swear.

  Aaron shrugged.

  Jane stepped in and thumped the center of his chest with the side of her fist.

  “Ow! Shit!”

  Pain radiated outward from where the first stone had pummeled him. The pain slammed into the knot on the back of his head where he must have knocked himself out by tumbling backward.

  “I might have cracked a rib or two while I was at it.” He tested with a deep breath and decided they were only bruised, but her blow still hurt.

  “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not. Now tell me.”

  It was the red eyes that finally persuaded him. He could see the pain there. In hindsight, he could see that he’d been causing it all week, which made him a total heel.

  “I can’t believe you’re still here.” But he didn’t pause for a response he was afraid he wouldn’t like. He told her about Jack’s visit and the way Aaron envied Dodger his second chance. Everything. Including the opportunity to get back in, if only he was willing to totally swallow all of his pride and be the resident gimp-boy that no one would ever truly respect.

  “Back in?” Jane had sat on the edge of the bed, her hip against his good thigh, separated only by a sheet and his stupid hospital gown. She wouldn’t do that if she was planning to run, would she? He prayed not.

  “With The Unit. Delta. Back as a trainer, if not in action.” Darkness out the window, TV off, door to the hall closed. There was nowhere to look except at Jane.

  “That’s why you wanted to lose your leg? Has an amputee ever made it back into Delta?”

  “No, though a few Green Berets have and a jumper in the 82nd Airborne. But the docs say it can be done. Got a recently injured buddy who lost one,” Aaron slashed a hand across his mid-thigh, “and is going for it.”

  “And you want to do this?” Jane’s question, and her face, were both painfully blank. He couldn’t read a thing about her reaction. No guideposts for the damned—she was leaving him to find his own answers. And if she didn’t like the answer? He couldn’t think about that.

  Did he want it? “I’ll be damned if I know.”

  He could see her swallowing hard.

  “Go on, ask the question,” he prompted her.

  She shook her head, sending a shower of hair to cover her face. He reached up to brush it aside, but she flinched away. He guessed that he deserved that no matter that it hurt worse than his head, ribs, or the leg that was now bringing its own complaints online. So, he took a stab in the dark…not that it was so mysterious now that he was flat on his back instead of trying to hide behind all the rage. He could read the question in her red eyes and the hunch of her beautiful shoulders.

  “No. It’s not because I want to get away from you.”

  No reaction.

  “Seriously. I’m not that stupid. You’re incredible.”

  Her shoulders sagged the tiniest bit in relief and he heard her take a hard breath from behind her golden shield. This time she didn’t flinch when he brushed her hair back over her shoulder.

  “No man in his right mind would want to get away from you.”

  “That makes you a first, not that I’m complaining about your bias. Then what is the problem, Aaron?” He could hear both the desperation and exasperation clear in her voice. Just how much had he put her through this last week? Way more than she deserved or should have to tolerate.

  Shit!

  He had to stare at the ceiling fluorescents for a long time trying to puzzle out the problem. He reached out and made sure to have a firm hold on her hand so she couldn’t slip away while he was working on it. The reassurance when she finally returned his grip was startling in its depth.

  “The problem…” he muttered up at the fluorescents, “is…” he wasn’t getting anywhere. “The problem is…I don’t want to lose my damned leg, even if I had it to do over. And now that I’m actually doing my PT, it’s fine for civilian use, or it was until I did this. I’ve adapted, mostly. Losing my leg isn’t an answer. Going back in as the outcast and unwelcome trainer isn’t any better. But if I’m not Delta, then who the hell am I? That’s what I can’t figure out.”

  “That’s easy.”

  He could only blink in surprise at her as she smiled down at him. It was a sad smile, but it was perhaps the first one he’d seen in a week.

  “You’re the man that I love.”

  She sounded utterly confident, but she looked as shocked as he felt.

  Chapter 15

  Jane went out of her way all week to make him feel that he hadn’t totally screwed up the week before. Again proving that no idiot in his right mind would run away from her.

  Aaron kept trying to apologize and she kept telling him to shut up until he finally got the message and did.

  While riding along with Trent on some errands—just so he had something to do—he found her a nice vase down in Bourton-on-the-Water. Actually it was a heavy ceramic water pitcher but decorated with sweet peas, which he figured made it vase-like at least. He left it in the living room, overflowing with tulips from Fosse’s third-Friday-of-the-month farmer’s market. He pictured her finding it when she got back from her own errands.

  For reasons beyond his imagining, Jane loved him.

  He could feel it in the cottage. Could see it in the air mattress they still shared though he didn’t deserve it. Could touch it in the dining set she’d purchased because he could no longer sit on the floor comfortably while wearing a cast.

  He crutched his way out into the garden. The sun was out and it felt good to be out in it again. He levered himself down until he was sitting on their impromptu stone table and set his crutches aside. The lambs in the meadow on the far side of the Heart of England Way footpath were growing and soon more males would be culled into lamb chops.

  Aaron breathed in the air and tried to understand how he hadn’t been culled out of the herd. Shot up—he’d been saved by a medic. Buried in stone—Trent had dug him out.

  And Jane…

  Jane had said she loved him.

  What was a guy supposed to do with that?

  Aaron needed a distraction, badly. It wasn’t hard to spot one as he looked toward the fallen arch.

  Per his instructions, Trent hadn’t touched a thing. Aaron surveyed the rubble. He had been lucky to survive. Stone was scattered everywhere and there was a grim outline of where he’d been partially buried, thankfully clear of the very worst of it or he’d be dead by now. He shifted to sit on the grass near the most scattered stones and began tossing them back into their various piles by size. Each time he cleared what he could reach, he scooted his butt over and went back to his sorting.

  After a week, the bump on his head had healed and his ribs were only frustratingly sore. Any Delta knew how to ignore that—even a former one.

  And Jane had said she loved him.

  She managed not to look too hurt when he didn’t say it back. Which only moved him deeper into that the foreign terrain of no man’s land that lay somewhere past like, but before that other word.

  Last person he’d said that to other than his mom was Mary back in high school. She’d rolled her eyes, though he’d meant it at the time. She’d been amused and explained the difference between teenage love and true love. She’d always been the deep thinker of the two of them.

  A magpie, so formal in its black-and-white feathers, landed atop the broken wall for a moment. It inspected him, the wall, the blue sky, and him again with quick twists of its head. With a shrug that said everything was as it should be, it fluttered away. A pair of sparrows did a brief dance down along the edge of the trench, snatching up a few bugs before taking flight. For the first time in weeks he became aware of the
birdsong that always seemed to fill the Cotswolds, like nature’s answer to elevator music.

  “What are you doing?” Jane had come down the garden path from behind him while he tossed rock.

  “Cleaning up my mess. I’m sitting. No stress on the leg, nurse.”

  “You’re such a good boy,” she leaned down and kissed him on top of the head.

  He reached both arms over his head for her, but she scooted away. Overbalancing, he landed on his back, with a rather painful fist-sized rock poking into his kidney. He cleared it and looked at her upside-down.

  She clutched the sweet pea vase to her chest and her face was framed to either side by the wildly varied tulip colors. Jane made a show of hugging it tighter. “You’re such a good boy.” Even upside down her smile was brilliant.

  “Your secret’s out, you know,” Aaron pushed himself upright and turned around to face her.

  “What secret?”

  “You’re a total sucker for flowers.”

  “From the right man, I sure am.”

  He tossed a few more rocks. “The right man…how do you know?” The question was out before he could stop it.

  “How do I know that I love you?”

  At his nod, she sat down on the lawn still clutching her vase and flowers.

  “What kind of a question is that, Aaron? You either know or you don’t.”

  “Not real helpful.”

  The beautiful vase was digging into her chest so hard that it hurt.

  “How can you not know?” How can you not know, yet still pick out such a perfect gift?

  Aaron grimaced. “This is new territory for me, okay? A soldier’s life is a very unsettled one. There are a couple of female Deltas now, but I haven’t ever met one. So I hung out with guys for a living and occasionally hooked up with a base clerk or a bar-babe for a while. But that’s about it.”

  “And you want me to explain what love is?” Her and fifty centuries of poets right back to Homer.

  “Too tall of an order?”